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Tip of the hat to Collider‘s Scott Mantz for being 91.67% correct in his Gold Derby balliot, and particularly for having won a $40 bet from Collider‘s Jeff Sneider over last night’s Parasite triumph. Below is a 1.29 Collider chit-chat between Mantz, Sneider and Perri Nemiroff. Start at 6:15.

Perri Nemiroff: “I do think that the top two on many of the ballots are going to be 1917 and Parasite. There’s little to no criticism on those compared to some of the others…”
Jeff Sneider: “You’ve gotta be crazy! ‘Little to no criticism about Parasite‘? You’re wrong. That’s a fact — you’re wrong.”
Nemiroff “In the voting community. I know you didn’t like it as much as most.”
Scott Mantz: “But most did.”
Nemiroff “Especially when you compare the critics of Parasite to the criticism we’ve seen about some of the other films. They’re much more divisive and..”
Jeff Sneider: “What film had the most criticism last year? What film?”
Scott Mantz: “Green Book.”
Sneider: “Did it win Best Picture?”
Mantz: “Yes.”

Sneider: “Scott, you just said you think Bong’s gonna win Best Director?”
Mantz: “Yes.”
Sneider: “And you think Parasite‘s gonna win Best Picture?
Mantz: “Yes.”
Sneider: “And you think it’s gonna win Best International Feature?”
Mantz: “Of course!
Sneider: “So you’re just going all in on Parasite?
Mantz: “I’m all in.”
Nemiroff: “That’s a dangerous guesstimate.”
Sneider: “I would bet you any amount of money it’s not gonna win all three of these awards.”

[$20 is wagered; later on it’s doubled to $40]

Nemiroff: “You’re in so much trouble now.
Sneider: “A bad bet.”
Nemiroff: “Parasite could be Best Picture or Best Director in addition to Best Int’l Features, but it’s not gonna win all three.”

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!

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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.

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“?

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Issur Danielovitch, otherwise known as Kirk Douglas, passed today age 103. Cheers, salutes and celebrations for a truly legendary fellow — an ego-driven, headstrong, no-nonsense hardhead, thinker and studly swaggerer during his day. A real pusher, doer, striver. It’s funny but all of that hard-nosed stuff has fallen away now that he’s left the earth, and all I’m hearing in my head right now is Alex North‘s Spartacus overture.

Douglas was one of the first male superstars to adopt a persona that was about more than just gleaming white teeth and manly heroism, although he played that kind of thing about half the time. But Douglas also dipped into the dark side, portraying guys who were earnest and open but hungry, and who sometimes grappled with setbacks and self-doubt and hard-fought battles of the spirit.

Douglas’s peak years as a reigning superstar and a producer-actor known for quality-level films ended 56 years ago with his last steady-as-she-goes lead in a fully respected film — John Frankenheimer‘s Seven Days In May (’64).

Douglas kept working and writing and flooring the gas as best he could, but out of his 103 years only 15 were spent at the very top.

He broke through at age 33 as a selfish go-getter in Champion (’49) and then fed the engine with 19 or 20 high-calibre films — Young Man with a Horn (’50), The Glass Menagerie (’50), Ace in the Hole (’51), Detective Story (’51), The Big Sky (’52), The Bad and the Beautiful (’52), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (’54), The Indian Fighter (’55), Lust for Life (’56), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (’57), the masterful Paths of Glory (’57), The Vikings (’58), The Devil’s Disciple (’59), Strangers When We Meet (’60), Spartacus (’60), Town Without Pity (’61), Lonely Are the Brave (’62), Two Weeks in Another Town (’62) and finally the Frankenheimer film.

Big stars will sometimes flirt with journalists from time to time. They’ll turn on the charm for a week or two and then “bye.” I was one of Douglas’s flirtations back in ’82, for roughly a month-long period between an Elaine’s luncheon thrown by Bobby Zarem on behalf of the yet-to-shoot Eddie Macon’s Run, and then the filing of my New York Post piece about visiting the set of that Jeff Kanew-directed film in Laredo, Texas.

