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Director Joel Schumacher, who used to pick up the phone when I called during the ’90s, has been interviewed by Vulture‘s Andrew Goldman. In the second paragraph before the q & a portion begins, Goldman mentions six Schumacher films of varying quality — St. Elmo’s Fire, Flatliners, Phone Booth, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, The Lost Boys. But not, for some inexplicable reason, the one incontestably good, verging on great Schumacher film of his whole career — i.e., Falling Down.

Early on Schumacher mentions that he and Woody Allen are longtime friends, which allows Goldman to ask “what are your thoughts about what’s happened to Woody?”

Schumacher’s reply: “I saw the interview with Dylan. She believes it happened. Her brother certainly believes it. Mia absolutely believes it. And I’m not saying it happened. I’m just saying they believe it happened. But she was so young at the time that I don’t know.”

Correction: Dylan was seven at the time, yes, but her brother Satchel (the one who looks like the son of Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra and is now known as Ronan Farrow), was even younger, as in four and a half. I’m sorry but implying that a boy of that age was alert and catching everything that was going on in the Farrow Bridgewater abode on 8.4.92 strains credulity. Sure, Ronan “believes it” now but that’s not exactly a compelling fact, given what he was able to know at the time or is now inclined to believe, especially given his journalistic brand.

But Dylan’s older brother Moses, who was 14 at the time and therefore more intellectually developed, was also present on that fateful day and emphatically doesn’t believe it, and in fact has offered proof as well as much circumstantial doubt to the contrary.

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Lonely, depressed, alone, miserable, haunted…”life is a comedy.” Obviously a tour de force performance from Joaquin Phoenix — instant Best Actor status. The film is basically saying that the cruel world we live in creates the villains that it deserves. And you can’t avoid thinking of the perpetrators of recent mass shootings, and about mental illness and how society so often just looks the other way.

And how ironic is it, by the way, to have Robert De Niro playing a Jerry Langford-like talk host (the character played by Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy), and this time opposite someone who could almost a kindred spirit of Rupert Pupkin, not to mention Travis Bickle.

The only stumbling block, for me, is that Joker is an origin story about a famous super-villain, and yet portrayed by a guy in his mid 40s — and who easily looks 50 if a day. Who figures out their role in life at the half-century mark? What was happening during the previous 40-odd years? Was he gestating, marinating?

Previously: “Last night I read a 2018 draft of Todd Phillips‘ Joker, written by Phillips and Scott Silver. It’s Scorsese-ish, all right — set in 1981 Gotham, tingling with echoes of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy with a little touch of Death Wish. The basic philosophy is ‘the world’s a venal, plundering place so who can blame Joaquin Pheonix for becoming a killer clown?’ It’s a stand-alone but at the same time it definitely feeds into the Batman legend.”

Focus Features has announced that Todd Haynes‘ Dark Waters, a fact-based attorney-vs.-polluters drama in the vein of Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, will open on 11.22.19.

November 22nd isn’t too far down the road. In a perfect world it would screen at Telluride this weekend. If they’ve got the goods, the word-of-mouth will follow.

The tale of Rob Bilott vs. Dupont is reported in Nathaniel Rich’s N.Y. Times Magazine story, which appeared on 1.6.16.

The screenplay is by Matthew Carnahan and Mario Correra, and stars Mark Ruffalo (as Bilott), Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper and Bill Pullman.

When The Wild Bunch opened it was regarded as the last revisionist wheeze of a genre that had peaked in the ’50s and was surely on its last legs. It was also seen, disparagingly, as a kind of gimmick film that used ultra-violence and slow-mo death ballets to goose the formula. Now it’s regarded as one of the best traditional, right-down-the-middle westerns ever made. This kind of writing, acting and pacing will never return or be reborn. Lightning in a bottle.

“What Citizen Kane was to movie lovers in 1941, The Wild Bunch was to cineastes in 1969,” Michael Sragow wrote, adding that Peckinpah had “produced an American movie that equals or surpasses the best of Kurosawa: the Gotterdammerung of Westerns”.

“After a reporter from the Reader’s Digest got up to ask ‘Why was this film even made? I stood up and called it a masterpiece; I felt, then and now, that The Wild Bunch is one of the great defining moments of modern movies.” — from 9.29.02 article by Roger Ebert.

