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Last weekend David Fincher visited South by Southwest to talk about Love, Death and Robots (Netflix, 3.15), an “anthology animated short series made by different artists from around the world” blah blah.

I’m a stone worshipper of Mindhunter, the 2017 series that Fincher produced and partly directed (and which will re-launch with a second season later this year), and I definitely enjoyed the Fincher-produced House of Cards for the first couple of seasons. But I wouldn’t watch Love, Death and Robots with a knife at my back. Because in my mind an “anthology animation short” series is Otto Ludwig Piffle…take-it-or-leave-it esoterica for animation oddballs and navel gazers and guys who avoid sunlight and regular pedicures, and who look and behave like Pete Davidson and wear skeleton-feet sneakers.

Remember the old David Fincher? The guy who was one of the most dynamic, innovative, forward-reaching directors of narrative features (on the level of Soderbergh, Cuaron, Inarritu and Kubrick) and who was slugging it out in the boxing ring and at least trying to make stuff that really mattered? That Fincher has now retreated into a kind of Netflix cave. He hasn’t made a theatrical feature in over four years, close to five. The good but vaguely underwhelming Gone Girl (’14) was his last theatrical effort.

If you ignore Alien 3 (which I advise everyone to do), Fincher was on the feature-film stick for 19 years, and made four world-class knockouts — Seven (’95), Fight Club (’99), Zodiac (’07) and The Social Network (’10). He also made four above-average, stylistically-striking popcorn films — The Game, Panic Room, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl. I’m not calling The Curious Case of Benjamin Button a stinker, but I’ll never, ever watch it again.

Why is Fincher more or less hiding in his little Netflix cave? He’s following his heart and his muse, and I’m sure that’s a satisfying place to be, but what about the devout fan base (i.e., persons like myself?) It’s like Fincher has decided he can’t be “David Fincher” any more…like that was a phase and now he’s past it.

He obviously no longer believes in theatrical narratives. Because Hollywood itself no longer believes in same, and because the zombie executives won’t greenlight anything even remotely original, and because Fincher won’t make formulaic crap. And so he’s operating out of his own little creative bunker. He’s not even doing a Soderbergh — making modest but original features, working with Netflix but exploring new distribution schemes, shooting on iPhones, etc. He’s working and living in a realm that allows for creative freedom, but the absence of the old Fincher breaks my heart.

If Fincher is trying to get anything made in the realm of narrative features, I haven’t heard of it. Has he totally bailed or is there something he’s developing that might actually become something? I’m asking.

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The slogan on those Long Shot posters reads “unlikely but not impossible.” Obviously the marketers behind this political-minded Seth Rogen-Charlize Theron romantic comedy (Lionsgate, 5.3) know they have a tough sell on their hands.

Theron plays Charlotte Field, a 40ish Secretary of State planning a run for the White House, and Rogen plays Fred Flarsky, a political journalist whom Theron hires to be her speechwriter, in part because she babysat for him “20 years earlier,” according to one review.

You think? In real life Rogen is 37 going on 55. He didn’t need a babysitter when he was 17 — Theron more likely babysat him 25 or 30 years ago, when he was 12 or 7. A quarter century ago Theron was 18 — a perfect babysitting age.

Long Shot screened last night at South by Southwest. Sight unseen, Hollywood Elsewhere agrees with Peter Debruge’s skepticism about this bizarre romantic pairing.

Debruge: “There are two high-concept male fantasies operating here: There’s the one in which a man-child finally gets to seduce the sexy babysitter, interwoven with another about the chances that the country’s most gorgeous/powerful woman — ‘I dreamed I was president in my Maidenform bra’ — might risk it all to be with someone like Flarsky.

“The odds? The movie’s new title says it all.

“More creepy than romantic, more chauvinist than empowered — and in all fairness, funnier and more entertaining than any comedy in months — Long Shot serves up the far-fetched wish-fulfillment fantasy of how, for one lucky underdog, pursuing your first love could wind up making you first man.

“Granted, society’s notion of what kind of romances are deemed acceptable is shifting awfully fast, so I could be wrong about this.. [But] there’s an alarming disconnect [in] whatever unconventional sex appeal Field sees in [Flarsky].

“If the sexes were reversed, Rogen would be the dumpy girl with curly hair and glasses waiting for his mid-movie makeover. But because Flarsky’s a dude, he doesn’t have to change at all; it’s Field who has to make all the concessions to be with him — which would surely be a point of contention in a properly engaged satire.”

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Early Friday morning “embattled” Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara sent a letter of apology to WB staffers about the Charlotte Kirk thing, which has prompted everyone in town to yawn and shrug their shoulders.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Kim Masters and Tatiana Siegel reported this tale of sexual intrigue and resentment on 3.6.

If I was Tsujihara’s speechwriter and he’d asked me to rough out a statement that explains this mess, here’s how I’d put it:

Warner Bros, CEO Kevin Tsujihara.

Warner Bros. friends and colleagues,

By now, you’ve read that irksome Hollywood Reporter hit piece. You’re therefore aware that I’ve behaved in a somewhat embarassing manner, albeit not unlike each and every studio head and hotshot producer who has ever worked in this town, going back to the days of Jesse L. Lasky and Samuel Goldfish.

Please understand that I’m not proud of this — the applicable terms are actually “furious” and “mortified”. But you also presumably know, being adults, that hotshot executives like myself enjoy succumbing to certain behaviors during our all-too-brief periods of privacy. Because we have the money to throw around, because it’s easy to get away with stuff, because guys like myself are generally insulated from touchy consequences.

