slider

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.”

Read more

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.

Read more

A film restoration guy swears that a print of Psycho with Saul Bass‘s main title section in color (“emerald green lines, much like North by Northwest“) was screened in England and reviewed by a major London newspaper (possibly the London Times). The same version was apparently viewed by former Los Angeles County Museum curator Ron Haver, having received a 35mm Psycho print from Alfred Hitchcock for a LACMA retrospective back in the ’70s.

I know what I’m about to say is heresy, but I wouldn’t mind watching a colorized Psycho as…well, as an exercise in perversity. If someone could make it look like real 1960s color, I mean, as opposed to what these colorized clips offer. The tones look weak and pastel-ish, like tinted lobby cards from the ’50s. The bathroom closeups of Janet Leigh‘s eye and skin tone look completely wrong. Anthony Perkins in the blanket looks okay, but it still doesn’t look like actual color cinematography.

This is an old revisionist routine, but just for the record I thought I’d re-award some of the 1990 Oscars (i.e., the winners of the 63rd Academy Awards that aired on 2.13.91 or 29 damn years ago).

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Annette Bening has said she’ll never have “work” done, but she looked so different last night during her Golden Globes appearance that my first thought was “hmmm, did she capitulate?” She looked radiant. Blonde, swept-back hair. A bit more slender than before. Just-right eye makeup. Definitely an upgrade of some kind or another. Getting a touch-up these days is nothing — it’s like coloring your hair or getting a facial. All to say that if Bening did go undergo a procedure, it’s fine.

Bob Dylan‘s changeover from acoustic folk to electric rock existential poetry (aka “electric Dylan controversy“) wasn’t just a major creative growth move on his part — it also wound up galvanizing rock music across the industry, inspiring the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Byrds and many other to chime in with complex, socially relevant lyrics and musical attitudes. The shift began at the Newport Folk Festival in July ’65 (when Dylan was 24) and peaked with the infamous English booing tours (“Judas!”) of ’65 and ’66.

This chapter was totally covered in Martin Scorsese‘s Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, of course, but now James Mangold (Ford Ferrari, Walk The Line) is planning to direct the loosely-titled Going Electric, a Fox Searchlight film about this transitional period with none other than Timothee Chalamet as Dylan. Jay Cocks has written the screenplay; Dylan is actually exec producing.

I’d feel pretty good about this if I was Dylan, who believe it or not is around 14 months from hitting the big eight-oh. Chalamet is better looking than Dylan ever was, can act circles, can sing and probably plays guitar, and he’ll look the part when he grows out his Bringing It All Back Home Jewfro.

Better Chalamet, certainly, than Hayden Christensen, who played the Dylanesque “Billy Quinn” in George Hickenlooper‘s Factory Girl.

The Going Electric story was broken by Deadline‘s Mike Fleming.

Read more

Robert Altman-wise, I could watch California Split and The Long Goodbye once a year for the rest of my life. Ditto M.A.S.H., The Player, Thieves Like Us, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and A Wedding. But I’ll probably never watch Popeye ever again. It’s been almost four decades since I saw it (once) but that’s enough.

I have this recollection of Giuseppe Rotunno‘s cinematography being lazy as fuck — just watching the action from a distance, way too reliant on zoomed-in wide and medium shots. Harry Nilsson‘s musical score was kind of a flatliner, no? Ditto Jules Pfeiffer‘s screenplay. I always heard that Popeye was a big cocaine movie, and that this was part of the problem. Legend has it that Robin Williams didn’t get along with Altman. It wasn’t a financial bust — having cost $22 or so million, it made $60 million worldwide. But an impression lingers that it was basically a misconceived failure because of an ill-suited director.

Read more

Last night Team Elsewhere (Tatyana and myself) attended another great pre-Golden Globes party, a Lionsgate bash with Knives Out and Bombshell luminaries (Charlize Theron, HE’s own Rian Johnson, Toni Collette (particularly great in Netflix’s Unbelievable), Chris Evans, a less-than-fully-recognizable Ana de Armas) in attendance, and once again orchestrated by the great and garrulous and huggy-touchy Colleen Camp.

Plus Stellan Skarsgard, Billy Zane and some choice hotshot journos (Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, N.Y. Times “Caroetbagger” Kyle Buchanan, Daily Mail‘s Baz Bamigboye, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman, Variety‘s Jazz Tangcay, Awards Daily TV and movie guy Clarence Moye).

It was cacophonous and a bit crowded but curiously relaxing…just a perfect, honeyed, shelter-from-the-storm vibe up and down…all tony amber and candles and low-light shadow and hors d’oeuvres every which way. Okay, the music was a bit loud.

Prior to the event we chilled with Phillip Noyce and Vuyo Dasi at the San Vicente Bungalows bar — smallish, quiet, darkly lighted, intimate, low-ceilinged. We were greeted by maitre’d Dimitri Dimitrov (formerly of the Sunset Tower bar-restaurant).

BTW: This being January 2020 and all, Tatyana and I have long since forgotten about that bizarre July 2017 episode when a Chateau gatekeeper wouldn’t allow us to visit on our own steam, possibly because they didn’t like the cut of my white pants.

Read more

If you could easily move into any home or apartment in which a movie character resides, what would you select? A recent Facebook thread asked this question, and believe it or not the author said he’d like to live in Scotty Ferguson‘s Vertigo apartment in San Francisco.