Vincent Canby on William Holden‘s performance as Pike Bishop, from 6.26.69 N.Y. Times review: “After years of giving bored performances in boring movies, Holden comes back gallantly in The Wild Bunch. He looks older and tired, but he has style, both as a man and as a movie character who persists in doing what he’s always done, not because he really wants the money but because there’s simply nothing else to do.”

Edmond O’Brien: “They? Why they is the plain and fancy ‘they’…that’s who they is. Caught ya, didn’t they? Tied a tin can to your tails. Led you in and waltzed you out again. Oh, my, what a bunch! Big tough ones, eh? Here you are with a handful of holes, a thumb up your ass and big grin to pass the time of day with.”

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Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman will open theatrically on Friday, November 1st, and will remain in whatever theatres it will occupy, uncompromised by Netflix streaming, for four weekends — 11.1 to 11.3, 11.8 to 11.10, 11.15 to 11.17 and 11.22 to 11.24. And then, on Wednesday, 11.27, the 210-minute gangster drama will begin streaming on Netflix.

The film will continue to play theatrically all through award season (“an expanded theatrical release in the U.S. and international markets” starting on 11.27), for those who feel that a theatrical immersion with popcorn is the only way to go.

The bottom line is that Netflix and the major theatrical chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) were too far apart to come to an agreement. Netflix wanted a slightly-longer-than-Roma-style release (as they’ve just announced) and the exhibs wanted a 90-day exclusivity without concurrent streaming.

It needs to be fully understood that the exhibs were being flat-out unrealistic. They should have admitted to Netflix, themselves and God Almighty that almost ALL movies have shot their wad after six weeks (42 days), and that 45 days of theatrical exclusivity would suffice. 90 days is ridiculous, and they knew it.

All the biggies are getting into streaming. The world is changing. You can’t go home again. Suck it up, do your best and deal with things as they actually are (as opposed to how you’d like them to be).

In Los Angeles, The Irishman will presumably play theatrically in Landmark Cinemas, possibly the downtown Alamo Drafthouse and possibly at the American Cinematheque, but — this is important — Netflix REALLY needs The Irishman to play in the Pacific Theatres-owned Arclight locations. Not being in the Hollywood, Santa Monica and Sherman Oaks Arclight would be a very bad thing, public profile- and Academy voter-wise.

Who knows where The Irishman will play in the New York City area, but probably The Quad, Alamo Drafthouse, BAM Cinema, City Cinemas, etc.

From Anne Thompson’s Indiewire report: “Rooting for Netflix from the sidelines were the studios: At this point, almost all of them are following Netflix headlong into the streaming world and they are desperate for a middleman like Netflix to use its first-mover advantage to break this exhibition logjam.

“Their filmmakers want theaters, Oscar voters want theaters, and if theaters refuse to budge as the world changes, the logic goes, they risk being left in the rearview.

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A little less than five years ago, or on 7.29.14, Jeffrey Cavanaugh posted an essay that fanned the flames of nascent Elizabeth Warren enthusiasm. Titled “Elizabeth Warren’s 11 Commandments,” the subhead was “Everybody’s eyes are on Hillary Clinton, but Elizabeth Warren might be the one Democrats should be watching if a golden calf is what they hope to avoid.”

In Cavanaugh’s prophetic calculus Clinton was the golden calf — “the abandonment of the true faith and the elevation of materialist safety” — and indeed she proved to be the terrible dead weight that sank the Democratic ticket and took us all straight to hell.

Posted on 6.13.18: “Every day I wake up shattered by the spreading Trump miasma, but I also curse Hillary’s name — every damn day. She did this to us. She and her centrist, Democratic-establishment cronies.”

But Warren did this to us also. In a way. Because in late ’14 and early ’15 she listened to the Democratic elders who told her not to challenge Hillary. If she’d announced anyway Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have run (he plainly stated that he got into the 2016 presidential race to carry the progressive banner because Warren had opted out) and with the excited women’s vote there was at least a decent possibility that Warren might have won the nomination. Maybe.

If Warren had run against Trump…who knows? I’m telling myself that everyone who voted for Hillary would’ve also voted for Warren, except Warren wouldn’t have had Hillary’s negatives — no secret email server issues, no fainting at any 9/11 ceremonies.

I would have been delighted to vote for Warren three years ago, without the slightest misgivings. Passion, smarts, gutsy, wonky.

I realize that African American voters probably would’ve clung to Clinton like they’re clinging right now to Joe Biden, but Warren had the heat in late ’14, ’15 and ’16…she really did. Read Cavanaugh’s piece — it’s fascinating.

