It’s 1991 and Robert Harris‘s initial restored version of Spartacus is starting to be screened for press and industry types. Imagine a 37 year-old F.X. Feeney sitting in the 10th row at a certain Academy screening (which I happened to attend myself), and then imagine a voice coming into Feeney’s head as he sits and waits for Alex North’s overture to begin:

“I want you to receive this news calmly — please don’t freak — but you and Kirk Douglas will move onto the next realm within 24 hours of each other. You will live a very full life, F.X., and you certainly won’t die young or middle-aged, but when the moment happens people will be speaking about the passing of Douglas and Feeney in the same breath. Don’t let the fact that Douglas [born in 1916] is now 75 throw you. He’s a very hearty fellow. You’ll both be around for decades to come. On top of which, as you well know, quality is far more valuable than quantity.”

If the Academy had a heart as big as Feeney’s, he would be included in Sunday’s “death reel” segment on the Oscar telecast.

From David Frum‘s “Bernie Can’t Win,” posted on The Atlantic site on 1.27.20:

I was understandably wary of Birds of Prey the other day. I was influenced by the trailer and Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman declaring that it “isn’t pretending, for a single moment, to cast a spell of poetic awe” but is nonetheless “a compellingly novel popcorn jamboree.” I deduced that Cathy Yan‘s film would be about “enraged fuck-all nihilism and, in a certain social-undercurrent way, anti-brute-male revenge porn…savage winks and ten times the necessary emphasis!”

So much for imprecise, second-hand observations. Last night I caught Birds of Prey at the Grove, and it ain’t half bad for what it is.

It’s not my cup but any fair-minderd cineaste would have to agree that it’s a bracingly vigorous, high-style, toxic-male-busting romp.

Here’s how I put it this morning to a critic friend (but understand that the following contains a mild spoiler about the ending, which, trust me, is no big deal in the greater scheme):

HE to critic pally: “I wasn’t caught up or deeply moved or anything, but Yan shows real vigor and pizazz as far as this kind of cartwheeling, slam-bam, extended-DC-universe material allows. Very nimble and enterprising choreography and camera work. Lots of visual invention and verve.

“It’s basically formulaic junk, of course, but I dearly loved that each and every male bad-guy character is dispatched with a few savage blows. Whomped and whoofed and slammed on the pavement. Or thrown from a car. Or shot. Or kicked in the face.

“Does Margot Robbie‘s Harley Quinn appear to be big or swift or musclebound enough to knock these guys over like so many bowling pins? Of course not! Do her fighting sisters — Mary Elizabeth Winstead‘s Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell‘s Black Canary, Rosie Perez‘s Renee Montoya (a cop) and Ella Jay Basco‘s Cassandra Cain — possess some kind of special superhero combat aptitude a la Bruce Lee on steroids? Well, yeah, sort of…if you wanna believe that. But I love the bullshit!

Important point: Birds of Prey lies, of course, by declaring that it’s about “The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.” Because it’s really about the bonding of five tough-chick desperadoes into a kind of D.C. Amazon Justice League. Or, in Quentin Tarantino-ese, “Fox Force Five.”

This teamwork aesthetic finally manifests at the 90-minute mark when Harley says to the other four “we’ll be better off facing this situation together.” Whoo-hoo! Social metaphor!

But then (an∂ here comes the spoiler) the movie completely reverses itself in the last four or five minutes by having Harley and Cassandra Cain (short, round-faced, maybe 12 or 13 years old) abandon their sisters and rumble off in their yellow Jaguar. Meaning that the D.C. Amazon Justice League of five (which was a thing for maybe 12 or 13 minutes) has been reduced to Fox Force Three.

What a betrayal of feminist “stand tall together and watch each other’s back”! It takes 90 minutes for these five desperadoes to join forces, and then Harley flips the bird and goes off on her own 13 minutes later. C’mon!

