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If you want a short, flavorful, totally on-the-money taste of what watching certain portions of David Crosby: Remember My Name may (or may not) feel like, please watch the below video. Produced by Rolling Stone and titled “Ask Croz,” it’s just four minutes and 24 seconds of Crosby answering fan questions. What makes it whoa-level is the naked, quietly scalding, take-it-or-leave-it honesty, which is almost always abundant from Crosby but in this instance is also present in the questions.

Like a 16 year-old girl asking about her fear of death and existential gloom. Or a person worrying about a family member, incarcerated on a “bullshit” drug charge, being able to handle prison life. Or a guy who’s angry about the fact that when he and a musician friend are competing for the same girl “she always goes home with him.” Or a general question about fundamental values and what it all feels like to have death patiently waiting on your doorstep.

This warts-and-all candor is also what makes A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe’s documentary (Sony Pictures Classics, opening today) such a profoundly rich and transcendent film.

I’ve said this over and over but it really is the shit, this film. A lion-in-winter reflection piece…hugely emotional, meditative…about the tough stuff and the hard rain, about hurt and addiction and rage and all but destroying your life, and then coming back semi-clean and semi-restored, but without any sentimentality or gooey bullshit. An old guy admitting to each and every failing of his life without the slightest attempt to rationalize or minimize. Straight, no chaser. And hugely cleansing for that.

This movie, I swear, delivers one of the best contact highs I’ve ever experienced. By the end it makes you feel lighter, less weighed down, even if you’re 18 or 37 or whatever. We all have stuff churning inside, and we all need catharsis. It’s very rare when a film offers you this for the mere price of admission.

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So the catty-watties in Tom Hooper‘s Cats (Universal, 12.20) are their own species — cat-human hybrids that don’t much resemble their cousins who cavorted in the popular stage show. Small and lithe with cat ears and whiskers and tails, but darting around on their hind legs and dressed in leotards. And no claws. More of a mocap than a costume-and-makeup thang.

Flatline reaction to Francesca Hayward‘s Victoria, I’m afraid, and a mild shrug for Taylor Swift‘s Bombalurina and Idris Elba‘s Macavity. If anyone owns it, it’s Jennifer Hudson, I suppose. I immediately recognized Judi Dench (Old Deuteronomy) and Ian McKellen (Gus the Theatre Cat). I wish I was allowed to say that James Corden and Rebel Wilson play fat cats, but that era has passed, I’m afraid. Their characters are named Bustopher Jones and Jennyanydots.

The title of this post was stolen from a 7.18 trailer review riff by N.Y. Times contributor Bruce Fretts.

Any thoughts you may have had about Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinki‘s Top Gun: Maverick possibly dealing subtle cards and not necessarily using sledgehammer tactics are now…well, let’s just say that hopes along those lines are temporarily dashed. If this just-released teaser is any kind of indication, I mean.

San Diego-based fighter pilots!….the aura of studly military rock stars, coping with buried anger and the burden of expectations, brusque and strapping and throwing their heads back in laughter while playing piano in a honky tonk. (Like Miles Teller‘s son of Goose Bradshaw character does in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clip.) And the women who both love and compete with them. With the big climactic test of skill and character looming. And so on.

I haven’t read the script (co-authored by Peter Craig, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie and Eric Warren Singer) but the tip-off is a Wikipedia description of Jennifer Connelly‘s character — “a single mother running a bar near the Naval base.”

A single mother! Running a bar! Who dispenses sage advice while mixing a killer Mojito! With, I’m guessing, a possible age-appropriate interest in Tom Cruise‘s Maverick, who’s now a creased and weathered Naval flight instructor. And perhaps, in keeping with the theme of launching the new generation, with an aspiring fighter-jock daughter? Or am I pushing too far?

I want a scene in which Cruise tells Connelly that Kelly McGillis‘ Charlie Blackwood left him for another woman, and then (beat, beat) Connelly tells Cruise, “Yeah, I know…it was me.” Or: “I’m sorry, that’s tough. (beat) She left me too.”

Ed Harris to Cruise: “Captain…what is that?” Jon Hamm playing some kind of tough nut. And Val Kilmer back for seconds. All the young dudes of the original Top Gun are now in their late 50s and early ’60s.

Best shot in the trailer: Crew-cutted Cruise riding a motorcycle without a helmet, bathed in magic-hour amber, loving the wind and grinning the grin.