Consider this chart showing Democratic candidate support among South Carolina’s African-American voters. Right now Warren is polling a weak fourth, and poor Pete Buttigieg is doing even worse. Face it — because of tepid black support Warren almost certainly won’t make it. Am I wrong?

Thanks, older voters of color, for your resistance to Warren because…what, because she’s white and position-papery and bespectacled and professorial? Thanks also for your ingrained resistance to candidates who aren’t straight. Because you’re saddling us all with a candidate who gaffes and drools. Thanks so very much.

In the eyes of Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson, Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is the frontrunner to win the Best Picture Oscar next February.

Partly because it’s a better than pretty good film in many respects, partly because it raises a glass to the “old” Hollywood of a half-century ago, partly because it delivers one of the kindest and most welcome happy endings in a dog’s age, and partly because in this era of dominating Disney-owned tentpoles it’s a stand-alone, non-franchise flick that has made a very decent pile of change so far ($123 domestic, $239M worldwide).

Maybe, but I’m of the vague suspicion that at the end of the day Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (and I recognize, of course, that it’s the height of recklessness to spitball about a film that I’ve only “seen” in terms of having read an early draft of the script) will out-point the Tarantino.

I have six reasons for thinking so.

One, because, given the skills and vision of a director who’s been at this racket since the late ’60s, it’ll probably be “better” and classier than the Tarantino (i.e., more upmarket, more assured, less Van Nuys drive-in-ish) in terms of your basic award-friendly attributes — texture, focus, story tension, dynamic performances, great scenes, technical prowess, color and pizazz.

Two, because it’s a gangster film that isn’t necessarily out to be a visceral funhouse thing a la Scarface or Goodfellas, and is instead a kind of meditative morality play. And is therefore “serious.”

Three, because the three-hour length automatically qualifies it as epic- or Godfather-scaled — i.e., the standard calling card of an “important”, weighty-ass film. On top of the fact that it took years to assemble and cost a tankload of money to produce.

Four, because it’ll be processed by every digital Tom, Dick and Harry as some kind of ultimate statement about the criminal ethos or community by the undisputed king of gangster flicks…a world-renowned maestro who’s made four great ones (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street) and will soon deliver what I have reason to suspect could be (and perhaps will be…who knows?) his crowning, crashing, balls-to-the-wall crescendo, albeit in a somewhat sadder or more forlorn emotional key.

Five, because it’ll set new standards for the invisible blending of unvarnished realism and CG wizardry as well as deliver the most visually convincing rendering of the fountain of youth in the history of motion pictures (and tell me that isn’t going to hit every SAG member where they live).

And six…well, this is a bit complicated but I’ll try to explain. The sixth reason is that even the stubborn old Academy farts are starting to realize that there’s no stopping the streaming way of things, and that save for a sprinkling of award-season films released between October and December the theatrical realm has pretty much been overrun by the mongrel hordes, and that other big streamers besides Netflix and Amazon are about to jump into the arena (Apple, Disney) and thereby make things even more exotic and challenging, and that despite whatever perceived threat element Netflix may psychologically present it deserves at this point a Movie Godz gimmee owesie because it’s the only big player (as of right now) that is standing belly to the bar and funding ars gratia artis films for their own merits (like Roma), and because long, ambitious movies Like The Irishman are at a premium right now.

There’s also a seventh factor, and a crucial one at that: Netflix has to cut some kind of deal with major exhibitors (AMC, Cineplex, Arclight, Landmark) in order to book The Irishman into theatres for at least…well, that’s the issue, isn’t it? Potential engagements of 42, 56 or 70 days (or six, eight or ten-week runs)….who knows?

AMC wants something close to a 90-day exclusive theatrical window, even though it was recently asserted by a distribution veteran that “95% of movies stop earning their keep after the 42-day mark.”

The other four Best Picture contenders of note, probably, will be Sam Mendes‘ 1917, Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story, Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women. And maybe Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell. But The Irishman will take it. That’s how I see it right now.

I didn’t attend the Cannes Film Festival midnight screening of the 4K remaster of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining. I heard something about it possibly containing that deleted hospital room scene between Shelley Duvall and Barry Nelson (which I saw 39 years ago at the Warner Bros. screening room in Manhattan), but I guess not. It was drawn from a new 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. The mastering was done at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging. The color grading was done by Janet Wilson with supervision from Kubrick’s former personal assistant Leon Vitali. The 4K disc pops on 10.1. I wouldn’t mind owning it, but the Bluray has always looked fine. I’d like to believe the 4K will deliver a bump, but I don’t think it will.

