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It’s absolutely certain that Donald Trump will constantly lie and fabricate during tonight’s Cleveland debate with Joe Biden. Yes, Biden will have many opportunities to call Trump on his whoppers, but do I understand that absolutely no clarifying information will be offered to viewers as Trump goes into his usual b.s.?

Debate moderator Chris Wallace has told N.Y. Times reporter Michael Grynbuam that fact-checking will be “a step too far” and that he doesn’t want to be “a truth squad“, and that it’ll basically be up to Biden to challenge Trump on this and that. Biden will therefore have to spend a good deal of his camera time shaking his head and saying that Trump is confused, a chronic liar or a dishonest sociopath, or a combination of all three.

Barely 100 people will attend in person. Each candidate has two minutes to respond to a question. No opening statements. The first question will be asked of Trump.

NPR’s Domenico Montanaro: “Debates can go very far south when a moderator isn’t in control. How and how much will he fact-check both candidates, Trump in particular, given that he can be so combative and is fine with running with things that aren’t true? How will Trump respond to Wallace pushing back?”

University of Pennsylvania historian Mary Frances Berry to NPR’s Domenico Montanaro: “The people who just want to get rid of Trump will be satisfied if Biden shows up, if he doesn’t collapse in the middle of the debate, and whatever he says, even if it’s erroneous or a gaffe — like 200 million [who have died from the coronavirus] — they’ll dismiss that, and people will just give him a pass.”

It’s now 3:30 pm Pacific. The Biden-Trump debate begins at 6 pm or 9 pm Cleveland time.

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None of us should begrudge Barry Jenkins for accepting a lucrative paycheck gig to direct a CG Lion King sequel. Like anyone else he needs a certain level of income to keep body and soul together, and there’s nothing wrong with cashing in on his reputation as an indie-level dispenser of vision, integrity and cinematic persuasion. We all need to sell out once in a while.

What Jenkins is doing is roughly analagous to Stanley Kubrick accepting a director-for-hire gig on Spartacus. That 1960 slave-revolt epic wasn’t Kubrick’s “own”, but he did a better-than-decent job with it and in so doing upped his industry cred, which allowed him to direct Lolita, Dr. Strangelove and so on.

Deadline, Variety and others reported earlier today that Jenkins will direct a Lion King sequel.

Jenkins will therefore be obliged to reiterate the basic idea behind the original, which is that the African wildlands are a kind of monarchy-styled, talking-animal neverland, and that all animal species (including those who are routinely killed and eaten by lions) are beholden to the “king” in the same way that the British used to be invested in the lore of the Royal family.

Zebras, wildebeests, buffalos, antelopes, gazelles and other grazing animals: “We admire your courage, Simba, and especially the way you fought to reclaim your throne from Scar. You are the King of the Pride Lands. All we ask in return is that if you happen to spot one of us in a field somewhere…uhm, we don’t know to put this exactly but if you happen to encounter one of your grazing subjects, perhaps you’ll give some thought to not tackling them, clamping your teeth over their windpipe and tearing their stomachs open so you can gorge on their intestines?

“We know this sounds ridiculous, but on the other hand…well, just think about it. We recognize your power and regality, King Simba, and we will always bow our heads respectfully when you walk by, but at the same time we hate the idea of being murdered and eaten. Yes, we know how this sounds. Please forgive us for not volunteering to be killed. How about this…if you happen to tackle one of us, could you please make sure that we quickly die from windpipe suffocation rather than agonizing disembowelment?”

Jenkins on the Lion King gig: “Helping my sister raise two young boys during the ’90s, I grew up with these characters. Having the opportunity to work with Disney on expanding this magnificent tale of friendship, love and legacy while furthering my work chronicling the lives and souls of folk within the African diaspora is a dream come true.”

Variety‘s Rebecca Rubin and Brent Lang have reported that the forthcoming sequel, which will be scripted by Jeff Nathanson (author of the screenplay for Jon Favreau‘s 2019 Lion King feature), may be a prequel to some extent.

Rubin/Lang: “Sources say the new movie will partly focus on the early years of Mufasa, the regal father of Simba whose death forms the emotional heart of the first film and its remake.”

