Ben Mankiewicz‘s “The Plot Thickens” podcast series on Peter Bogdanovich is pretty great. I’ve listened to episodes #1, #2 and #3. Chapter two covers Peter and Polly Platt‘s early New York days, driving across the country in a beater, getting started in Los Angeles, making Targets, etc. Chapter three is about The Last Picture Show and the years-long affair with Cybill Shepherd and the breakup of Peter and Polly’s marriage.

Mankiewicz knows Hollywood lore, of course, but episodes are aimed at people who aren’t all that hip. (Excerpt: When Carroll O’Connor is mentioned, Mankiewicz uses a dialogue clip from All In The Family…grating.) But it’s also hugely engaging and amusing, and the backstage stories are wonderful.

“The randomness of life is so strange…”

Marty, meet Svetlana. Svetlana? Marty. You’re both having a difficult time with the plague, and I’ve watched both of your short films about what it’s like to be in stir for weeks while listening to the tick of the grandfather clock.

I have to be honest — I like Svetlana’s lament a tiny bit more. Sad, melancholy, daydreamy. Marty’s is more on the level of “Henry Fonda, I feel your Wrong Man pain” plus a little “how long until we can get moving again?” Oh, and I was horrified that Marty shot himself in vertical portrait mode at the very beginning.

I only know that for one brief shining moment in Mexico (Wednesday morning to Thursday afternoon), Tatyana and I were in a place that felt mostly free of the Covid blahs. We took walks on the beach without masks. At dusk we ate on an outdoor terrace overlooking the Pacific. The briney aroma was wonderful. The water was too cold to swim without a wetsuit, but I splashed around. The usual precautions were taken. Some wore masks, others didn’t. And now we’re back in WeHo.

I wanted to commemorate this poignant moment – more than 100,000 lives lost in the U.S. due to #Covid19. Here’s a 90 second short film that I made in isolation to raise a voice to my feelings. @WHO @CDCgov pic.twitter.com/jIjuWLSWJl

— Svetlana Cvetko (@svetlanadp) May 27, 2020

pic.twitter.com/QNW53VceRV

— Ian Mantgani (@mant_a_tangi) May 28, 2020

Amazon Studios movie exec Ted Hope has left that position for a multi-year first look producing deal with Amazon. The official word is that Hope decided to abandon the prestigious job due to a primal itch to get back into hands-on producing, which he did for years at other outfits.

The general presumption, of course, is that Hope was pushed out by his Amazon superior Jennifer Salke, mainly because his Amazon track record was colored by investments in too many under-performers. Because Ted’s picks were too indie-quirky. Which resulted in Joe and Jane Popcorn saying “Uhm…what?”

Hope joined Amazon five and one-third years ago (i.e., in January 2015) as the head of development, production and acquisitions. In January ’18 he began serving as the co-chief of Amazon movies, reporting to Salke.

2016 was Hope’s finest Amazon year with the release of Kenneth Lonergan‘s Manchester By The Sea (worldwide earnings of nearly $79 million) and Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman. Manchester won two Oscars (Best Original Screenplay + Best Actor for Casey Affleck), and Salesman won for Best Foreign Language Film. But except for Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War (’18), a well-reviewed Oscar contender, it was all downhill after that.

Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here (’17) was and is a first-rate arthouse assassin flick, and Joaquin Phoenix won the Best Actor prize in Cannes (yay), but Joe and Jane said “naah.” Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot (’17), a recovery-from physical-trauma flick that I mostly liked, also sputtered with the hoi polloi–

Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying (opened in Nov. ’17) didn’t do much review-wise or commercially ($965K worldwide).

In 2018 Hope got all hot and bothered about Mike Leigh‘s Peterloo, which also fizzled with a lousy $152K in North America and $1.9 million worldwide. Felix van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy (’18) was a moderately weak sister with worldwide earnings of $16.5 million. Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (which broke my heart) opened in late ’18 and ended up with $7.9 million worldwide.

Amazon ran aground big-time in 2019 with four pricey Sundance acquisitions — Late Night, Honey Boy, Brittany Runs A Marathon and The Report — all shortfalling with the meat-and-potatoes public.

Cold War, a 2018 release, lost the foreign-language Oscar to Roma in early ’19, true, but it was a film everyone had to see. It was the most stunningly photographed black-and-white film in a long time, or at least since Pawlikowski’s Ida.

If I was running Amazon instead of Salke, I would’ve said to Hope, “Ted…these films are critically respected and all, but they’re mainly aimed at guys like yourself and your ahead-of-the-curve friends and a certain percentage of the Academy. What about Amazon…you know, releasing at least an occasional film that Average Joes want to see?”

