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So Renee Zellweger has it all locked down, right? That’s what I’ve been telling myself for four months now, or since I saw Judy at the Telluride Film Festival.

And I’d certainly say so now. Simply put, none of her competitors has the same sense of accumulated heat and coagulation. And no one else has Zellweger’s award-season narrative, which boils down to (a) went away then returned with a seriously risky role (for if she didn’t bring Judy Garland back to life in all senses of that term all bets would be off), (b) still glowing at 50, and (c) cheers for an actress who hasn’t lost her mojo.

Seriously — tell me how she’s going to lose.

I knew in my bones that Zellweger had this after attending the Judy premiere at the Academy four months ago (9.19). Full house, unmistakable emotional reactions, cheers and applause. (And a great after-party.)

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I wrote the next day that for what it was worth “both the film and particularly Zellweger’s performance, all but locked for a Best Actress nomination, sank in a bit deeper. Not just the sadness and humor but the vigor of it. I was studying her more closely, enjoying the flicky facial tics and raised eyebrows and hair-trigger grins all the more. RZ slams a homer!”

There’s never been any question that Zellweger’s performance as the financially strained, worn-at-the-seams Judy Garland had that certain snap-crackle-awe. I felt that in Telluride, and especially the humorous spritzy side. We all know that performances of this type always end up nominated.

Judy is an adaptation of the Olivier- and Tony-nominated Broadway play End of the Rainbow, about Garland’s last few months during a run of sell-out concerts at London’s Talk of the Town.

I didn’t know or care much about personal problems, alcoholism and pharmaceutical abuse when I was a kid, but Judy Garland was the very first Hollywood star whom I associated with these issues. After seeing The Wizard of Oz at age seven or eight my mother (or was it my grandmother?) mentioned that Garland’s adult life was a mess. I never forgot that.

Garland had ten or twelve good years (mid ’30s to late ’40s) before the downswirl pattern kicked in. Stress, anxiety, pills, self-esteem issues. Garland was between 31 and 32 when she made George Cukor‘s A Star Is Born, supposedly playing a fresh-faced ingenue but occasionally looking like the battle-scarred showbiz veteran that she was. A barbituate overdose killed Garland at age 47, at which point she seemed 60 if a day.

When I spoke to Zellweger four months ago at the annual Telluride brunch, her appearance was anything but Garland-esque. She looked exactly (and very fetchingly) like a somewhat older but entirely vibrant and relaxed version of Dorothy Boyd, the lover and wife of Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. She looked like herself, I mean, and well-tended at that.

Zellweger was 26 or thereabouts when she costarred in that landmark Cameron Crowe film. 24 years have passed, and she still has some kind of serene, settled, casually glowing thing going on. If I didn’t know her and someone told me she was 42 or 43, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

Best Actress trophies from Golden Globes, Critics Choice, National Board of Review, etc. Not to mention the recently bequeathed Oscar and BAFTA nominations plus the forthcoming Riviera Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, etc. Timing, momentum, the curve of history…arrival.

In today’s Guardian (1.13) is a brilliant Jessa Crispin piece that basically says that critics have become so political-minded and have chugged so much virtue-signalling Kool-Aid that they’re not only opposed to telling the truth about films as a rule but are pretty much incapable of doing so.

The piece is called “Is politics getting in the way of assessing which films are actually good?”

Excerpt #1: “This was…the year media outlets like the New York Times and Vanity Fair insisted Little Women was mandatory viewing to prove you’re not a misogynist. Even GQ ran a piece implying how important it was men ‘support women’ by watching this film about some white ladies having a hard time during the civil war.

“Men’s supposed lack of interest in Little Women became the dominant narrative of the movie, implying it reveals the (alleged) lack of interest men have, in the words of the New York Times, in ‘see[ing] women as human beings’.

“It couldn’t possibly be that Little Women is just a bad movie — although it is. Little Women is one of those books that has been over-adapted, with five previous film adaptations, plus a miniseries, plus a theatrical production, plus an anime version, and on and on.”

Excerpt #2: “But if you insist that a movie is important, you don’t really have to deal with whether or not it’s good. You can shame people into seeing it as a political statement, rather than as an entertainment or cultural selection.

“Same with the ‘dangerous’ or ‘disturbing’ moniker, which got used on everything from Joker to the latest Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was marked down for everything from not giving its female costar Margot Robbie enough lines to its gratuitous violence against a female would-be murderer to its filming of women’s feet (fetishes are now dangerous, I guess).

“If a critic doesn’t like a film, labeling it as dangerous — and implying you might get killed if you go see it — is an attempt to keep people away.”

Excerpt #3: “Part of this language is the result of our commenting culture choosing to see everything through a political lens. There must be a political reason for Tarantino giving so few lines to a female actor in his latest film, and that political reason must be he does not respect or have any interest in women. There must be a political reason this movie doesn’t have the correct number of roles given to actors of color, and that reason must be that the director is racist.