Yesterday a doomsaying friend again predicted a Trump victory “because the left has lost its mind. I don’t want a close election — I want a blowout. But what reasonable people who aren’t in the [liberal] bubble would look at the wokester fanatics on the left right now and say, ‘Yeah, I want those people in charge?'”

Lefty Twitter terrorists will not be “in charge” if Biden wins. They will seek to influence, of course. They will naturally persist in their militancy, as well they should because, apart from the fact that most many of them would like to bring career death and ruination to left-of-center types who have their own minds, many if not most of their views are fundamentally humanist.

The bottom line is that Amiable Joe is not beholden to them. He’s a 20th Century guy — a decent, respectful, soft-spoken, left-leaning centrist. Obviously far from God’s gift to progressives but a potential national blessing compared to the Trump malignancy.

As another friend said in response to the doomsayer, “Don’t you consider it at least possible that there are many, many people out there who — just like us — despise the woke left, are fully conscious of its disgusting trust-fund fascism, but hate Trump ten times more?”

“That’s the whole reason Biden was nominated: because he’s a liberal-centrist. I do not believe that people think he represents the woke left. I realize that you think people think he does, and that’s the disagreement.”

A close vote would drain the blood from my face. The apparent fact that Trump has retained the allegiance of slightly more than 40% of registered voters is horrifying in itself. But the numbers are not indicating a cliffhanger of any kind. I for one regard this 9.29 N.Y. Times poll as relatively trustworhty.

That just-released Washington Post-ABC News poll that has Joe Biden with a nine-point lead over Donald Trump in Pennsylvania? It’s based on polling between 9.21 and 9.26, and was therefore unaffected the 9.27 N.Y. Times report on Trump’s taxes and his $750 payment for 2016 and ’17.

A 9.28 Paul Krugman quote from “Trump’s Debt, His Future and Ours“: “How much will the revelation that he has always been a fraud hurt him? Many of his supporters will probably refuse to acknowledge the truth, perhaps because they won’t admit to themselves how completely they were scammed. But assuming that the news will have no effect at all is probably too cynical. And remember, Trump is running behind Biden, so he has to do more than keep his base — and this may not do much to win over undecided voters.”

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As part of a week-long tribute to the recently departed Michael Chapman, Trailers From Hell is highlighting three brief Chapman commentaries, including Rod Lurie‘s 2013 riff on Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver (’76).

Chapman’s impressionistic lensing of this moody portrait of increasingly delusional loneliness, and how a certain Manhattan cab driver is gradually engulfed by a vaguely hellish and spooky city with all kinds of needles and provocations…we all know the drill. But I have two quibbles with Lurie’s patter.

One, Taxi Driver is not “as depressing as a dying nun.” It’s hauntingly alive and pulsing and tingling with dread. “Depressing” is when a film depicts a relatively flat and oppressively defined realm of regimentation and submission from which there’s no escape.** “Depressing” is when a stuck, not-very-smart character is without nerve or options. Robert De Niro‘s Travis Bickle, one senses early on, is definitely a guy with options. They just happen to be of a powder-keg variety.

Two, Lurie suggests that Bickle’s “are you talkin’ to me?” is a steal from Shane — a line that Alan Ladd said to Ben Johnson inside Grafton’s Saloon and General Store. The line was actually “are you speakin’ to me?“, a slightly more refined form of inquiry. Plus it was ad-libbed by De Niro, and I seriously doubt if George Stevens’ 1953 western…aahh, who knows?

The difference between “talking” and “speaking” was pointed out in a scene from David Mamet‘s Glengarry Glen Ross:

Aaronow: Yes. I mean, are you actually talking about this or are we just…?
Moss: No, we’re just…
Aaronow: We’re just “talking” about it.
Moss: We’re just speaking about it. (Pause.) As an idea.
Aaronow: As an idea.
Moss: Yes.
Aaronow: We’re not actually talking about it.
Moss: No.

** Michael Radford‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Tatiana has been on a Grace Kelly kick for a couple of weeks now. Partly because she’s an admirer of three or four Kelly performances**, but mostly because she’s preparing a short video on the late actress, who was born on 11.12.29 and would be 91 today had she not been killed in a 1982 auto accident.