I hit it off pretty well with Douglas during the luncheon, in part because I talked about how much I admired Lonely Are The Brave and how Eddie Macon seemed to be roughly similar to that 1962 classic (i.e., a tough lawman pursuing a sympathetic, good-guy outlaw). Douglas talked about anything and everything at the luncheon, and I remember his being fairly wide-open with his impressions about Stanley Kubrick (i.e., “Stanley the prick”), with whom he’d famously partnered on Paths of Glory and Spartacus.

Our Laredo interview happened between takes. Neither of us regarded Eddie Macon’s Run as anything more than a servicable B-level programmer so we mostly discussed Douglas’s career hallmarks, and to my satisfaction he realized early on that I knew all about his good films. All those years and years of watching Douglas’s older films, and now all that TV time was paying off like a slot machine.

I told him I half-loved the foyer freakout scene with Lana Turner in The Bad and the Beautiful. And much of The Devil’s Disciple. And almost all of Champion. And every frame of Paths of Glory and Lust for Life and Lonely Are The Brave. And then I made an attempt at quoting his “eight spindly trees in Rockefeller Center” speech from Ace in the Hole. Douglas was drinking a bourbon (or something fairly stiff), and I remember his leaning forward at this point and saying, “You’ve really done your homework.”

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What does this clip tell you about the intelligence and awareness levels of average voters out there?

Iowa primitive (female, 70something): “How come [the fact that Mayor Pete is gay] has never been brought out before?”
Iowa precinct captain: “It’s common knowledge.”
Iowa primitive: “I’ve never heard it!”
HE observer (standing nearby): “It’s the content of a candidate’s character, yokel granny, and not his/her domestic predilection.”

Too many people don’t listen, don’t read, don’t scan the headlines, don’t watch newscasts and don’t want to know from nothin’, and yet they still make decisions. That’s why we are where we are right now. Uninformed voters have harmed this country before, and they will harm it again.

I never thought I’d feel this way about Mitt Romney, but currents of admiration are surging. He’s still “Mitt Romney” and therefore still, in some ways, the contentious dick who ran against Barack Obama in 2012. But he has my vote today. He will, of course, catch hell from the lunatic right for this. A profile in courage.

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The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Scott Johnson have co-authored a 2.3 article titled “Catherine Burns: The Vanishing of an Oscar-Nominated Actress.” It tries to paint a hard-luck portrait of a gifted actress whom Hollywood had given the backhand to, and who hated playing the Hollywood game, and who led a subdued and shrouded life over her last three or four decades.

The 23-year-old Burns delivered an Oscar-nominated supporting performance in Frank Perry‘s Last Summer (’69), but she was never that lucky again. Burns made two more films in the immediate wake (Me, Natalie, Red Sky at Morning) and did some theatre and a lot of television over the next…oh, 15 years or so. She had dabbled in writing and allegedly focused on that entirely in the ’80s. Then she fell off the map.

A longtime Manhattanite, Burns married a non-industry dude named Kenneth Shire in 1989. Sometime in the aughts she and Shire moved into a retirement community in Lynden, Washington. The THR piece discovers that the 73-year-old Burns passed almost exactly a year ago and that cirrhosis (i.e., a drinking problem) was a “contributing factor” in her demise.

When contacted by the Seattle-based Johnson, Shire doesn’t mention her passing. He also lets go with some anti-Hollywood rancor. “She hated [Last Summer] and most everything that came with it,” Shire says. “She wanted to be remembered as a published writer of novels. My wife has been out of the business for decades. She is not old news. She is ancient news. We are in our eighth decade. We left that rotten business a long time ago. It’s time for some peace. Maybe someone else wants this kind of reminder of who they once were, but we do not.”

HE to Feinberg, Johnson: My impression was that the piece tried to inject a certain melancholy or sadness that may not have been warranted by the facts. It tried to make it sound as if Burns wanted to deepen or expand her career but Hollywood and to a lesser extent Broadway said no. In their usual callous way, Hollywood types didn’t think she had the right look.

Many are called, few are chosen. Talented as she was, Cathy Burns was one of the called.