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I know Joker is “divisive.” Then again it’s grossed $1.067 billion worldwide ($334 million domestic, $732.7 million overseas) so I guess it’s not that divisive, right? And it is the most zeitgeisty of all the Best Picture nominees. And now it has 11 Oscar nominations. So what makes it an unlikely Best Picture winner exactly? An Oscar prognosticator who just arrived here from Mars would probably conclude that Joker has the Best Picture Oscar in the bag. And yet everyone continues to say “oh, no, no…can’t win, too dark, too anti-social, too diseased,” etc.

via GIPHY

The Hammond organ track that made history. Ignore the horrific first 30 seconds and just cut to Al Kooper‘s story. 21 years old, June 16, 1965. Columbia Records, 799 Seventh Avenue, Studio B. It was included in Martin Scorsese‘s No Direction Home doc, but this is a more complete telling.

Boilerplate: “When Dylan heard Like A Rolling Stone played back, he insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite [chief engineer] Tom Wilson‘s protestations that Kooper was ‘not an organ player.’ Dylan: “I don’t care who he is and what his experience level is…turn it up.”

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BREAKING: Video emerges of @JoeBiden criticizing antiwar Dems, praising Bush for leading America into the Iraq War & promising he will support Bush's continuation of the war

"The president of the United States is a bold leader & he is popular…I & many others will support him" pic.twitter.com/Sx2zsdbSJV

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 12, 2020

When it comes to 2020 Oscar nominations, Hollywood Elsewhere is partly run-of-the-mill and partly…well, a bit peculiar. In some ways I’m a lot like Scott Feinberg, and more similar than not to Sasha Stone. But I’m everybody’s brother and son. I ain’t much different from anyone. Well, in some ways I am.

Advance warning: Bong Joon-ho‘s over-praised social dramedy will wind up Best Picture nominated (along with a locked nom for Best International Feature), but it must not and can not win in the former category…no!

Best Picture in order of likelihood: The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917, Parasite, Joker, Marriage Story (6). Outliers: Little Women (will a series of impassioned journalist columns and the ever-present Twitter fervor push it through?), Jojo Rabbit (too broad, too comedically tidy, lacking in boldness), Ford v Ferrari (respectable character-driven drama, excellent race-car footage), Knives Out (VERY clever, first-rate popcorn whodunit), Uncut Gems (an endurance test to sit through, the Safdies are sadists). (5)

Best Director in order of likelihood: Martin Scorsese, The Irishman; Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Sam Mendes, 1917; Bong Joon-ho, Parasite; Todd Phillips, Joker. (5)

Possible surprise omission: Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story (not much momentum over last four months, might fall by the wayside). Forget it: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit.

Best Actor in order of likelihood: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker; Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes; Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory; Taron Egerton, Rocketman.

Not happening: Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (nobody has said boo about Leo’s performance — all the heat has been about Brad).

Best Actress in order of likelihood: Renée Zellweger, Judy; Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story; Charlize Theron, Bombshell; Saoirse Ronan, Little Women; Awkwafina, The Farewell.

Shameful omission of the best female lead performance of the year: Mary Kay Place, Diane.

Forget it: Lupita Nyong’o, Us. Not a chance: Cynthia Erivo, Harriet.

Best Supporting Actor in order of likelihood: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Al Pacino, The Irishman; Joe Pesci, The Irishman (will cancel each other out), Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; Jamie Foxx, Just Mercy.

Not likable enough: Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes. Too broad: Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit.

Best Supporting Actress in order of likelihood: Laura Dern, Marriage Story; Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers; Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell. (3) Possible: Shuzhen Zhao, The Farewell.

Should be nominated but won’t be: Julia Butters, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Unworthy contenders: Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit (because her character was hung?); Margot Robbie, Bombshell (because Roger Ailes humiliates her in that one agonizing scene?); Nicole Kidman, Bombshell (because she delivers a prim-and-proper performance that she could have performed in her sleep?).

Call me bullish, biased or delusional, but I refuse to take this man out of my Oscar predictions. pic.twitter.com/hgr0B6xrAr

— Zach Laws (@zachlaws) January 12, 2020

In a 1.11 Facebook entry, director Eugene Jarcecki (The King, Reagan, Why We Fight) posts some photos of various West Village retail shops that have shuttered and laments “the lie of a ‘booming’ economy…in Gentrification 2.0, where even the crappy soulless establishments that once replaced the original mom-and-pop places, even these onetime intruders can no longer survive.”