“Maybe we should all be like Venice — just ignore everything you journalists and the PC media say with regard to gender equality and Netflix and do whatever we want, and then sit back and hear how we are the best festival in the world.” — the honcho of a major, big-deal festival, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter.

Most engaged, here-and-now, top-tier film festivals are playing ball with p.c. progressive agendas these days. This means “going Sundance” however and whenever possible, which is to say (a) programming as many reasonably good films as possible that have been directed by women, POCs and gays, or otherwise programming with an eye towards p.c. quotas, (b) selecting as many “instructive” films with diverse subject matter as possible, and (c) not exactly frowning upon films directed by straight white males but being careful to limit their inclusion, depending upon the quality of their relationships with well-positioned progressives in the filmmaking and film-festival community.

It goes without saying that films directed by men with checkered or otherwise troubling pasts (Roman Polanski and Nate Parker being two) need to face the strongest possible scrutiny if not out-and-out prohibition.

Venice Film Festival topper Alberto Barbera

It also goes without saying, and certainly in the wake of an 8.23 Hollywood Reporter article titled “‘Completely Tone Deaf’: How Venice Became the Fuck-You Film Festival” by Scott Roxborough and Tatiana Siegel, that Alberto Barbera‘s Venice Film Festival has mostly been ignoring these rules, certainly in terms of quotas and flagrantly by inviting Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy to screen in competition, and by slating Parker’s American Skin in the (noncompetitive) Sconfini section.

The thrust of Roxborough and Siegel’s article is that industry progressives regard Barbera as an obstinate, convention-defying dinosaur and that in a perfect world he would be cancelled and then banished to Kathmandu for the rest of his life.

The basic impulse of many p.c. types is to silence if not exterminate all agnostics or aetheists in the conversation. Roxborough and Siegel certainly have their ears to the train tracks in this regard.

However, there’s one small consideration that Roxborough and Siegel seem to be ignoring, and that’s the remote possibility that Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy or even Parker’s American Skin might be — am I going to get in trouble for saying this? — good. As in worth seeing and discussing, at the very least. Hell, one or the other might even be very good. Or even, God forbid, excellent. That’s certainly a possibility as far as the Polanski film is concerned. Or even, to be liberal about it, in Parker’s case.

The underlying point of the Roxborough-Siegel piece is that the people they’ve interviewed — Women and Hollywood founder Melissa Silverstein, Swiss Women’s Audiovisual Network co-president Laura Kaehr, Toni Erdmann producer Janine Jackowiski plus an unnamed female filmmaker — and perhaps even Roxborough and Siegel themselves are not rigorously concerned with matters of cinematic quality.

What concerns them is progressive tokenist statements by way of festival representation, and how inviting Polanski and Parker to Venice represents a slap in the face to #MeToo and #TimesUp. Which it arguably does in a certain sense.

If I were calling the shots I would bend over backwards to include as many worthy films from women, POC or gay directors as possible, within the limits of good taste. But I would insist on not programming any film on the basis of quotas alone.

Excerpt: “In an era when Hollywood has little tolerance for talent swept up in a #MeToo scandal — as when Amazon dropped Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York amid resurfaced allegations from his daughter Dylan Farrow that he molested her when she was 7 — and even notoriously macho Cannes has made strides with female award winners, Venice stands alone as the last major un-woke film festival.”

HE response to above paragraph: Woody Allen has contended in his lawsuit that Dylan’s accusation is “baseless,” as the facts overwhelmingly indicate. Alas, Amazon execs didn’t care about the facts and history or the holes in Dylan’s account or Moses Farrow’s May 2018 essay or anything else.

Great Jackowiski quote: “You can see how in America, if you don’t play by the rules, you’re out. Here in Europe, there’s still the idea of the ‘genius’ who is allowed to do anything and should be celebrated for it.”

Transpose this quote to the early to late 1950s, and imagine a conservative-minded European producer saying it: “You can see how in America, if you had associations with communism in the 1930s, you’re out. [But] here in Europe, there’s still the idea of the ‘genius’ who is allowed to do anything and should be celebrated for it. Jules Dassin, for example, is allowed to make films in Europe despite his commie-agitator background.”

Jackowiski explains that “she isn’t calling for a ban on films from ‘problematic’ men but says ‘the issues surrounding them should be discussed, and their films should be seen in that context.'” Fair enough.

