I’m sorry to report that Gregor Jordan‘s Dirt Music (Samuel Goldwyn, sometime in July) got roughed up last September by Toronto Film Festival critics. And yet Tim Winton’s 2002 source novel, an Australian road romance between a free-spirited woman named Georgie Jutland and a poacher named Luther Fox, is widely respected and won a slew of literary prizes.

Garrett Hedlund and Kelly Macdonald play Luther and Georgie. At the very least Sam Chiplin‘s cinematography seems appealing. We all understand that some books simply don’t translate to the screen, and sometimes they’re not adapted in quite the right way.

Either way you can’t help but wonder what might have happened if the original Dirt Music team — director Philip Noyce, costars Heath Ledger and Rachel Weisz, and screenwriters Justin Monjo and John Collee — had made their version a decade or so ago.

Phillip Noyce (l.) discussing Dirt Music with Tim Winton (center) and Justin Monjo. Sydney, June 2004. 

Noyce had been working on a Dirt Music flick even before Winton’s novel became an Australian best-seller in ’02. He had the option to make a film version for roughly 11 years, from before publication until sometime in 2012. Noyce had wanted Rachel Weisz to play Georgie — she wound up being attached to the project for several years. In February ’07, with the project very much alive and ready to roll, Noyce ran into his leading man.

“One morning, walking with my coffee in Sydney, a Range Rover pulled up at a pedestrian crossing,” Noyce recalls. “Down came the window, and there was Heath Ledger. We agreed on the spot to shoot the film in Western Australia eight months later with Rachel.”

But the usual delays occured, and then Ledger died of an accidental overdose on 1.22.08. He was 28 years old.

“And I could never find the same spark for making the film with anyone else,” Noyce laments. “Not with Colin Farrell nor with Russell Crowe. No one could be the Luther Fox that Health showed me that morning in Sydney.”

In November 2011 Noyce asked Chris Hemsworth to play Luther for a shoot that would have begun in March 2013. That didn’t pan out either. Noyce’s option expired.

Along came Gregor Jordan. Jack Thorne (The Eddy) was engaged to write a new script. In August 2018 Hedlund and Macdonald were announced as the costars. Filming eventually happened in Kimberley, Western Australia, as well as Perth and Esperance.

Nervous Nellie blogger addressing the possibility of an all-streaming Oscar season (in comment thread): “When Damien Chazelle’s The Eddy hit, no one cared. It didn’t even cause a minor ripple. That seemed odd to me. We know Netflix built their house out of bricks and with Lisa Taback pushing the films they might reign supreme. But what will the competition be, and what will people care about, and why would anyone bother caring? My prediction is that it will go either way — either an uplifting musical like West Side Story might revive lethargy or something dark, political and angry might. I’m just wondering how bad it’s going to get, and how I’m going to make a living this year.”

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond: “I can only use the Emmy season so far as an example and it seems to be ‘business as usual’ this year. Print pubs are likely to be hit hardest as Netflix has announced it is going digital in terms of ads. I don’t get involved on the sales end, but if the studios can get content released, I am sure the usual hullabaloo will follow in all its forms. Content, as always is KING. That is the one potential factor separating Emmy season from Oscar this year. But assuming the movies are there (they really need just ten decent Oscar pics), the industry will find a way.”

HE: Some Nervous Nellies were asking this morning if the Oscar season will happen later this year, along with the show itself in early ’21. I took a deep breath.

Jordan Ruimy: Maybe, but the big titles are probably going to be streamed.

HE: Maybe so. Maybe it’ll have to be an all-streaming year this one time. Or maybe theatres will start to creep back in July and more in the fall. Maybe we’ll actually get to watch Mank and the other biggies on the big screen under certain conditions.

Here’s the answer either way: The Oscars are happening in early ’21, period. Because this is a DO OR DIE, “RALLY ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS” MOMENT….not just for exhibition but for all aspects of the industry…production, distribution, marketing, SAG, the below-the-line guilds, blogaroos. This is not a time to lay down and curl into a fetal position and die. Pearl Harbor has happened. Are we going to put Rosie the Riveter into those factories or not?