For her You Must Remember This podcast, Karina Longworth has created a ten-episode tribute to legendary producer, production designer and Pretty Baby screenwriter Polly Platt. It’s called “Polly Platt, The Invisible Woman.” I haven’t had a chance yet. I’m thinking of catching the first two episodes on the drive back to Los Angeles later today.

“Dearest Polly Platt,” an HE tribute posted on 7.27.11:

The tide has turned against Wokester McCarthy-ites, or at least those who are paying attention. Jig’s up, time to trim sails, hand overplayed, etc.

Please consider a day-old, profoundly comforting, nearly perfectly phrased Bulwark article by fiction writer Greg Hurwitz.

Excerpt: “All women are not to be believed any more than all men are. To suggest that females are magical truth-telling creatures isn’t just insulting; it’s objectifying.

“And of course the leaders of #MeToo knew that.

“But the biosphere of social and mainstream media no longer responds to — or has any interest in — nuanced positions. So ‘Women will no longer be silenced just because they lack relative power in certain circumstances, an injustice that now demands we give equal weight to those who’ve been victimized’ became ‘Believe all women.’

“Which then, by its very lack of nuance, set off a firestorm of cancel culture, circumventing due process and harming people of both genders. And when members of the left said nothing or responded with glee to the one-size-fits-all mob sentencing guidelines, they ended up condoning the same sort of overzealous nonsense that the right does when pretending that cancel culture rules the day.”

Acknowledgment: I dearly wish that The Bulwark could be a centrist, common-sense website as opposed to an American conservative news and opinion website founded by conservative commentators Charlie Sykes and Bill Kristol. I regard myself as a sensible leftie, but I completely agree with Hurwitz except for the “believe all women” slogan, which some #MeToo-ers have claimed was a rightwing mis-labelling of a view that more correctly could have been understood as “take accusations by women seriously.”

Excerpt from Alaric Dearment article on abovethelaw.com, posted on 5.27: “In their zeal to boost Reade’s accusation and lend credence to her claims, people like podcaster Katie Halper, Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson and many others effectively presumed Biden’s guilt. But mounting evidence has raised serious doubts about the veracity of Reade’s allegation and her own credibility — mounting evidence uncovered, I should add, by professionally trained journalists who actually knew what they were doing.

“To be sure, no concrete proof –- in the form of damning or exonerating documentary or photographic evidence –- has surfaced of whether Biden is guilty or innocent, or of whether Reade’s allegation is true or false. Because of that, only a fair and impartial examination can determine whether the totality of evidence at hand favors or disfavors her allegation or remains inconclusive. But this isn’t really about Reade, Biden, or sexual assault — it’s about how activist journalism is ill-equipped to provide such an examination, and how its poor handling of the Reade story is a shining example of that.

Meanwhile, N.Y. Times columnists Michelle Goldberg, Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat have assessed the all-but-total collapse of Tara Reade‘s accusation of sexual assault against Joe Biden. Here’s an alternate link.

Despite Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey calling for now-fired Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin to be charged with having murdered George Floyd…Chauvin having clearly ended Floyd’s life by keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck until asphyxiation occured…

Despite the obvious, authorities haven’t charged Chauvin because, I’m assuming, certain elements within the Minneapolis police department and judicial system have resisted because they’re persuaded it would be rash or bad for police morale or some such hooey.

No one believes that the other three officers involved in the incident — Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng — should be charged, but Chauvin definitely needs to pay the piper.

“I’ve wrestled with, more than anything else over the last 36 hours, one fundamental question: Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” Frey said in a news briefing. “If you had done it, or I had done it, we would be behind bars right now. And I cannot come up with a good answer to that.”

“But the film closest to my heart…the one that really rings my deep emotional bell after all these years…well, there’re two, really. Jaws 4: The Revenge and, of course, The Swarm.”

Our Tijuana dental work completed by 3 pm, we arrived at Poco Cielo Hotel (south of Puerto Nuevo, even further south of Rosarito) at 4:10 pm. We were walking on the beach by 5:30 pm.

This isn’t a good thing to admit, but we melted when we realized that Dimitry’s original La Fonda restaurant, which is right next door, was allowing customers to sit inside and order. It was the first time we’d been to an eatery since late February.

We’re bad people for having done so, we realize, but the place was nearly vacant and the waiters were so grateful we’d arrived. Plus we could sense that God wasn’t frowning at us.

We sat on the outdoor patio at dusk, overlooking the crashing surf and almost weeping about how wonderful it felt to be ourselves again. We apologize to all of the Virusbros out there who are no doubt seething with rage as they read these words.

And forget The Disney Channel…not this horse.