The Venice Film Festival begins on Wednesday, 8.28 — four days hence. Telluride kicks off two days later.

As recently as 1973 there was a drive-in theatre at the corner of Olympic and Bundy. Really. It was called (wait for it) the Olympic Drive-In. The street-facing side of the screen featured a mural of a 20something couple riding a wave. It opened on 4.4.45 and closed on 10.14.73.

The last time I even contemplated the memory of drive-in theatres was when I was watching that abandoned drive-in shoot-out scene in Michael Mann‘s Heat, which was 24 years ago.

The last time I saw a film at a drive-in was sometime in the early to mid ’80s. I think it was a Bob Zemeckis film (Used Cars or Romancing The Stone). Somewhere in the northern Burbank area, or in North Hollywood. My first drive-in experience was with my parents, somewhere in the vicinity of Long Beach Island on the Jersey Shore.

I’m kind of surprised to learn that 330 domestic drive-in theatres were in business as of two years ago. But only in podunk backwaters that nobody’s heard of, much less visited. Carthage, Missouri. Middle River, Maryland. Newville, Pennsylvania. Honor, Michigan. Russellville, Alabama. Sterling, Illinois. Driggs, Idaho. Lakeland, Florida.

Earlier today: I respect the affectionate feelings that some have shared about the drive-in experience, and I love the Americana aspect of drive-ins (those iconic images of ‘50s and ‘60s films playing to an army of classic Chevys, Impalas, Ford Fairlanes and T-Birds), and let’s not forget the most common aspect, which was the sexual stuff (mostly second-base and third-base action).

But if you cared even a little bit about Movie Catholic viewing standards (as in decent sound and tolerable light levels, and no headlights hitting the screen every five minutes) ) you avoided drive-ins like the plague. You went to drive-ins for the car sex, and you brought your own beer.

Wise guy to HE: “‘And let’s not forget the most common aspect, which was the sexual stuff (mostly second-base and third-base action).’ I guess this explains the affection for Elton John ballads. You really are from Connecticut, aren’t you?”

HE to Wise Guy: “What are you saying, that people actually got laid at the drive-in? Some did, I guess. But they sure kept it a secret.”

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At the tail end of an 8.21 “Notes on the Season” piece about the Emmy and Oscar races, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond mentions that The Report costar Jon Hamm “mentioned” the other night that “he believes Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell — so far not officially dated by Warner Bros — will be released in December.”

I’m hearing that it’s more than a case of Hamm believing this will happen, but that it’s pretty much locked and loaded. Warner Bros. will of course deny or sidestep until they announce down the road.

During filming pic was called The Ballad of Richard Jewell, which was also the title of Marie Brenner’s 1997 Vanity Fair article. The IMDB still refers to it as The Ballad of Richard Jewell but Wikipedia is calling it plain old Richard Jewell (which doesn’t sound good, by the way — the title needs “The Ballad of”).

From “They Done Him Wrong“, posted on 6.18.19: “The conservative-minded Eastwood is doing The Ballad of Richard Jewell, of course, because of the anti-news media narrative.

“In Jewel’s case the narrative (which unfolded over 88 days from late July to late October of ’96) was earned and then some. Several reporters and commentators (including the Atlanta Constitution‘s Kathy Scruggs and NBC’s Tom Brokaw) fingered Jewell as the likely Atlanta bomber without having all the facts.

“Jewell’s tragedy nonetheless feeds into Trump’s fake news mythology, and Eastwood’s film, you bet, will almost certainly strike a chord in America’s heartland or, you know, with the same ticket-buyers who flocked to Clint’s American Sniper and chortled along with Grant Torino‘s Walt Kowalski.”

Hammond: “Will this be another sneak attack on Oscar season from four-time winner Eastwood, a producer-director fond of quickly delivering his movies. Just last year he did that with The Mule, and in the past has had great success with such films as American Sniper and Million Dollar Baby in December. Warner Bros has an unusually strong slate of possible awards contenders already this year, but what’s one more when it comes from Eastwood? We shall see.”

A day or two after the passing of Peter Fonda author and film scholar Joe McBride posted a Facebook comment about Roger Corman‘s The Wild Angels (’66), in which Fonda played the first significant role as a motorcycle-riding guy. McBride called it a much better film than Dennis Hopper‘s Easy Rider (’69), in which Fonda played his second significant role astride a Harley.

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