Today we visited two Los Angeles locations where Kelly lived — a Bel Air hotel suite rented in ’53 or ’54, and a Pacific Palisades home (321 Alma Real) that Kelly rented sometime during ’55 and perhaps into early ’56. (It’s hard to pin this stuff down.)

To make the experience complete, Tatiana wore an outfit similar to the one Kelly wore in the opening scene of Rear Window. We also figured that as long as we were exploring Bel Air bungalows, why not settle in for some vittles?

Probably my favorite photo of the late actress — zero makeup, no glam, no effort to “sell it”

Kelly rented this simple, tree-shaded Spanish-style bungalow sometime in ’55. A hop, skip and a jump away from the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon.

Bel Air hotel, 9.26.20, around 3:55 pm.

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The profitable Variety and the money-losing The Hollywood Reporter are now (or are soon to become) sister publications run by the same outfit.

Variety and Deadline owner Jay Penske (PMC or Penske Media Corp.) has inked a deal with MRC, a media and production company founded by Modi Wiczyk and Asif Satchu, to operate The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe under a new shingle called PMRC.

Variety excerpt: “PMC will lead daily operations of an expanded entertainment and music brand portfolio under the PMRC banner that will bring two Hollywood trade institutions under the same roof for the first time. Billboard, Vibe and the Reporter will join PMC’s Variety, Rolling Stone and Music Business Worldwide.

“The second joint venture calls for MRC to use its content production assets — which include Dick Clark Productions — to develop new content and business opportunities drawn from stories and other intellectual property culled from across PMRC brands.”

I asked some folks for a little speculation. “What might actually happen with the merger?”, I wrote. “What do your nerve endings tell you? Whenever companies or publications merge there are always people who get cut loose. Always. And we all know The Hollywood Reporter has been hemorrhaging money for a long time.”

Informed guy #1: “Variety is in excellent financial shape, and THR, as you said, has been hemmhoraging money for a long time. So I would expect that there’ll be changes there. But I think Penske wants to save THR, not kill it. And this, in the long run, is its best chance of being saved.”

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Default fundamentals apply when a director assesses another director’s work. Political, fraternal, instinctual. If a deep-down reaction is, say, one of genuine if slightly muted admiration for the craft, theme and/or performances (or for all three), the director will always brush aside the “slightly muted” and amplify the love. Always accentuate the alpha — there could never be a reason not to. So we’re naturally obliged to regard all such testimonials with a grain of salt. That said, Aaron Sorkin‘s assessment of David Fincher‘s Mank is encouraging as hell.

There are three distinct 21st Century nouveau riche approaches to interior design…three vomit-bag aesthetics favored by socially insecure people with too much money and no taste to speak of. A generally over-sized feeling, gold everything, too many drapes, questionable paintings, gaudy chandeliers, imitation ancient-Rome statues, huge windows, 14 foot tall ceilings, etc.

The offense-givers are (a) Kardashian Splendor (i.e., way too much conspicuous luxury, every nook and cranny designed and furnished like a luxury hotel, the exact opposite of distressed bohemian), (b) Uday and Qusay Hussein Palatial — Middle Eastern gold-and-marble kitsch, more conspicuous luxury, too many mounted 4K flat screens, large fountains and jacuzzis, and (c) Aggressive Putin, or the home stylings of an ostentatious Russian gangster — the main idea is to announce to the first-time visitor, “Look how much man money I have!…trust me, what I’ve spent on this place is only a fraction of my total holdings.”

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Yesterday I posted about an 85-minute doc, Meeting The Beatles in India. The piece was titled “I’ll Kill You, Lennon, You Bastard.” A comment from Variety‘s Chris Willman mentioned that a portion of the doc briefly dealt with allegations about sexual misbehavior on the part of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and yet Willman passed along observations from others that this portion may (emphasis on the “m” word) have been removed from the PPV version.

This morning I wrote a Facebook note to Paul Saltzman, director of Meeting The Beatles in India, which Gathr is now offering PPV streaming access to the film. I also wrote the film’s publicist, Maggie Begley.

“Paul — Greetings from Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere. On 9.9 Variety‘s music critic Chris Willman reviewed your Meet the Beatles in India doc. I riffed on the film yesterday, and here’s what Willman said in the HE comment section:

“‘When I reviewed the film, I made mention of a section toward the end that brings up the allegations against the Maharishi and then explains it away to sabotage by Magic Alex that spoiled a good thing.