The Academy might have to extend the 2020 deadline to 1.31.21 or the end of February (2.28) or even March 31st, but THEY’RE GOING TO HAPPEN. The Oscars used to happen in April back in the ’60s. It would simply be a matter of going back to an April air date this one year. BIG DEAL. If there’s a problem out there and among us, it isn’t excitable behavior. It’s covid lethargy or, worse, covid depression. Maybe what we all need is a little fire and brimstone…a little Elmer Gantry.

Ruimy: Yeah, but again — will movies be released theatrically? If not, which studios are willing to send their Oscar titles straight to VOD?

HE: And don’t forget that 5.22 Carolyn Kormann New Yorker story about a fast-tracked virus vaccine, and particularly this passage: “Stephane Bancel, the C.E.O. of Moderna, said last week that, pending the results of the Phase III efficacy trial this summer, the vaccine could be ready for approval and licensing as soon as the fall.”

Ruimy: Vaccinating 330 million Americans is going to take months. The weakest and most vulnerable will get it first.

HE: Theatrical may not ignite until early next year….who knows? Or maybe in the fall. Remember that the first theatrical openings are happening in July.

Ruimy: We need L.A. and NYC to reopen their theatres. A theatre in Iowa or Tennessee screening UNHINGED doesn’t really count as a legitimate reopening of theatres. I can’t see Newsom and Cuomo fast-tracking the opening of movie theatres by July. They are taking their sweet-ass time, in no rush whatsoever.

HE: What’s wrong with Oscar contenders streaming, just this one year? What’s wrong with just sucking it up and DOING THAT as a one-time-only thing?

Ruimy: Nothing at all, but in the meantime we should all embrace the fact that streaming will be the go-to spot for this year’s best movies.

Journo pally: “Last night I watched William Wyler‘s final film — The Liberation of L.B. Jones (’70). It’s about a staid, small-town, African-American funeral home owner (Roscoe Lee Browne) who wants to divorce his hot wife (Lola Falana) because she’s having an affair with a white cop (Anthony Zerbe).

“The powers-that-be in the small Southern town want the whole thing to go away, and put pressure on Browne’s character to drop the suit. He refuses, with tragic results.

“It’s hard to imagine what Wyler was thinking when he decided to take on this project, but what emerged was a lurid, violent melodrama that’s somewhere between a blaxploitation film and a civil rights message pic (Yaphet Kotto also pops up as a black avenger). It’s a mess — a fascinating one, the kind you can’t take your eyes off, but still a mess.

“Wyler is one of the great directors of the old Hollywood system, a man who made a number of undying classics, and won a ton of awards. Yet his final film might be the worst movie he ever made. How many other major directors have ended their careers with a stinker?

“Lee Majors and Barbara Hershey play a white couple related to Lee J. Cobb, who’s sort of the film’s super-villain, and they’re supposed to be the white liberal conscience of the film, but are basically given nothing to do. And the film features two stereotypical racist white cops — Zerbe and Arch Johnson — who could have come out of any Fred Williamson flick. The craft is fine, although nothing special. Competent. But far from Wyler’s best.”

Wiki excerpt: “The screenplay by Jesse Hill Ford and Stirling Silliphant is based on Ford’s 1965 novel ‘The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones’. The novel, in turn, was based on events that happened in a Southern town where Ford lived. Post-publication he was verbally attacked for writing about same. The motion picture’s release added to the controversy, especially in Humboldt, Tennessee, where Ford lived.”

It must feel a bit disappointing to Jon Stewart that Irresistible, his second effort as a director-writer hyphenate, will open online because of the pandemic. After all that blood, sweat, passion, refining and tweaking. Pic is an upmarket political satire with a title that doesn’t exactly say “upmarket political satire”. The suggestion is that it’s Welcome to Mooseport meets Primary Colors…maybe. Steve Carell, Rose Byrne, Chris Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, Will Sasso.

I love Superbad and Some Like It Hot but otherwise I’ve never been much for “hah-hah” comedies. I like “off” humor, dry comedies, sly comedies, tongue-in-cheek, no-laugh funny, etc. Or, failing all that, truly moronic humor. But let’s examine a “50 greatest comedies of the 21st Century” piece by Rolling Stone staffers, and consider which of these films are actually funny.

