“I think it makes a difference when a movie is physically bigger than you. I mean that. Your relationship to it changes.” — film critic Bilge Ebiri.

There’s no disputing that King Vidor‘s Duel in the Sun (’46), the derided David O. Selznick-produced western that became known as Lust in the Dust, is a groaner. Ditto The Fountainhead (’49), a boldly sexual adaption of Ayn Rand‘s novel with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. A pair of unsubtle big-studio movies about passion and fucking — overwrought and overplayed.

And yet I’ve never seen either in a theatre of any kind, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center is showing presumably handsome 35mm prints of both on Saturday as part of a Vidor retrospective. I’m tempted for obvious reasons.

I became a “bad kid” when I entered my early teens. Defying authority, shitty grades. I had all kinds of low-self-esteem issues, but that’s standard for any child of an alcoholic. I was certainly lippy and insolent with my dad, Jim Wells — a Mad Man exec who worked for J. Walter Thompson. I regarded him as a gruff, flinty, foul-tempered dick because — make no mistake — he was that.

One summer evening Jim and I came to blows, or rather he lost his temper and beat the shit out of me. I was 16. I suffered a head gash, bleeding all over my white shirt. I was seeing a therapist at the time, and as it happened I had a 7 pm appointment that evening. I told the therapist (who was also a serious dick) what had happened, and he took my dad’s side. He basically said, “Bruises and bloody shirt aside, kids like you are bad news and frankly you deserved it.”

In short, during a single summer evening I became 100% convinced that domestic parental violence was something to be avoided in the future, and that family therapists were not necessarily bringers of profound perception and wisdom.

Why hadn’t I grabbed a drinking glass and smashed it across my dad’s head during our kitchen fist fight? You know, like Joe Pesci does in that Copacabana fight in Raging Bull? I’ll tell you why. Because I was more of a lover (i.e., a movie lover) than a scrapper, plus I was basically too chicken to get seriously violent with my taller, heavier and stronger dad. When the kitchen fracas began I was mainly rope-a-doping — focused on protecting myself. But God, if I could relive that moment right now and if I had a hammer…

A year or two later I happened to watch Clarence Brown‘s Human Hearts, a family drama about a rebellious, independent-minded son (James Stewart) and his stern preacher father (Walter Huston). Huston has slapped Stewart around a few times, but prior to a fresh altercation Stewart tells him, “If you hit me, pop, I’m going to defend myself.” They tussle and Huston winds up giving Stewart another beating.

That was not the outcome I was hoping for.

Until last night I had somehow never read about James Garner‘s violent fight with his stepmother, Wilma. His alcoholic father married Wilma when the future movie star was five, in 1933. From the get-go Wilma was a “nasty bitch,” Garner recalled. His brother Jack later called her “a damn no-good woman.” Wilma would scold and beat Garner, and whenever he crossed the line Wilma would make him wear a dress and call him Louise. James finally had it out with Wilma in ’42, when he was 14. She came at him and he pushed back, finally “choking her to keep her from killing him in retaliation.”

Give her what for, Jimbo!

One way or another parents often manage to fuck their kids up. They brutalize and leave scars.

My son Dylan is currently back to regarding me as a dick in somewhat the same way that I regarded my dad long ago. (The difference is that I was 16 and Dylan is 32.) But in my late 20s as I sucked all that in and said “okay, that happened” and decided to cut my father a break, especially after he entered AA and apologized for his poor parenting skills and whatnot, explaining as honestly as he could that he just wasn’t cut out for being a good dad.

N.Y. Post article, posted today [8.10]: “Canadian rock guitarist Gord Lewis was found dead in his Hamilton, Ontario home on Sunday after he was allegedly murdered by his own son. Jonathan Lewis, 41, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder as the Hamilton Police Department continues to investigate the case, according to local reports.”

I would love to see a short film about Garner and Wilma’s relationship, ending with the strangle slapdown.

My last piece about Ignite’s Invaders From Mars 4K Bluray appeared just over four months ago (3.31). The deluxe disc (stacked with extras) pops on 9.26.

I somehow hadn’t paid attention to a radical new trailer that first appeared five or six weeks ago. I’ve only just watched it. The visual scheme is nothing if not eccentric (Invaders From Mars on mescaline, and then re-imagined by Peter Fonda‘s character in The Trip), but I can’t help wondering why the haunting Invaders From Mars score, credited for decades to Raoul Kraushar but actually composed by Mort Glickman, wasn’t used.

The new trailer is fine, or certainly harmless. I happen to be a bigger fan of the old ’53 trailer, which has also been restored.

Posted on 11.12.09: I had a nice, friendly, off-the-record lunch today with Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow at Extra Virgin on West 4th.

After Bigelow left and I was putting my coat on I asked the Extra Virgin waitress if she’d seen The Hurt Locker. “The what?,” she said. “The Hurt Locker. An Iraq movie, bomb-squad defusing.” Her face was a blank. “Is it a documentary?,” she asked. “Nope, feature…a thriller,” I said. “Who’s in it?” she said. “Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes, Anthony Mackie….that’s okay, just wondering.”

Intrigued, I walked into the main room and asked the hostess and (I think) another lady employee who was sitting at the bar if they’d seen it. Same reaction — neither had even heard the title.