One of the photos was of the recently shuttered Vesuvio’s Bakery (or more precisely the Birdbath bakery inside the Vesuvio’s storefront) at 160 Prince Street. Devastating. I haven’t been to Manhattan since last spring, and had somehow missed the closing last August. Early 20th Century storefronts like Vesuvio’s are the heart and soul of what remains of the old West Village. This kind of thing has been happening in Manhattan for the last 20, 25 years. Earthy single-owner establishments have been dropping like flies, and with them the flavor and character of Sidney Lumet‘s Manhattan.

In ’78 and ’79 I lived a hop, skip and a jump away at 143 Sullivan Street. I was mostly miserable back then, and yet I felt so glad that my apartment was part of a living, breathing neighborhood composed of mom-and-pop businesses, and run by people with pugnacious New York personalities.

Eugene Jarecki anecdote: During the annual Sony Pictures Classics party in the middle of the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, I was talking to Jarecki about Why We Fight, which the festival was screening. We were engaged in the usual party chit-chat. And then I somehow shifted into a testy-bordering-on-hostile discussion with MCN’s David Poland, who was standing right next to me. “Whoa, wait,” Jarecki quipped. “This sounds like a real conversation…you guys actually have something to say to each other!”

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Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom is a grotesque portrait of fascism unbridled, but it’s certainly no satire. A “satire” this cold and clinical inevitably morphs into something else. Salo is essentially a horror film about the practice of cruelty…cruelty and contempt taken to their final expression. And yet it’s certainly a tougher, harder, more unforgiving creation than Jojo Rabbit, and a much fiercer thing than Taiki Waititi ever thought to attempt. Talk about films that focus on a similar situation but exist in two completely separate universes. There’s a Salo scene in which the four brute fascists (Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti) are dressed in drag, looking like perverse middle-aged biddies with pearl necklaces, too much rouge, ornate hats and whatnot. Imagine if Jojo Rabbit had the nerve to be this dark, this diseased.

Posted three-plus years ago: “Can anyone imagine a more noir-ish sounding title than They Won’t Believe Me? The world won’t cut me a break, won’t stop shitting on me, won’t trust me, won’t look inside to see who I really am, won’t give me a job or lend a helping hand, refuses to love me, etc. It’s the ultimate expression of despondency.”

I’ve just watched this clip of TCM’s Noir Alley host Eddie Muller (aka “The Czar of Noir”) talking about They Won’t Believe Me, and reporting that screenwriter Jonathan Latimer‘s original ending had accused murderer Robert Young leaping to his death from a courtroom window, followed by the jury rendering a verdict of not guilty.

But the production code guys insisted that a person can’t commit suicide, Muller says, and so “a trigger-happy baliff” shoots Young before he leaps.

Posted on 11.2.16: “You can’t stream Irving Pichel‘s They Won’t Believe Me, a 1947 noir in which Robert Young played a weak, disloyal, manipulative shit. I haven’t seen it in eons, but I vividly remember the final scene when Young, a wrongfully accused defendant in a murder trial, is shot dead by a cop when he tries to leap out of a courtroom window just before the verdict is read. Cut to close-up of the jury foreman reading the verdict: ‘Not guilty.’

“The only way you can see They Won’t Believe Me is on TMC and via a Region 2 DVD. No Amazon, no Netfix, no Vudu, no nothin’.

“I was taken by the film because Young was a consummate exuder of domestic serenity and middle-class assurance in two hit TV series, Father Knows Beast and Marcus Welby, M.D. In actuality Young was an unhappy, unsettled fellow who suffered from depression and alcoholism. In 1991, at the age of 84 or thereabouts, he tried to kill himself. And yet Young was candid about his personal issues and urged the public not to follow his example (i.e., boozing) and to seek professional help when so afflicted.

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The concluding line in this Catch 22 conversation between Lt. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) and Cpt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) was not written by original novel author Joseph Heller but Buck Henry. Heller reportedly approved.

Minderbinder: “Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.”

Yossarian: “What difference does that make? He’s dead.”

Minderbinder: “Then his family will get it.”

Yossarian: “He didn’t have time to have a family.”

Minderbinder: “Then his parents will get it.”

Yossarian: “They don’t need it, they’re rich.”

Minderbinder: (beat) “Then they’ll understand.”

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The legendary Buck Henry has passed at age 89 from a heart attack. From the mid ’60s to mid ’90s Henry was a screenwriting king and highly valued pinch-hitter who specialized in quippy, ascerbic humor, as well as a well-known deadpan comedian who acted in scores of comedies and social satires. 30 years at the top of the heap, and closer to 40 if you count his early TV writing days.

Buck was also very decent and helpful to me during my Entertainment Weekly and L.A. Times Syndicate column-writing days (’91 to ’98) as he would always pick up the phone and help if he could. He could be testy and crabby from time to time, but that came with the territory. Generally an excellent human being.

It’s ironic that a guy as dryly mannered and emotionally low-key as Buck adapted a film with one of the happiest endings of all time (despite the final 40 to 50 seconds), and then ten years later co-directed another film with one of the happiest endings of all time.