WATCH: As tensions rise in the 2020 race, @SRuhle sat down w/ @PeteButtigieg who says “the bulk of credit for the achievements of the Obama administration belong with President Obama” in an interview that airs tomorrow at 9am ET on MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/N5OyLHYblz

— MSNBC Public Relations (@MSNBCPR) February 6, 2020

This was my idea (and probably a lot of other people’s idea) of an elegant acceptance speech. I love everything Jack did that night — the little dance on the way to the podium, thanking all those friends and collaborators, the conveying of genuine humility, not getting overly emotional. And God, I really miss that deep, crackly cigarette voice.

For his second Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot transcription, THR‘s Scott Feinberg spoke to a dispirited, somewhat insensitive, over-the-hill producer.

Of all the Best Picture contenders this guy only likes Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and JoJo Rabbit, but his real favorite was Danny Boyle‘s Yesterday. Jesus wept! Plus I have no respect for anyone who would call Casino better than The Irishman. That’s just a silly estimation. Everyone regards Casino as good but grating (especially due to Sharon Stone‘s performance) and certainly underwhelming compared to Goodfellas, and not nearly as satisfying as The Departed. But at least he’s entertaining:

“My favorite film of the year didn’t even get a nomination. I’m embarrassed to admit it because a lot of people hated it, but it was Yesterday. That movie made me feel fucking great.

“Two movies that I really hated were Ford v Ferrari and Little Women. The director [of Ford, James Mangold] knows nothing about racing, and admitted as much at the q & a after it screened at the Academy — you don’t have someone putting on their goggles once they’re already driving or staring longingly at the guy in the next car as he passes him! [The 1966 film] Grand Prix had class and style and knew what it was about.

THR article art by Skip Sterling.

“With Little Women, the timeline was ridiculous. I was really confused sometimes, and I know I’m not the only one. Thank God [Saoirse Ronan] cut her hair, because that at least gave me a bit of a reference point.

“As for Marriage Story, I needed to care for the kid, and I didn’t. And I know that those two actors [Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson] poured their souls into those roles, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to care about entitled people’s marital relationships. It wouldn’t have been that hard to say, ‘I’ll stay in New York, you go to LA and work for a while,’ stay married, hook up when you can and be bicoastal.” HE interjection: I agree with this criticism.

“The Irishman, as much as I loved it and its performances, is not Casino. After Hoffa was dead, the movie was done for me, my ass was sore and I wanted to get the fuck out of there.” HE to producer: What is wrong with you, man? The last 35 minutes of The Irishman [after Hoffa is dead] is the big melancholy karma-kickback payoff, Frank Sheeran looking at death in the face, buying the coffin, talking to the priest, “leave the door open a little bit,” etc. You, sir, are a half-filled Coke bottle.

“I love Parasite — super-smart, brilliant director [Bong Joon Ho], the movie looks great and the whole look into class struggle was terrific — but once the murdering started happening they lost me.

“Joker was excellent, but it’s not a best picture.

“1917 was great but gimmicky, and rang a little hollow for me in the same way that Dunkirk rang a little hollow for me.

“Once it got down to Jojo Rabbit and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it was hard for me. I wish I could have voted for them both. Once I realized it was okay to laugh at Jojo, it was great — so funny and so applicable to where we are today.

“But Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gave me real escape at a time when I wanted nothing more. I don’t jump up and down for [Quentin] Tarantino movies — the last movie of his that I liked before this one was Jackie Brown, but this movie made me feel good. We all have our ups and downs in this business. I’m not at the high point of my career right now, so I could identify very much with the characters, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gave me hope.

“And it leaves you thinking about what could have been in a better world: what would Sharon Tate‘s life have been if this hadn’t happened? What would [Roman] Polanski‘s life have been?! It puts tears in my eyes when I think about it.”