And we’re not talking about waitresses in some greasy spoon in Pensacola, Florida. New Yorkers are supposed to be moderately hip and aware. It’s one thing for these women not to have seen an Iraq War film, but to draw a total blank at a mention of the title?

In November 1985, a dead black bear was discovered in Chattahoochee National Forest. Nearby was a torn-open duffel bag that had apparently contained 75 pounds of Bolivian marching powder, and which had apparently fallen out of a smuggler’s plane. (Flown by Tom Cruise’s Barry Seal?) The clueless bear had eaten a good portion of the coke and overdosed.

The guy who found the bear’s ruined body didn’t alert authorities (one guess why) and it wasn’t until 12.20.85 when authorities discovered the carcass. A medical examiner at the Georgia State Crime Lab said that that the bear’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”

Elizabeth Banks has directed a “character-driven thriller” about the poor bear’s misfortune as well as, one presumes, certain humans who quickly developed an interest in the free cocaine. It’s called Cocaine Bear (Universal, 2.24.23). The film costars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the late Ray Liotta.

The title alone suggests that Banks and her producers see the story as an opportunity for bear thrills, or at least partly that.

The body of this poor, poisoned animal eventually found its way to a taxidermist, and is now on display inside the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall (720 Bryan Ave., Lexington, Kentucky). There’s a sign around the bear’s neck that refers to him as “Pablo Escobear.”

In short Kentucky bumblefucks regard the idea of a furry beast dying of a cocaine overdose as a hoot.

HE to Banks and Universal marketing: HE believes that the death of an innocent animal who died of cocaine ingestion is not in itself an opportunity to do “funny” or “thrilling”. It sounds to me like a metaphorical tale about our casual greed and cruelty and indifference to the natural order of things — about the fact that forest animals have a certain nobility while we have none.

If Robert Bresson was still around and Universal had hired him instead of Banks, the film would be called Au hasard, Cocaine Bear — the sad story of a saintly bear who died because he was unlucky enough to cross paths with a duffel bag full of blow.

What kind of evil mind would listen to this story and go, “Whoa, great idea for a fun, goofy movie…a bear with a cocaine problem! Whoo-hoo!”

Early last March I reviewed Neil Labute‘s House of Darkness, which had its big debut at the 2022 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

“House of Darkness isn’t that bad,” I wrote. “Creepy, diverting, socially thoughtful — altogether a half-decent sit.”

I described it as “an elevated horror film that uses (borrows?) themes and situations from Promising Young Woman and Midsommar.”

I added that “when it opens, House of Darkness, which costars Kate Bosworth and Justin Long, will probably be attacked as a metaphorical woman-hating horror film. Or a man-hating #MeToo horror film. Or something like that.

“It’s definitely trafficking in social metaphor — #MeToo and #TimesUp and others in the women’s progressive movement looking to bring pain and terror to the male jerks of the world.

“I don’t think House of Darkness does anything phenomenal. All it does is apply the basic LaBute attitude software to Promising Young Midsommar.”

The trailer tries to sell House of Darkness as a reimagining of the classic Dracula tale….except it isn’t. (It’s much more interesting than what that suggests.) The ostensible distributor or at least the producer is Dark House Films, Inc.

… but at the same time I wouldn’t call it a good one. Because it suggests that Volodymir and Olena Zelensky have social aspirations. Which they’re allowed to have, of course, but it doesn’t feel right. Not in the midst of so much death and devastation. A bit unseemly.

You can feel the warmth…it’s there. And I love Alexandre Desplat‘s score, and the voice of Ewan McGregor giving life and spirit to Jiminy Cricket.

There’s a vague physical resemblance between the glistening, shimmering Marilyn Monroe of 60 and 70 years ago and the exquisitely coiffed, gowned and made-up Ana de Armas, even though the latter doesn’t really “look” like Norma Jean Baker, an unloved and abused daughter of average Midwestern Anglo-Saxon parents. Ana looks like a beautiful Cuban-born actress trying to do her best and mostly pulling it off, which is fine as far as it goes. Here’s hoping that Blonde, directed by Andrew Dominik and expected to be a difficult sit in some respects, shows up at Telluride after debuting in Venice.

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Another discussion stirred by Ethan Hawke‘s The Last Movie Stars…, and especially by Paul Schrader‘s observations about Hud…

HE to Schrader: “Your observation is 100% spot-on, but the kicker in Hud is the ending — when Newman, the last one in the house, pops open a beer, strolls over to the kitchen door, gazes at the departing Brandon de Wilde, reflects for seven or eight seconds, and then delivers that cynical ‘fuck it and to hell with it’ gesture…that‘s what sunk in, what altered the American male identity from 1963 onward, at least as far as movies were concerned.”

Newman: “‘We thought [the] last thing people would do was accept Hud as a heroic character. His amorality just went over [the audience’s] head — all they saw was this western, heroic individual.’”

HE to Newman: “They saw the amorality, of course, but they still liked Hud’s irreverence, rogue swagger and cocksure fuck-all attitude…his general disdain for old conservative values. And they liked that all those women, married and single, went to bed with him.”