Last weekend I saw HBO’s Bad Education, a somewhat riveting, fact-based drama about a bizarre heist in plain sight. The focus is the infamous Roslyn embezzlement scandal of the early aughts. But I couldn’t get it up when I tried to write about it. This was because I couldn’t quite comprehend the insanely self-destructive acts of administrative thievery that this film is…well, partly about.

It’s also about the generally insane notion that living high on the hog is everything in life, and that all you need to sleep through this kind of brazen flim-flamming is a little vial of denial.

I understand Butch and Sundance robbing banks in the old days. I understand the gangs who stole jewels in Rififi and Topkapi. I can relate to the British thugs who pulled off the Great Train Robbery of 1963. Because they all thought they had a decent chance of getting away with it. Why rob anyone or anything if you can’t escape the law, right? But I can’t fathom how or why a pair of senior school administrators expected to get away with stealing over $6 million from a prosperous school district in Roslyn, Long Island — the largest public school embezzlement in American history.

Bad Education is about Roslyn’s secretly gay and deeply frustrated school district superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) and his assistant superintendent and business administrator Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney) using taxpayer money to buy homes, travel all over, wear swell duds, drive pricey cars, get plastic surgery touch-ups (although not in Prague) and so on. And then wave it all off when questioned by whomever

When Gluckin’s embezzling was exposed, Tassone forced her to resign and surrender her license. But then a reporter for the school’s newspaper uncovered what she thought was a $250K embezzlement scheme involving both of them. The actual figure was much higher. Tassone had pocketed $2.2 million from school district coffers, and Gluckin admitted to stealing almost double that — $4.3 million.

In ’06 Tassone was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, although he was released in 2010. Gluckin, sentenced to 3 to 9 years in ’06, was released a year later. She died in 2017. Tassone is living comfortably on a lifetime annual pension of $173,495.

Yes, Jackman’s portrayal of Tassone is slick and sad and altogether engaging, and the role is one of his best-written. But he’s playing an incomprehensible sociopath, and I kept asking myself “who believes they can get away with this kind of pilfering? Stuff like this always comes out in the wash sooner or later. It’s all tracable, all on the books…just a matter of time.”

Cory Finley‘s direction is so confident and smooth that it’s invisible. Mike Makowsky‘s highly arresting script is based on “The Bad Superintendent,” a 9.17.04 New York article by Robert Kolker. I read Kolker’s piece as soon as my viewing ended, of course. Here’s an excerpt:

Earlier today, the Academy’s board of governors approved a temporary relaxation of the rule stipulating that a film needs a seven-day theatrical run in L.A. County to qualify for the Oscars. This is transitional but whoa-level historic. For the first time in Hollywood history films that have never seen the light of a projector lamp will be able to scoop up an Oscar or two at the Kodak theatre.

The reason, of course, is the awful, soul-stifling, lifeforce-draining pandemic.

Exhibitors were already on life support and gasping for air due to theatre closings — now they’re having sequential heart attacks. They know that in the affairs of all institutions “temporary” often means “mostly temporary unless, you know, things change or whatever.” The operative phrase is “the thin end of the wedge.”

Variety: “[This] doesn’t mean, however, that any movie premiering on a streaming service is eligible for Oscar gold. To be considered, the streamed film must have already had a planned theatrical release. The film must also be made available on the Academy Screening Room member-only streaming site within 60 days of the film’s streaming or VOD release”

AMPAS president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson, in a letter sent to Academy members: “The Academy firmly believes there is no greater way to experience the magic of movies than to see them in a theater. Our commitment to that is unchanged and unwavering. Nonetheless, the historically tragic COVID-19 pandemic necessitates this temporary exception to our awards eligibility rules. The Academy supports our members and colleagues during this time of uncertainty. We recognize the importance of their work being seen and also celebrated, especially now, when audiences appreciate movies more than ever.”

I’ve now watched four episodes of Mrs. America, the nine-episode FX/Hulu miniseries about the ’70s battle over the Equal Rights Amendment, and particularly the conflict between second-wave feminists (Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Jill Ruckleshaus) who fought for passage and the primly conservative Middle American coalition (led by Phyllis Schlafly) who opposed and, sad to say, ultimately won.