Just because Burns delivered a special moment in Frank Perry‘s Last Summer as well as some noteworthy stage and TV-series performances…that doesn’t mean she had what it took to keep going and going as an actress, She apparently didn’t have that engine, that hunger, that gotta-gotta. We all know that these qualities are as important as talent.

A certain Hollywood columnist was dismissive of her looks, the article reports, and that obviously amounted to a kind of cruelty.

Burns’ looks were okay. She was small and mousey, but it takes all sorts to make a world. If you ask me she looked like a slightly less attractive version of Liza Minnelli‘s “Pookie” in The Sterile Cuckoo, and perhaps with a side order of Susan Oakes‘ “Anybodys” in West Side Story.

The main thing is that she didn’t have that X-factor dynamism that all successful actors seem to have. She had a certain recessiveness and a face that said “whatever” and “maybe you could leave me alone”. She was was hugely turned off by the day-to-day reality of being famous and recognized on the street or whatever.

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The real-life echoes in Ben Affleck‘s basketball-coach character in Finding The Way Back (Warner Bros., 3.6) are obvious. Affleck has been famously struggling with alcohol issues for years, and so (in the realm of the film) is “Jack Cunningham”, a former basketball star who bends the elbow. The film is obviously self-portraiture to a certain extent.

Director Gavin O’Connor knows how to do sports redemption dramas. I still say Miracle (’04) is his best.

I saw this trailer at the Grove last weekend, and my first reaction (above and beyond the Affleck thing) was that it could be described as Hoosiers but with Dennis Hopper‘s rummy character taking the place of Gene Hackman‘s.

Why call this Finding The Way Back when (a) Nat Faxon and Jim Rash‘s The Way Way Back opened only seven years ago and (b) Peter Weir‘s The Way Back opened ten years ago? Why follow in that path? I can’t think of a decent alternative. All that comes to mind is Fat Bearded Boozer. Don’t laugh — people would pay to see a film with that title.

I’ve no idea how much jail time, if any, Harvey Weinstein will wind up serving for the multiple alleged instances of rape and sexual assault he’s currently being prosecuted for. But after yesterday’s grotesque anatomical testimony by alleged sexual assault victim Jessica Mann, Weinstein has certainly gotten a taste of the sexual humiliation that he’s been accused of handing out during his heyday.

Mann, who alleges that Weinstein raped and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions in 2013, claimed that the first time she saw Harvey buck naked she thought he was (a) “deformed and intersex,” (b) didn’t appear to have testicles, and (c) seemed to have a vagina. She added that he “smelled like shit” and “had a lot of blackheads” on his back. Her description, put bluntly, is that of a deformed and repugnant Uriah Heep.

Mann’s testimony suggests that Harvey may have had an undescended testicle or two, or a condition that resembles what Adolf Hitler reportedly suffered from. I know something about this as I had to have surgery when I was 10 years old to correct a one-ball condition. Without this I wouldn’t be able to have children, my parents were told.

In “Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute”, historians Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie wrote that “Hitler [was] believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the under side of the penis.”

Life and biology are unfair and some of us are dealt bad cards. The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of people on this planet, perhaps millions, who are regarded as ugly. I myself have never used that word — a decision that came from watching Charles Laughton‘s performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (’39) when I was eight or nine.

But most or many people do use it. They regard certain people, fearfully, as deformed or abnormal or otherwise grotesque. Cruel or unfair as this sounds, these unfortunate people arguably have an obligation to prevent others from contemplating or, God forbid, being physically intimate with their biological misfortune. It follows that they should never even think about attempting sexual congress with other people. Better that way.

Think of all the anguish and bruisings that could have been avoided if Harvey had decided that he had no choice but to be sexually inactive in a normal social sense. Without a sex drive he’d probably still be a swaggering film industry hotshot of some kind. All he had to do was accept his biological fate and conclude that onanism, prostitutes and love dolls were his only allowable outlets.

But no — he had to have his way with actresses. And thereby ruined not only his own life but left many of his alleged victims permanently bruised and/or traumatized.