Cruise’s six career-best roles (in this order): (1) Vincent the assassin in Collateral, (2) the titular Jerry Maguire, (3) Joel Goodson, the U-boat commander of Highland Park, (4) Charlie Babbitt in Rain Man, (5) Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July, and (6) Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia. Honorable Mention: Mitch McDeere in The Firm.

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Scarlet Johansson doesn’t make perfect career decisions (who does?) and sometimes wavers a bit (like all of us), but for my money she has a pair of cast-iron cojones. Because she’s stood up to the wokester thugs by going her own way on Woody Allen and by recently repeating her view that political correctness can get (and in fact has gotten) in the way of creative freedom.

“I recognize that in reality, there is a widespread discrepancy amongst my industry that favors Caucasian, cisgendered actors and that not every actor has been given the same opportunities that I have been privileged to,” Johnasson said in a statement after her views were misrepresented, she claimed, in an interview with As If magazine.

In the As If piece, Johansson said that she continues “to support, and always have, diversity in every industry and will continue to fight for projects where everyone is included. [But] as an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job. I feel like it’s a trend in my business and it needs to happen for various social reasons, yet there are times it does get uncomfortable when it affects the art because I feel art should be free of restrictions.”

In a 7.3 HE piece called “Ciswashing” I assessed the criticism that Johansson was getting at the time for wanting to play real-life trans massage parlor owner Dante “Tex” Gill in Rub & Tug, a crime drama that would have been directed by Ghost in the Shell helmer Rupert Sanders.

“The trans-twitter community apparently feels that only a real-deal trans actor should play Gill (who transitioned from being a woman to a man),” I wrote. “They presumably regard Johansson’s casting in the same light that Native Americans probably saw the casting of Henry Brandon as ‘Scar’, the Comanche villian in John Ford‘s The Searchers (’56).

“Let’s back up and consider how this could have been avoided. Actors in top-tier Hollywood films are typically cast by producers and directors with two goals in mind — (a) find the most gifted actor to play a given role for the benefit of the film, and (b) preferably an actor with name recognition among the hoi polloi, in order to help boost ticket sales. So in a perfect world Johansson would have declined and Sanders would’ve found a gifted trans actor instead…fine. But who would that be?

Posted last year by HE commenter “Adam”: “This is just the latest outrage from ScarJo. She played an alien in Under the Skin for crying out loud when every single person knows full well she’s from Earth. And then there was The Other Boleyn Girl nonsense in which we were expected to believe she was British royalty! I mean, you can’t make this stuff up! And don’t get me started on her Black Widow character…I’ve seen her try martial arts in real life and it’s all totally fake — she can’t fight for shit. So I’m glad someone finally called her out for the fraud she is.”

Here‘s what Deadline‘s Mike Fleming and Peter Bart had to say about p.c. Stalinists a la Donald Sutherland in the final shot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Which Mike Pence realizes, of course. So he stands there with his arms crossed arms and that frosty look on his face…okay, I’ve seen enough, later. And without decent facilities those poor guys are filthy and sleeping on cement.

…I don’t want to be right.

A friend insists that yesterday’s post about Little Women and other fall hotties (“Gerwig’s Little Women Avoiding Festival Circuit?”) is “hogwash.” If he’s referring to the Little Women part, he needs to complain to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson and not me.

“I know several titles locked for Telluride,” he says, “and I don’t think you mention any of them, not even the right Netflix one. Actually there may be two.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said. “You’re telling me that none of the hotties I listed are going to Telluride as far as you know?”

I don’t care what this guy is saying — at least two or three of the films I mentioned (Ed Norton‘s Motherless Brooklyn, Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced, Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet, Dee Rees‘ The Last Thing He Wanted, Steven Soderbergh‘s The Laundromat, Gavin O’Connor‘s Torrance, Roger Michell‘s Blackbird, Rupert Goold‘s Judy, Tom Harper‘s The Aeronauts) have to be Telluride-bound…c’mon.

He also commented about Jeff Sneider‘s prediction tweet about Melina Matsoukas‘ Queen & Slim and Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy being possible Best Picture favorites, along with my inference that admirers of these films will represent “an anti-Green Book, authentic-black-experience pushback vote.”