All I can say is that I’m hooked, and that I wouldn’t dare miss an episode from here on. It’s a vital watch. There’s a right and a wrong way to make a miniseries out of a blend of recent history and an issue that was once hot-button but has since been bypassed by time and circumstance, and Mrs. America knows exactly how to deal the cards. It’s a model of tight narrative focus, convincing period realism and absolute grade-A performances from the leads — Cate Blanchett (Schlafly), Rose Byrne (Steinem), Tracey Ullman (Friedan), Uzo Aduba (Chisholm), etc. Hell, from the whole cast.

Blanchett will be Emmy-nominated, I’m presuming, but so will Ullman in a supporting category.

A creation of screenwriter Dahvi Walker (Desperate Housewives, Madmen, Eli Stone), Mrs. America just tells the story on a chapter-by-chapter basis — no tricks or curve balls, straight and plain — a story of how the ERA didn’t quite get there, I mean, and how the personalities of all of these high-powered women clashed and grooved and accommodated or didn’t, etc.

Everything really looks and feels like the ’70s in this series. Not pretend-faux ’70s, but the actual genuine decade as it talked, walked, smelled and tasted. The opening credits sequence nails the zetgeist cold.

Plus I feel as if I’ve learned a few things. I didn’t know Betty Friedan was that much of a drinker. I didn’t know Schlafly’s son was gay. I didn’t know about Steinem’s black boyfriend, Franklin Thomas.

The trailers and copy led everyone to believe that Blanchett is the centerpiece of Mrs. America, but Phyllis Schlafly isn’t that much of a dominating force. She’s the steely villain of the piece, the troublemaker, the Midwestern monster. But Blanchett mainly serves a strong ensemble. Byrne and Ullman make just as strong of an impression.

Walker’s primary strategy is to use each episode (nine in all, ending on 5.27) to explore the views and vantage points of the leads — Schlafly, Steinem, Chisholm, Friedan, Abzug, et. al.

Anna Boden & Ryan Fleckk have directed four episodes. Amma Asante and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre have directed two each. A singe episode (#8) was directed by Janicza Bravo.

I loved the big debate scene between Schlafly and Friedan at Illinois State University in Bloomington, which happened in ’73. Schlafly repeats a much-quoted remark aout por-ERA feminists being “a bunch of bitter women seeking a constitutional cure for their personal problems.” Friedan responds by calling out Schlafly for “hypocrisy” and telling her “I’d like to burn you at the stake” and “I consider you a traitor to your sex…I consider you an Aunt Tom.”

At no time during the first four episodes was I even slightly bored or distracted or checking my watch. It holds, engages, feels right.

It doesn’t appear as if Grant, a three part History Channel presentation from exec producer Leonardo DiCaprio and biographer-historian Ron Chernow about the legendary Civil War general and U.S. President, can be called a “pure” documentary. The trailer suggests a reenactment drama mixed with a talking-head doc.

Directed by Malcolm Venville (Henry’s Crime), Grant is premiering on the History Channel beginning Monday, 5.25, or on Memorial Day. The usual 5.30 date has been moved up five days because 5.30 falls on a Saturday. Yeah, I know — why not have the holiday on Friday, 5.29?

I’m very sorry to report that Nancy Dawson, wife of author and critic Matt Zoller Seitz, passed today from cancer. They were married in February 2017. Nancy was the sister of the late Jennifer Dawson, whom MZS was married to from ’94 until her death on 4.27.06. We all know life can be randomly cruel, depending on the breaks, but this is surreal.

Seitz is an editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com and TV critic for New York magazine and Vulture.com. His books include “The Wes Anderson Collection” (’13), “Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion” (’15), “The Oliver Stone Experience” (’16), “Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings,” cowritten with Josh Larsen, “Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone” (’17), cowritten with Simon Abrams, and “The Sopranos Sessions” (’19), co-written with Alan Sepinwall.

It’s been suggested that friends and mourners can donate to @transformcincy (aka Transform), a transgender youth charity that Nancy founded.

We’re all living in a wonderful time right now. Truly magical. If you stay inside (which you should), you’ll slowly die of spiritual and/or economic malnutrition. It might take a few more weeks or months, but sooner or later you’ll become a shell of the person you used to be. And if you venture outside you might catch COVID-19 and wind up dead or struggling for dear life. So you’re pretty much dead or depleted any way you slice it. Cool or what?

Passed along by Joe McBride.

Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island (Universal, 6.19) has bailed on theatrical. Which is a shame but that’s how things are.