The guy has his pick of any residence in the movie world, including Robert Downey, Jr.‘s houseboat in Zodiac, the gaudy Tony Montana mansion in Scarface, Robert De Niro‘s seaside home in Heat, Joe Starrett‘s cabin in Shane and Xanadu in Citizen Kane, and he chooses an unexceptional and rather pokey one-bedroom apartment at 900 Lombard (at Jones)?

Jesus, why not choose Popeye Doyle’s Brooklyn one-bedroom rathole in The French Connection? Or Jeff Lebowski‘s Venice apartment?

Hollywood Elsewhere is torn between (a) Kristen Stewart‘s small Paris apartment in Personal Shopper, (b) the mountainside John Robie home in To Catch A Thief (which Sasha Stone and I actually visited in 2011), (c) the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired VanDamm home in North by Northwest, and (d) Lionel Barrymore‘s ramshackle hotel in Key Largo.

No, I wouldn’t like to live in that 19th Century Knives Out mansion. I love that cozy third-floor area where Chris Plummer wrote and slept, but otherwise it’s too big, too cavernous, too costly to heat.

One of the most deeply rooted images of my entire filmgoing life. If I could find a nice impressionist rendering on canvas I’d hang it on my living-room wall.

Name some noteworthy films that started out as one thing, and ended up as another.

All serious-minded films are designed and executed with a certain moralistic or thematic or sensationalist intention. They’re made to stir emotions. Or merely excite or amuse. Or cast light upon certain aspects of the culture. Or make some kind of political point…whatever. But every so often the intended doesn’t happen when the film plays before paying audiences and it becomes something that the filmmakers never expected.

This is what happened to Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63). The below excerpt from a 2003 conversation with Hud screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. and Michigan Quarterly Review‘s William Baer explains the basics.

The most obvious kind of “wait, what happened?” is when a film is made as a straightforward drama or melodrama, only to “land’ as an unintentional comedy because of ineptitude or an overload of attitude or something. Another is when a film is ostensibly made as some kind of half-crude exploitation but is nonetheless received as a sophisticated genre commentary in “quotes” (Mark Lester‘s Truck Stop Women), or something along these lines.

BAER: “Well, Hud was certainly a unique picture in many ways, but, most significantly, it dared to portray a central character who was a pure bastard, and who remained totally unredeemed and unrepentant at the end of the picture.”

RAVETCH: “Yes, we sensed a change in American society back then. We felt that the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, and indulgence, and greed. Which, of course, fully blossomed in the ’80s and ’90s. So we made Hud a greedy, self-absorbed man, who ruthlessly strives for things, and gains a lot materially, but really loses everything that’s important. But he doesn’t care. He’s still unrepentant.

FRANK: “In our society, there’s always been a fascination with the ‘charming’ villain, and we wanted to say that if something’s corrupt, it’s still corrupt, no matter how charming it might seem. Even if it’s Paul Newman with his beautiful blue eyes. But things didn’t work out like we planned.

BAER: “It actually backfired.”

RAVETCH: “Yes, it did, and it was a terrible shock to all of us. Here’s a man who tries to rape his housekeeper, who wants to sell poisoned cattle to his neighbors, and who stops at nothing to take control of his father’s property. And all the time, he’s completely unrepentant. Then, at the first screenings, the preview cards asked the audiences, ‘Which character did you most admire?’ and many of them answered ‘Hud.’ We were completely astonished. Obviously, audiences loved Hud, and it sent us into a tailspin. The whole point of all our work on that picture was apparently undone because Paul was so charismatic.

Read more

Click here to jump past HE Sink-In

Give Shia LaBeouf‘s Honey Boy an A for honesty, and an extra A for soul-baring. It warrants respect and admiration — for LaBeouf’s screenplay and lead performance (playing his own abusive dad), for the performances of Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges who play LeBeouf (called Otis Lort) at ages 12 and 22, respectively, and for the efforts of Israeli director Alma Har’el.

Since opening on 11.8, Honey Boy has been critically praised (Rotten Tomatoes 94%) and polled well with Joe and Jane Popcorn (91% on RT, an IMDB rating of 7.5.)

Honey Boy is a straight-up,  take-it-or-leave-it thing — half  cinematic therapy (LaBeouf wrote it in rehab) and half sordid family saga. It tells the truth about what Shia endured as a kid and what he’s grappling with now as a 33 year-old. And it’s no stroll in the park. But it doesn’t sidestep or shilly shally. It’s trustworthy.

SPECIAL HE ADVERTORIAL:

We’ve all come to know the LaBeouf saga over the last 13 or so years, and how reactive and turbulent and issue-laden it’s been all along. He became a successful child actor at age 9 or thereabouts (around ’95) and then a 21 year-old marquee name with his lead performance in Disturbia and then, starting in ’08 or thereabouts, an obviously troubled hotshot with standout performances in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (’10), Lawless and The Company You Keep (’12), Nymphomaniac (’13), Fury (’14), American Honey (’16), Borg vs McEnroe (’17) and The Peanut Butter Falcon (’19).

Not to mention the arrests, altercations, conflicts, provocations. Over the last decade LaBeouf has become far better known for his issues than his talent or achievements.  By the term “issues” I’m alluding to what some have perceived as obnoxious, self-regarding behavior.  But that’s a fair call, LaBeouf has said.

“I don’t think you were wrong for thinking I was a dick,” he told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg a while back. Feinberg had confessed to feeling guilty for making dismissive assumptions about him in recent years as he repeatedly wound up in the headlines for all of the wrong reasons. “I think context is really important,” LaBeouf explained. “And I think what Honey Boy does is contextualize who I was publicly, and kind of plays on it. And I’m grateful it’s effective.”

Read more