Last night I watched Alexandre O. Philippe‘s Leap of Faith, a 105-minute doc about William Friedkin and the making of The Exorcist. Assembled from a marathon six-day Friedkin interview, the 84 year-old director passes along fascinating story after story about the development, casting, filming and editing of his 1973 classic.

The film premiered at last September’s Venice Film Festival, and it just played at Sundance ’20. I was interested because I was a huge admirer or Philippe’s Memory, a saga of the making of Ridley Scott‘s Alien, which I saw during Sundance ’19.

Leap of Faith (which will probably get some kind of minimal theatrical play before going to streaming) is very good stuff. It held me tight and firm — I relaxed and felt great start to finish. As a longtime Exorcist fan (I’ve seen it 10 or 12 times, the last two or three on Bluray), I eat this shit right up.

Friedkin (known in his heyday as “Hurricane Billy”) is a first-rate raconteur — always has been. He tells it and sells it. And man, what a story. He was between 37 and 38 during the shooting of The Exorcist in ’72 and early ’73, and it was the greatest time in the history of Hollywood to be a hotshot whirlwind helmer. All the signs were favoring.

I loved all the stories in which Friedkin told this and that Exorcist collaborator that their ideas or acting weren’t good enough. Saying “no” over and over again to this or that possibility is partly what strong directing is about. There are always hundreds of mediocre or underwhelming ideas thrown at a director, and he/she has a duty to say “no” to roughly 98% of them.

I especially loved Friedkin’s riff on a certain “grace note” portion in the film (the non-essential but haunting passage in which Ellen Burstyn walks through Georgetown on a crisp fall day as “Tubular Bells” plays on the soundtrack). And I was intrigued by Friedkin’s concluding thought, which keys off footage of Kyoto’s gardens, about the essential solitude and loneliness that we all have within.

But since Philippe is encouraging this kind of thing, I was amazed that Friedkin never even mentions, much less explores, the central social metaphor of The Exorcist.

The story is about the young daughter of a famous and wealthy movie actress succumbing to demonic possession — some adjunct of the devil literally occupying and ravaging her body and soul. But in a broader social upheaval sense this kind of thing was happening a lot in the mid to late ’60s. Middle-aged parents of that era were contemplating the anti-traditional, in some cases shocking behavior of their teenage or college-age kids (longer hair, frank sexuality, pot and hallucinogens, anti-government protests) and wondering what had happened to them. Who is this person? What dark social forces have turned my son/daughter into someone I barely recognize, much less feel any rapport with?

William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel came out of this social earthquake, and anyone who says that late ’60s cultural convulsions weren’t a seminal influence in the creation of this horrific tale is either brain-cell deficient or lying. How could Friedkin not even mention this?

And as long as he’s telling fascinating tales, why not mention the Ted Ashley-Ellen Burstyn story that he passed along in his 2013 book “The Friedkin Connection“?

F.X. Feeney was the kindest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life. Well, not specifically — the preceding description actually applies to Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate — but F.X. really was one of the best human beings I’ve ever dealt with in this racket…this kinship of the cloth made up of bicoastal film chasers and acolytes, contrarians, worshippers, cultists, would-be priests, snarkers, chess players, obsessives, rage junkies, hand-jobbers and torch-carriers.

And now he’s gone and my heart goes out. A series of strokes. 66 years old. If anyone hears of a gathering or farewell party of any kind, please advise.

Sharp, perceptive and enterprising though he was, F.X.’s stock-in-trade was the fact that he had a big beating heart that never quit. He didn’t seem to have a caustic or dismissive bone in his body. He might allude to this or that shortcoming in a film or a person, but he never put anyone or anything down. He was mainly about scholarly hugs and caresses.

F.X. Feeney

Plus he was a staunchly emotional Irishman, and I can recall two or three times off the top of my head when his voice cracked while speaking of something near and dear. Buy or stream Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (which no one, I realize, is allowed to mention these days because founder Jerry Harvey killed his wife and himself in some kind of horrific murder-suicide finale), and watch F.X. reflect tearfully on the Z Channel mystique and Harvey’s contradictory currents.