And in between these two he adapted a talking-dolphin movie that wanted to be one of the most emotionally devastating films of its type ever made. It didn’t get there but the effort was vigorous.

The first two films in question are The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols, and Heaven Can Wait, which Buck co-directed with Warren Beatty. These alone put Henry in the 20th Century pantheon of legendary screenwriters and co-directors.

He also co-created the original Get Smart NBC series with Mel Brooks. He also wrote or co-wrote Catch-22 (’70), The Owl and the Pussycat (’70), What’s Up, Doc? (1972) (with Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Benton and David Newman), First Family, Protocol, To Die For, Town & Country and The Humbling.

He also appeared on several Saturday Night Live episodes in the ’70s and ’80s. He also played supporting or bit parts in The Graduate (the hotel desk clerk…classic!), Catch-22 (Lieutenant Colonel Korn), Taking Off, The Man Who Fell to Earth (Oliver Farnsworth who was thrown out of skyscraper window), Heaven Can Wait (the heavenly escort), First Family, Eating Raoul, Defending Your Life, The Player, Short Cuts, To Die For and Town & Country.

Important anecdote: While adapting The Graduate Henry stuck fairly close to the original 1963 Charles Webb novel, but he invented the famous exchange when “Mr. Maguire,” a 40ish businessman, offers Dustin Hoffman‘s Benjamin Braddock some career advice.

Maguire: “I just want to say one word to you…one word.”
Braddock: “Yes sir.”
Maguire: “Are you listening?”
Braddock: “Yes, I am.”
Maguire: “Plastics.”
Braddock: (beat, beat) “Exactly how do you mean?”
Maguire: “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”
Braddock: “Yes, I will.”
Maguire: “Enough said. That’s a deal.”

From Variety‘s Rick Schultz: “In a 1997 interview with National Public Radio, Henry said he almost dropped the line, thinking it was ‘a sort of ’50s society way of complaining about falseness.’ But it resonated with younger audiences and helped turn the film into a classic.”

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This morning “handsome solo” posted a hard–nosed comment about Quentin Tarantino‘s “beautiful angel” depiction of Sharon Tate in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. He was promptly derided as a “misogynistic troll” for, as one commenter claimed, saying that in the actual world Tate “had it coming because she was no saint.”

Solo (who has since deleted his post) didn’t say or mean that. Allow me to elaborate.

Solo’s basic assessment is correct. Tarantino created a Sharon Tate lacking in any recognizably adult specifics, certainly in any kind of closely observed, semi-complex fashion. She’s more of an alpha vibe than a person. All she does in the film, really, is flash that radiant smile and listen to Paul Revere and the Raiders and bop around and have a good time.

There’s not even an attempt at some kind of interesting definition or shading in QT’s Tate dialogue. No texture, no hints, no unspoken conveyances…nothing. Remove the tragic fate aspect (which we all supply on our own, of course, except for those Millennial and GenZ dingbats I heard about who reportedly didn’t get the ending) and she’s basically presented as a glowing cypher in go-go boots.

Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski sometime in late ’68 or early ’69.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was never intended to be any kind of portrait of Tate and Polanski — it’s a portrait of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. But you know what? That N.Y. Times stringer who challenged Tarantino at the Cannes Film Festival press conference wasn’t just whistling dixie.

Are you telling me that if, say, Eric Roth, Robert Towne, Diablo Cody, Paul Schrader, William Goldman, Susannah Grant, Jay Presson Allen, Tom Stoppard, Paddy Chayefsky, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Leigh Brackett, Greta Gerwig, James L. Brooks or the Lawrence Kasdan of the ’80s and ’90s had written their own versions of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (i.e., sticking to the basic bones but adding embroidery here and there) that they would have written Tate as a rich hippie-chick Barbie doll?

Sharon Tate was in fact a driven woman with a presumably complex inner life. She was certainly more than just a blissed-out ditzoid. She was a limited (you could say mediocre) actress in a somewhat turbulent marriage. She and Roman Polanski had their infidelities. Hair stylist Jay Sebring was in love with Tate. He knew Polanski was to some extent an aloof and selfish husband, more tethered to his work than to Sharon, and so Sebring was just waiting for an opportunity to move in.

Tarantino isn’t ignorant of Tate’s personality and history and ups and downs, but he certainly chose to ignore them. All you get from the film is that QT wanted to be as kind and cherishing and chivalrous as possible to poor Sharon, considering what actually happened to her.

That said, saving her life (and that of Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent) at the very end is quite welcome and in fact constitutes one of the happiest endings ever delivered by a mainstream, big-budget film in this century. This is the spark of my initial affection for Once after catching it in Cannes, and partly why I’m still a fan.

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