“The Academy is not looking to ‘make up’ for Green Book,” he says. “They strongly endorsed it and still do. Queen & Slim sounds interesting but it’s about a black couple (played by Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) killing a white policeman and going on the lam. Universal plans to [try to] cover that up largely by selling it as a love story.”

“Warner Bros. is considering Just Mercy for an awards run but it is aimed more directly at MLK weekend. WB has so many possibilities, most notably Joker, so we’ll see. Like Green Book it’s an inspiring true story.”

Just Mercy is a variation on Call Northside 777** — a “get a convict out of jail because he’s innocent” drama. The director is Destin Daniel Cretton; the costars are Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Eva Ansley.

** Yeah, I know — Call Northside 777 who? It’s a 1948 James Stewart docudrama, based on a true story about a Chicago reporter who got an innocent guy out of jail.

Unusual Dispensation: As the following is one of my favorite HE Plus essays over the last few months, I’m offering it for free as a special HE promotion. Feel free to click through:

I became an amateur stage actor between ’75 and ’76. I was living in Westport, Connecticut. My big move to Manhattan was about a year and a half off. The usual nocturnal distractions prevailed, of course — carousing, partying, movies. I also wrote program notes for the Westport Country Playhouse Cinema. And I acted in front of paying audiences. First I played the timid “Dr. Spivey” in a Stamford Community Playhouse production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which I mentioned to Ken Kesey when I interviewed him in Park City in ’98 or thereabouts), and then a macho backwoods type named “Marvin Hudgens” in a Westport Playhouse production of “Dark of the Moon.”

Click through to full story on HE-plus]

It seems logical, at least from a dramatic standpoint, that David Fincher‘s Mank, a forthcoming Netflix feature about the life and times of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, would portray Kane director, producer and star Orson Welles in a less than flattering light.

The whole Welles-vs-Mankiewicz mishegoss has been the subject of fierce debate for nearly 50 years, or since the 1971 publication of Pauline Kael’s disputed essay that claimed Kane was almost entirely written by Mankiewicz. Where’s the drama if the third act isn’t about Welles trying to buy Mankiewicz off or otherwise elbow him aside?

Calling Joseph McBride and other Welles biographers and admirers! To arms! To arms! Pass out the muskets and gunpowder!

I have to be honest and say I’m not all that keen on watching Gary Oldman play Mankiewicz. Oldman is a little too old for one thing (61) — a little too weathered and blinkered. Born in 1897, Mankiewicz worked on Kane when he was a relatively spry 43 and 44, and who enjoyed his main Hollywood heyday during his 30s and 40s. Mank died of drink at age 55, in 1953.

You know who should play Herman Mankiewicz? Bill Hader or somebody in that vein. A clever 40something or nudging-40 type with a twinkle in his eye. Mankiewicz was chubby, yes, but not overly so. A thin guy could pull if off.

Wiki excerpt #1 — Mank and The Wizard of Oz: “In February 1938, he was assigned as the first of ten screenwriters to work on The Wizard of Oz. Three days after he started writing he handed in a seventeen-page treatment of what was later known as ‘the Kansas sequence’. While Baum devoted less than a thousand words in his book to Kansas, Mankiewicz almost balanced the attention on Kansas to the section about Oz. He felt it was necessary to have the audience relate to Dorothy in a real world before transporting her to a magic one. By the end of the week he had finished writing fifty-six pages of the script and included instructions to film the scenes in Kansas in black and white. His goal, according to film historian Aljean Harmetz, was to “capture in pictures what Baum had captured in words — the grey lifelessness of Kansas contrasted with the visual richness of Oz.” He was not credited for his work on the film.

Wiki excerpt #2: “Mankiewicz was an alcoholic. He once famously reassured his hostess at a formal dinner, after he had vomited on her white tablecloth, not to be concerned because ‘the white wine came up with the fish.’ He died March 5, 1953, of uremic poisoning, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.”

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A riff about King of Kings from yesterday’s Rip Torn comment thread:

What a strange, compromised in-betweener King of Kings is. Composed according to the rules of a costly, conservative, big-studio Biblical epic (i.e., even the wandering poor wearing studio-finessed wardrobes with perfect hair stylings) but at the same time political-minded and eschewing the usual religious sentiment (except towards the end). It seems to be straining to become something less conventional but without the focus and nerve to really push into that.