F.X. prayed at the altar of film on a daily, devotional basis. He cared, he believed. You could wake him up at 4:30 am on a Sunday and talk to him about Michael Powell or Budd Boetticher or Michael Cimino or Roman Polanski. The only other film persons I can think of who’ve routinely augmented their film passions with such kindness and tenderness are Guillermo del Toro and Martin Scorsese.

If he hadn’t become a film guy F.X. couldn’t been a great priest. I can see him right now in a freshly pressed black cassock. To me he was always the Film Yoda with the kindly face and the Andy Devine-sized pot belly, that pinkish complexion and that dapper fedora covering his swept-back salt-and-pepper hair.

Of all the people in the New York and Los Angeles film realm there are maybe four or five I would consider confessing my sins to. Until today F.X. was one of them. I could go into the confessional closet, get on my knees and say, “Bless me, father, for I have sinned against whatever or whomever.” And F.X. would say, “You’re absolved, Jeff. Go and sin no more. And while you’re at it you might want to find a bigger place in your heart for Michael Cimino.”

F.X. and I worked as in-house freelancers for People in ’97 and ’98. It was in the People offices that F.X. passed along a story he’d gotten from Lars von Trier at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, about an alleged incident between Harvey Keitel and Nicole Kidman during filming of Eyes Wide Shut. (I once referred to it as “The Saga of Mr. White.” **)

A lot of brief tributes have appeared on F.X.s Facebook page.

So Typewriter Joe is fading and wheezing? If Biden doesn’t finish second or at least a strong third in New Hampshire, you can stick a fork in him. And that’s obviously not in the cards. Elizabeth Warren isn’t doing any better. Face it, fellas — it’s Bernie vs. Pete, and if Bernie takes the nomination (which seems likely), Trump gets another term. Question: How long will it take Joe’s Johnny-on-the-spot African American supporters to take a hard look at this situation? How long can they continue to say “yeah but I feel comfortable with the man because he was Obama’s vp”? Sooner or later they’re going to have to wake up and smell the coffee.

Last year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earned a certain negative notoriety for failing to include legendary director Stanley Donen, who passed on Thursday, 2.21.19, in the Oscar telecast’s “death reel” tribute, which aired three days later on Sunday, 2.24.19. Talk about your drag-ass approach to keeping up with breaking events.

Today Variety ‘s Brent Lang reported that this Sunday’s death reel will include Kirk Douglas, whose passing was announced yesterday. Lang reports that the reel had been locked but Douglas will be squeezed in regardless. That’s very accommodating of them. I know very little about editing but I’ve been told that slipping in a last-minute departure is no technical biggie.

Notice to Hollywood luminaries: Try to croak at least four days before the Oscar show. If you wait until Thursday you’ll probably be Donen-ized. Douglas would have presumably suffered the same fate if he’d expired this morning (2.6).

Or is this really a matter of status? Are you telling me that if, God forbid, Julia Roberts or Warren Beatty or Denzel Washington were to be struck dead by a lightning bolt on a golf course today or even tomorrow that the Academy would say “nope, sorry…too late for the death reel because we need more than three days.” I somehow doubt that.

Soon after waking this morning at 8:10 am (having overslept), I was asked/ordered to visit Hollyway Cleaners to pick up some dry cleaning. I like to wake up a bit and maybe sip some coffee before driving. Not this time. “Go now, please.”

Two or three minutes later I was out the door. It was the height of rush hour with Melrose Ave. and Santa Monica Blvd. traffic at a near-standstill…jammed. Did I take the rumblehog, which would have meant that the three-quarters of a mile journey would’ve taken three or four minutes, tops? Of course not. I took the VW Beetle, which resulted in 10 minutes of traffic agony, maybe a bit more.

I love swearing while driving. I get to bark and yell all I want and nobody says anything back.

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