We’re all sick of streaming stuff at home. I for one would love to catch it at a special all-media Arclight screening for masked, glove-wearing journalists who’ve recently tested negative for COVD-19 or are otherwise willing to risk death in order to watch a movie on a big screen again. With everyone sitting three seats apart, of course. I’m willing. Especially since we’re talking six or seven weeks from now.

The new plan is for The King of Staten Island to the usual digital platforms starting on 6.12. A 48-hour rental will set you back $20 bills.

The plot of the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy, cowritten by Apatow, Davidson and Dave Sirus, is as follows:

“Scott (Davidson) has been a case of arrested development ever since his firefighter father died when he was seven. As his younger sister (Maude Apatow) heads off to college, Scott, now in his mid 20s, spends his days smoking weed, hanging with the guys and hooking up with his best friend (Bel Powley).

“But when his mother (Marisa Tomei) starts dating a loudmouth firefighter (Bill Burr), it sets off a chain of events that will force Scott to grapple with his grief and take his first tentative steps toward becoming Pete Davidson.”

Typical for an Apatow film, TKOSI runs 136 minutes.

The costars are Steve Buscemi, Kevin Corrigan, Ricky Velez and Domenick Lombardozzi.

All below-the-line people look the same on movie sets — T-shirts, baseball caps, comfort shoes, hoodies, jeans, work boots, mandals with socks.

An electrician or wardrobe person or union carpenter or sound recorder will never dress like, say, Michelangelo Antonioni did on the set of The Passenger or Brian DePalma while shooting Scarface or Dressed To Kill (i.e., safari jacket) or Steven Soderbergh while directing Magic Mike.

Because the below-the-line Hollywood rulebook states they will never step outside the fashion realm of a basic sound-stage grunt. Not a complaint or lament — just how it is.

It was the same way 50 and 60 years ago, only different. Union guys who worked on sound-stage shoots wore the same regulation outfit — (a) a checked short-sleeve sports shirt or long-sleeve business shirt, (b) a pair of baggy, pleated, hand-me-down business pants, and (c) brown or black lace-up shoes with white socks.

On top of which sound stage guys of the ’50s and ’60s were almost always bald or balding. Somewhere between 85% and 90%. And if they had more than a few follicles they always looked like beefy-faced mafiosos or longshoreman from On The Waterfront.

Look at the Ten Commandments guy helping Charlton Heston — like a guy who might have worked at a small-town hardware store or at a shop where they built raw wooden furniture. Look at the bald guy handling the boom mike during the shooting of Psycho.

Hollywood union guys all had this shlubby look…a million guys who looked like the brother or cousin of “Hogeye,” the lighting guy who shined the light on Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.

A handful of films starring Seth Rogen, or those cowritten by or co-produced by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, have felt unbelievable (i.e., posing a strenuous or obstinate argument with reality or any kind of internal logic) in this or that way. Often in many ways. Knocked Up, The Green Hornet, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Neighbors, Neighbors 2, The Interview, Sausage Party, Long Shot — all surreal fantasy bullshit devoid of any relationship to human behavior as most of us understand it. Even the wildly hilarious Pineapple Express steps into absurdity quicksand toward the end.

Rogen’s best films and performances — 40 Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Funny People, 50/50, The Disaster Artist — have happened when he played supporting characters.

The disaster trigger (for me at least) is when an attempt is made to sell Rogen as a sexual being who scores or at least gets lucky. That is a total stopper. If I was some kind of Supreme Hollywood Dictator I would say “keep those dopey Rogen-Goldberg films coming but Rogen can never get laid again with an attractive woman…that scenario is OUT for the rest of his career. Rogen is 38 but looks 49 if a day, and the idea of him participating in any sexual scenario with anyone or anything (including a love doll) doesn’t work for me…that is my final edict.”

All to say that streaming Long Shot was recently suggested, just for the goofy fun of it. And I said “no, no…I can’t, I really can’t. Because it farts in the face of reality at every turn, and because I sat there like a sphinx when I saw it in a theatre.”

My review posted almost exactly a year ago. Here’s most of it:

“What if a bearded, bulky-bod, hairy-chested journalist with an extremely blunt and adolescent writing style and a name (i.e., Fred Flarsky) that says “I’m a dork”…what if the current U.S. Secretary of State, a 40ish foxy type named Charlotte Field (Theron), used to babysit Flarsky (Rogen) when he was 10 or 11 and she was 16 or thereabouts, and is now thinking about running for President because the current Oval Office occupant wants to become a bigtime movie actor?

