From the fearless Susan Orlean, author of “The Orchid Thief”…..

Satirizing an alleged Native American tribal tradition…no one would dare shoot a scene like this today.

“We are coming towards a great reckoning of our past. The more that these stories can be told in a truthful way, the more it can be a healing process.” — Lily Gladstone quoted in U.K Vogue.

It was three long–ass years ago when news broke that Timothee Chalamet would play the creatively transitioning (acoustic folkie to electric poet-with-sunglasses) Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Now it’s actually, finally going before the cameras sometime in March.

This is Chalamet’s big chance to step out of the not-quite-happening place he’s been standing in for the last six years (throwing Woody under the bus, Little Women, Beautiful Boy, Bones and All, the Dune franchise, Wonka) and do something cool and provocative for a change. Maybe.

Posted last spring…

Originally posted on 3.21.11, updated on 9.17.16:

One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that’s over and done with is “okay, that happened.” Unless, of course, you’re talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it. Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we’re here now…let’s get a coffee and catch up.

All my life I’ve been friends with exes, or have at least been open to same. And they’ve been open to ease and friendship with me. Except for one.

She was (and most likely still is) a whipsmart blonde with a great ass, a toothy smile and a kind of young Katharine Hepburn vibe. She’d been raised in Brooklyn but always reminded me of a Fairfield County gal.

She’s married now and living in Pasadena; her husband — a slightly stocky, gray-haired guy of some means — doesn’t resemble me or her first husband (a doobie-toking small-business owner who owned a Harley) at all. Whatever attributes or nice qualities he’s brought to the table, he’s clearly a swing away from the past.

I gave up trying to be in touch with her 11 years ago, or towards the end of Barack Obama’s first term. She really wants to erase that part of her life — the first marriage (which began in the summer of ’96) and the affair with me that began in early ’98 and lasted two and two-thirds years, ending in late September 2000.

We last spoke in ’12. The most emotionally significant thing that happened before that was her friending me on Facebook, but what is that?

Our thing began at the ’98 Sundance Film Festival and finally ran out of gas in late ’00 when her husband found out.

I took the hurt and the lumps. I was dropped six or seven times. It was easily the most painful and frustrating relationship of my life. Whether things were good or bad between us was entirely about her shifting moods. Her father had been a philanderer when she was fairly young and this had caused a lot of family pain, so she felt badly about following in his footsteps. But she kept coming back and oh, the splendor.

The bottom line, obviously, is that she’s not at ease with having been a beloved infidel in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Easing up and looking back by way of occasional contact or e-mails just isn’t a comfortable thing for her.

I could write a Russian novel about what happened during our fractured romance. I once flew to NYC just to hang with her for a couple of days without the nearby presence of her husband. Toward the end we had a blissful rendezvous in Las Vegas.

But when all is said and done I’m basically a Woody Allen type of guy — the heart wants what it wants and all’s fair. Even if nothing hurts quite as badly as being the on-and-off boyfriend of a not-very-married woman.

But I’m past it. I’m not sorry it happened. And I’ve always liked her besides. She’s smarter than me. And a good judge of character, more practical, more planted, etc. But I’m deeper, stronger in terms of handling rough seas, and a better writer.

Obviously my love for Bradley Cooper’s Maestro has become a minority viewpoint. Obviously the tide of public opinion has turned against it. I was completely swept up by Cooper’s stylistic audacity and particularly by Carey Mulligan’s performance as Felicia Montealegre, but you can’t fight City Hall or at least you can’t instruct or badger people into broadening their aesthetic horizons. All I can say is that I’m very sorry.

Partly because it sounds like woke gobbledygook, I suppose. Because it suggests that the simple bedrock concept of gender (as in primarily two, as in male/female) has been imposed by a foreign power to establish political control over a native culture. Which is bullshit, of course.

Thank you, God, for sparing me from the burden of such terminology throughout most of my life. Thank you for that blessing.

At the same time I felt curiously charmed by the “Little Horse” character in Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (‘70), and I loved Chief Dan George’s “Old Lodge Skins” character (a performance that was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor) and his “live and let live” approach to life.

For nearly a quarter-century Michael Mann made a series of intensely male-ish, high-stakes grand-slammers — hardcore films about headstrong fellows forging their own paths, sometimes outside the bonds of legality but always single-mindedly. And man, did they hit the spot!

The hot streak began with 1981’s Thief and ended with 2006’s Collateral, and also included Manhunter (’86), The Last of the Monicans (’92), Heat (’95), The Insider (’99) and Ali (’01) — seven films in all.

Then came the “excellent work but not quite a bell-ringer” period…Miami Vice (’06), Public Enemies (’09) and Blackhat (’15)…movies that registered as ground-rule doubles or triples. Which felt disorienting to Mann-heads given his 23-year home run history.

Now comes Ferrari (Neon, 12.25), which is made of authentic, bruising, searing stuff. In my eyes it’s another grand-slammer but what do I know? Obviously the reaction so far has been mixed-positive — many admirers but also a modest-sized crowd of dissenters.

Back in the mid ’90s I’d have written about that infamous VHS tape showing how The Naked Gun movies copied jokes and sight gags from Get Smart, Sledgehammer and other comedy movies and TV shows.

The VHS video in question (originally mentioned in Spy magazine in July 1993) has been digitally remastered and updated. It now includes David Zucker’s contention he’s only been influenced by his own work. I’m not saying that Zucker is basically a comedy kleptomaniac (I wouldn’t know), but there are those who feel this way.

How odd that Snoopy has suddenly become a thing on two fronts — not just retail shelves but also in Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro or more particularly in that already famous argument scene that happens around the three-quarters mark.

From “Why is Snoopy so popular with Gen Z?,” posted on 12.15.23 by Morning Edition‘s Leila Fadel and Steve Inskeep:

“One of the hottest toys this holiday season has little chance of making it into the hands of children. That’s because people in their 20s, people who are adulting, are grabbing up a toy known as Puffer Snoopy.

“Puff Snoopy Dog is a upmarket version of the cartoon beagle from Peanuts. He wears a puffy pale-blue jacket and a green-and-yellow ski cap.

“Snoopy was selling for $13.99 at CVS until stores sold out. People from Generation Z, we’re told, are posting on TikTok about their frantic searches.”