“‘I then heard from people who watched the film upon its PPV opening that said this section I described was no longer in the film, and viewers were left thinking that everything ended happily. I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who saw the film which cut they saw.’

Willman is a totally reliable, first-rate journalist so I’m taking his word for this, or at least regarding what he says he’s been told. Have you in fact removed the referred-to portion of your doc? If so, do you have any comment or explanation as to why this was done?

Pertinent Willman paragraph, in 9.9.20 Variety review:

“The Maharishi is portrayed only in a positive light, although there’s a passing reference to the nasty song Lennon wrote about him immediately after the sojourn, ‘Sexy Sadie,’ before Saltzman fleetingly addresses the still hot-button topic of why some of the group members fell out with the guru, which had to do with the Maharishi allegedly making moves on women in the compound. The apologia offered by Saltzman and Lewisohn is that a peripheral figure in the Beatles’ entourage, ‘Magic Alex,’ spread false stories about the holy man, though [Alex] told a very different accounting of the fallout (and sued The New York Times over a description similar to the one offered here) before he died in 2017.”

And yet “Magic Alex (aka John Alexis Mardas, who passed in January 2017) denied all this in a February 2010 statement he sent to the N.Y. Times. Here are four paragraphs from said statement:

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Republican Utah Senator Mitt Romney has dashed liberal hopes by announcing a willingness to vote for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before the 11.3 election, which seems to all but assure confirmation.

The only way to stop the Supreme Court confirmation process, at least until after the election and perhaps into January or beyond the 1.20.21 inauguration, is for the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against Attorney General William Barr, which would have been warranted anyway. Seriously — what other blocking option is there? Re-impeach Trump?

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Last night’s open-air screening of Kiss The Ground happened on an upper-level parking lot behind West Hollywood’s Andaz Hotel. It was Hollywood Elsewhere’s first invitational Hollywood screening in six and a half months, and quite the emotional thing. It felt a bit awkward at first, but we all got used to it and loosened up. Thanks to the Allison Jackson Company and 42West (AnnaLee Paolo, Susan Ciccone), who co-hosted. Technical issues abounded but it was all cool. The FM radio band playing the soundtrack kept switching back and forth between 97.7 and 98something. The parking lot power went out twice. The focus and light levels were fine but the aspect ratio was wrong (it should have been 1.85 but they showed a horizontally squeezed 1.37 image.). And then our car battery, drained by listening to the radio without the engine on, began to flash a power warning. I called AAA and 20 minutes later a guy gave us a jump. But it was all good. Awesome to be with people again in a social setting.

Kiss The Ground director Rebecca Tickell.

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Beloved Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gone, and with her any chance of at least a semblance of moderate temperance on the court. I was praying so hard that she would hold on for another five months or so, or until Joe Biden‘s hoped-for inauguration on 1.20.21 along with a distinct possibility that the balance of Congressional power in the Senate might tip in favor of sensible liberal allegiance.

Ginsburg’s death means that another Trump stooge will almost certainly fill her seat. With Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, the bench was split between four liberals (herself, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan), four rabid conservatives (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh), and the occasionally sensible if right-leaning, Citizen’s United-supporting Chief Justice John Roberts.

Now the Supreme Court will be six-to-three in favor of conservatives. The ballgame is more or less officially over for many years to come with three Trump friendlies on the bench.

Vox: “Justice Ginsburg died believing that Trump is an ‘aberration.’ Her death ensures that he won’t be.”

I recall reading about an alleged discussion between President Obama and Justice Ginsberg, apparently beginning in 2014 or thereabouts, in which Ginsburg might have retired before the end of Obama’s second term and thereby allowed him to nominate a moderate liberal replacement before his term ran out. Ginsberg’s response was essentially “no way, I’m good, forward march.”

Then came Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s refusal to allow confirmation hearings on Obama nominee Merrick Garland in 2016.

Judicially speaking the rights of the Democratic majority in this country and particularly women, anti-corporatists and people of color are now going to be under severe strain for the next 10 to 15 years, at least. The pooch is really screwed.

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