Genuinely, Humanly Funny (and Occasionally Even Wise) / 7

Alexander Payne‘s Sideways
Stephen Frears and Nick Hornby‘s High Fidelity
Spike Jonze‘s Adaptation
Greg Mottola and Judd Apatow‘s Superbad
Ben Stiller‘s Tropic Thunder
Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man
Armando Iannucci‘s In The Loop

Mescaline Attitude, Brilliantly Funny In Spurts / 12

Paul Feig‘s Bridesmaids
Mike Judge‘s Idiocracy
David Mamet‘s State and Main
Larry Charles and Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Borat
Terry Zwigoff‘s Ghost World
Terry Zwigoff‘s Bad Santa
David O. Russell‘s I Heart Huckabees
Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Hail Caesar
Wes Anderson‘s The Royal Tenenbaums
Michael Winterbottom‘s The Trip
Amando Iannucci‘s The Death of Stalin
Christopher Guest‘s Best in Show

No-Laugh Funny (Conceptually Amusing But Not Actually “Funny”) / 5

Richard Linklater‘s School of Rock
Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Lobster (but only during the first half)
Adam McKay‘s Anchorman
Adam McKay‘s Step Brothers
Edgar Wright‘s Shaun of the Dead

What is the implication when a rightwing Christian woman like Kayleigh McEnany says that “people should be allowed to pray to their gods“?

This made sense when Peter Ustinov told Jean Simmons to “thank your gods” in Spartacus, because the common Roman belief in pre-Christian times was that several gods held sway. But today even the dumbest evangelical Christian understands that there’s a single unifying cosmic and mathematical order to the universe, and that “Allah” is the same entity as the Biblical King James God or, if you will, the entity whom the ancient Judeans prayed to as “Eli”.

True — there are millions of idiots in this country who believe that “God” is some kind of all-powerful, white-bearded sentient administrator in flowing robes who gets involved in the moral particulars of human behavior on the planet earth…who roots for this or that human to do the right moral thing when push comes to shove, and who gave Moses the Ten Commandments and who wept (but did nothing) during the Holocaust and who is gravely disappointed if humans fail to show proper reverence and respect for His authority, etc.

He doesn’t exist, of course, but if He did he would probably say to little Kayleigh in her sleep, “Do you honestly believe that there are competing Gods in heaven, watching over their respective spiritual flocks? Do you not at least understand that there is only one unifying celestial force, and that whatever term is used by whatever culture it’s the same vibration all over?”

The pandemic is killing (i.e., has probably permanently killed) London’s Old Vic. I’ve only attended one play there — Peter O’Toole‘s Macbeth in December ’80 — and the odds of my attending another are…well, who knows? But it’s been a going concern since the mid 1800s, and there are damn few theatres with this kind of history, and the idea of this hallowed place shuttering for good because of some dead bats in Wuhan, China is…I don’t know what word to use but “infuriating” isn’t strong enough.

I was in a sluggish, downish mood this morning, and I couldn’t get rolling with the column. And then Faye Dunaway rescued me. In the space of two or three minutes I was smiling, happy. I watched it again twice.

How could Dunaway and director Frank Perry have possibly calculated that audiences (gay guys especially) wouldn’t have relished the camp value? How could they have expected otherwise in the face of such intense Kabuki theatre?

My first viewing of Mommie Dearest was in late August 1981, inside an upper-story screening room within the Paramount building at Columbus Circle. I distinctly recall the gaiety in the elevator after it ended; two or three passengers were cooing and squealing with laughter. It took Paramount marketing a while to realize what was happening. Five or six weeks after the 9.18.81 opening the tongue-in-cheek ads appeared– “The biggest mother of them all.”

I know very little about the actual playing of golf but a little something about what makes a good golf swing. And I certainly know a bad swing when I see one. Great golf swings are meant to be things of beauty. Like ballet or playing a violin or Minnesota Fats shooting the eyes off them balls.

Milestone celebration for 100k deaths?pic.twitter.com/KqSIGizg61

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 23, 2020