“And what if Flarsky suddenly meets Field at a party and (a) they recognize and reminisce, (b) she decides to hire him as a speechwriter because she needs a guy who writes like a pissed–off seventh grader but also (c) quickly develops an attraction for Flarsky, and before you know it is doing him six ways from Sunday? And then love enters the picture and the movie is suddenly about values.

“Given the extremely improbable story line in Long Shot, I figured they’d try to aim it at a late-teen sensibility, perhaps even at 20 or 22 year-olds. Low and semi-coarse and therefore ‘funny’, but occasionally sounding and behaving like, say, a Seth Rogen-flavored In The Loop. Remember that Armando Iannucci film? How fast and sharp it was? How skillful and sure-footed?

“Well, guess what? In The Loop isn’t stupid enough for the Long Shot crowd. It isn’t stoned or digressive or downmarket or druggy enough. (There’s a scene in which Seth and Charlize drop some ‘Molly‘ in Paris.)

“Long Shot, alas, is aimed at a 13 year-old mentality. Okay, a 14 year-old mentality. Every line, every scene save for three or four half-decent moments (did I hear a Brett Ratner joke in there somewhere?) plays to the stoners and dipshits in the cheap seats, otherwise known as the Seth Rogen crowd.

“This would be totally forgivable, of course, if Long Shot was funny, but it’s not. When you play it this broadly and this coarse, when every bit and line is written and played on an obviously farcical but brainless jack–off level without the slightest respect for the venal but semi-grown-up political milieu out there or for human behavior as most of us know it, IT’S NOT FUCKING FUNNY.

Chris Matthews to Vanity Fair‘s Joe Hagan on why he resigned early last month: “I didn’t argue about it, I didn’t deny it. I accepted the credibility of the complaint in the article. I didn’t want to challenge the person that made the complaint and wrote the article. I thought it was very credible and certainly within the person’s rights to write that article, of course. That was highly justified. Basically, as I said, to repeat myself, it’s inappropriate in the workplace to compliment somebody on their appearance, this is in the makeup chair, and I did it.”

Key Matthews excerpt: “On the matter of Biden’s vice-presidential pick, Matthews thinks Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is the ideal choice for helping Biden grab the center, especially in the Midwest.

“‘It looks like she could be president if necessary, but not determined to have the office right away kind of thing,’ he said. ‘It’s very tricky when you have a president who will be in his 80s [for] half his first term or his only term perhaps. To pick the other person that’s too ready to be president, you want somebody who’s willing to be vice president for a while. Be vice president and not look like the guy’s a lame duck and I’m ready to take over.’

Embed code for Hive podcast insisted on including a large blank space so I trashed it. Click here for podcast.

“At the same time, Matthews sees the recent leadership of state governors like Gretchen Whitmer, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom as a preview of what national leadership in a post-Trump era might look like. ‘I think that’s a pretty good indicator what normal will look like when we get back to it,’ he said. ‘One of these governors may be the next president.'”

Vanity Fair‘s Joe Hagan: “[To me life is currently feeling like] Groundhog Day as written by Dostoevsky…we’re in a Russian novel that’s never going to end.”

Before introducing his Matthews discussion (which doesn’t happen for a good 10 or 12 minutes), Hagan sounds like a quivering p.c. candy-ass when he says he initially felt a little funny about even talking to Matthews, given his controversial canning from MSNBC for making a sexist comment to a Hardball guest in a dressing room, and for being generationally out-of-synch with the New Stalinism.

Hagan is right. Matthews is generally out of synch and he did say the wrong thing to the guest in question. But for decades he was a hotshot talk-show host, a veteran political news guy and Washington insider (and still is the latter two)…and Hagan feels funny about even talking to him?

If a film is a classic, I know it almost immediately and certainly before it ends. I knew The Silence of the Lambs was a classic as soon as the first meeting between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter had begun. I knew No Country For Old Men was a classic when Javier Bardem told that store proprietor to “call it.” I knew The Wolf of Wall Street was a classic when the quaalude scene had gotten underway.

I also know right away if a film is a pat-on-the-back-but-no-cigar. I knew that Moonlight was an approvable non-classic the instant that Barry Jenkins‘ film tried to convince me that Trevante Rhodes was the grown-up version of the wimpy little kid played by Alex Hibbert and Ashton Sanders. One look at Rhodes and I heard the penalty buzzer. I will never, ever see Moonlight again, by the way, and that goes double for If Beale Street Could Talk.