Director Nicholas Ray was quite the muscular auteur in the ‘40s and ‘50s, but he was a director-for-hire here. And yet a faint hint of personality emerged in one respect. Ray seemed to regard Jeffrey Hunter’s Jesus as a vague relation of James Dean’s Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. How else to interpret Hunter’s red shepherd cloak + white undergarment matching Dean’s famous red jacket + white T-shirt outfit? But Ray’s bold power days were behind him. King of Kings was a job — he was pocketing a paycheck. You can almost sense a tone of resignation.

Ray fell apart two years later during the making of 55 Days at Peking (’63). Wiki excerpt: “Ray was a tortured individual at the time of the production of 55 Days at Peking. Paid a very high salary by producer Samuel Bronston to direct 55 Days, Ray had an inkling that taking on the project — a massive epic — would mean the end of him and that he would never direct another film again. Ray’s premonition proved correct when he collapsed on set halfway through shooting. Unable to resume working (the film was finished by Andrew Marton and Guy Green), he never received another directorial assignment.”

Young Rip Torn (29 during filming) gave a thoroughly uncharacteristic performance as Judas Iscariot, solemnly invested in playing a devoted disciple according to the accepted mode of earnest, second-banana acting in 1961. As Barabbas Harry Guardino was in his own spear-and-sandal movie, playing a Che Guevara-like mad man insurrectionist, turning on the Italian machismo spigot and using raw bleating lung power to rail against the Roman oppressors.

The only elements that hold King of Kings together are Miklos Rosza’s reach-for-the-heavens score, Ron Randell’s crisp, disciplined performance as a skeptical but compassionate Roman Centurion, and Hunter’s Nazarene — a performance that doesn’t attempt much in the film’s early stages (underwritten, going through the motions) but gradually takes hold during the second half.

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Starting at 5:08: “I can sincerely tell you that I tried to get out of [Jaws]. Because I had done a film in Canada called The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. And I turned Steven [Spielberg] down. And he said ‘why?’ I said ‘because this is going to be a bitch to shoot, and I’m really lazy.’ And then I saw Duddy Kravitz. For the first time. And I said to myself, ‘If somehow this film is sold in the United States, I will never work again.’ I had to get that [film] behind me.

“So I just did what every normal human would do. I begged for the [Jaws] part. On my knees, And then Steven gave it to me. [To do that Steven] had to deal-break another actor out of the film. I felt like shit. I got the role and did it as well as I could, and that made me ‘a something.’ I wasn’t a star, but I wasn’t not a star.”

Why doesn’t Dreyfuss talk about Stakeout? Or American Graffiti?

What’s Daughter of the Wolf?

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Until today I hadn’t noticed that John Turturro’s remake of Bertrand Blier‘s Going Places (’74) and the Big Lebowski sequel (aka The Jesus Rolls) are one and the same. Screen Media will distribute Turturro’s three-year-old film next year. Great title, but I’ve never understood how a flick about an older trio of “sexually depraved misfits” (played by Turturro, Bobby Cannavale and Audrey Tautou) could work. The French-made original was about reckless youth frolicking in counter-culture upheaval — a couple of amoral hooligans (Gerard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere) and the various adventures that befall them. Substitute these guys with 40something actors in the 21st Century and it’s…I don’t know what but on some level it feels out of time. Especially with today’s #MeToo scrutiny. Pic costars Pete Davidson, Jon Hamm. Susan Sarandon (in the Jeanne Moreau role) and Sonia Braga.

One of the ways that rock stars and movie stars reside in the same general orbit is that they have a solemn responsibility to not suddenly look “older” in any kind of “wait a minute, what happened?” head-turning way. It’s part of the basic contract. They can gradually and gracefully age but no sudden hair loss. That’s an easily maintainable thing. They have to do a better job of coping with the ravages of time than Average Joes, and that means no weird hair dyes or expanding neck wattles.

Mick Jagger has always understood this. Cary Grant set the standard 60 years ago when he played a Madison Avenue ad man at age 54 while looking 45 or even a tad younger. A year earlier Orson Welles defined the other side of the scale by playing Det. Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil when he was only 42 years old, and yet looking like a dessicated wreck of at least 60 if not 65 years. This, trust me, was one of the reasons that North by Northwest made five times more dough than Touch of Evil. You can argue and put me down, but people prefer examples of defying the inevitable rather than submitting to it.