As long as we’re not being cruel or committing felonies or dancing naked before bonfires while wearing animal-head masks or, God forbid, being shadowed by our significant others, most Hollywood executives like to do what they like to do in the company of trusted friends and colleagues. Right? We’re all familiar with this syndrome or attitude. It’s called “kicking loose”, “letting our hair down”, “setting free the libertine.”

Presumably other Warner Bros. employees besides myself have sampled said behaviors.

The concept of privacy used to have some currency in our culture. Once upon a time journalists actually believed that persons like myself were entitled to sample forbidden fruit in their off hours — to behave in technically “sinful” but harmless ways, to cavort like less-than-perfect human beings, to play around like JFK did in the early ’60s, or like Roy Scheider‘s “Joe Gideon” did in All That Jazz. Those were the days!

I deeply regret having brought pain and embarrassment to the people I love the most, yes, but mostly I regret having been busted and publicly shamed by Kim Masters and Tatiana Siegel. What did I do, really, that was so terrible? I catted around with a pretty English actress, knowing full well I’d probably have to reciprocate with some casting favors. And so what? This kind of thing happens all the time.

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Mentioning Randy Newman‘s “Rednecks” is pretty much verboten these days because the lyrics repeatedly use the “n” word. But it’s worth recalling that the song, released on a 1974 Newman album called “Good Old Boys,” was inspired by an incident that happened on the Dick Cavett Show on 12.18.70.

A 12.19.70 N.Y. Times story reported that Gov. Lester Maddox of Georgia “walked out of a taping of the Dick Cavett Show in a huff last night after demanding that the host of the program apologize for a remark about Mr. Maddox’s white supporters.

“Mr. Cavett was paraphrasing a question asked during a break in the show by Jim Brown, the black actor, who wanted to know if Governor Maddox had ‘any trouble with the white bigots because of all the things you did for blacks.’ On the air, Mr. Cavett substituted ‘admirers’ for ‘bigots.’ The Governor, saying the implication was that his supporters were bigots, demanded an apology.

“’If I called any of your admirers bigots who are not bigots, I apologize,’ Mr. Cavett said.

“Mr. Maddox rose and, after another exchange, left the stage with 10 minutes of the program remaining.”

Newman’s lyrics changed things around somewhat:

“Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show” — check.
“With some smart-ass New York Jew” — Cavett is a witty Midwestern gentile with a dry sense of humor.
“And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox” — Cavett never explicitly laughed at Maddox.
“And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too” — true.

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You may have read some dour assessments of J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier (Netflix, opening today — streaming as of 3.13), a moralistic heist-gone-wrong adventure thriller. But it’s no wipeout.

It’s definitely a better-than-decent sit, and is certainly worth catching for the second half, or for the section that deals with how to escape with ill-gotten loot on the backs of donkeys, chopping your way through heavy jungle and over and down the Andes mountains.

The first half deals with five 40ish special forces veterans (Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal) deciding to rip off the fortress home of a South American drug dealer, and the second half is about trying to get away with it and not doing so well in this regard, and being forced to abandon more and more dough as the escape progresses.

The second half is about what happens when you’re carried away by greed and you forsake common sense. It’s more or less John Huston‘s Treasure of Sierra Madre meets William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer meets Eric von Stroheim‘s Greed.

I was into Triple Frontier during the first half, but not exactly gripped by it. We aren’t told very much about the five ex-commandos (Affleck’s character is sketched out to some extent — he’s fat, financially strapped, has an alienated daughter) and the general feeling is that the film is a stone skipping across the surface of a lake. Or, you know, more into treading water than actually swimming.

There isn’t enough texture, the heist isn’t planned with enough detail, there aren’t enough hindrances or security guards…it’s all kind of rushed along.

The key moment is when they discover that the drug lord has much, much more cash socked away in his jungle abode than expected. $250 million or something like that. If these guys could get away with $10 million each they’d obviously be doing just fine. Hell, they could make off with $20 million each. But no — cash-strapped Affleck suddenly wants a Kardashian-sized bank account. He not only loses his mind — let’s take it all, look at this, we’re loaded beyond our wildest dreams! — but everyone else falls in line.

The problem is that Issac has arranged for a large Russian-made chopper to take them over the Andes, but all that extra dough (bags and bags of it) weighs a hell of a lot, and they find out too late that the helicopter can’t manage to clear the 11,000-foot Andes peaks with all that weight. The chopper goes down, and then, finally, Triple Frontier gets interesting.

HE commenters were complaining two or three days ago that I’d erred by openly guessing that not all of the five make it out alive. Which is, in fact, true. I’m not going to say how many get away clean, but a typical action melodrama of this type would kill off at least two characters if not three. Suffice that Triple Frontier is atypical.

Affleck is so heavy in this film he’s almost Harvey Weinstein. All that bulk plus thatches of gray hair…you’re seriously wondering if his heart can take the strain and stress. Affleck is almost double the size he was in Gone Girl.

I was nonetheless favorably impressed by Triple Frontier. All in all it’s a solid B plus. And that ain’t hay.

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In the late summer of 1982 I attended a Bobby Zarem press party for Kirk Douglas at Elaine’s. Douglas was around 65 at the time, and about as gamey and blunt-spoken as they come. We talked about Paths of Glory, which Douglas was naturally proud of, and his sometimes contentious relationship with director Stanley Kubrick, who had also directed Douglas in Spartacus. Douglas respected Kubrick immensely, but that day he called him “Stanley the prick,” in part because Kubrick had been ready and willing, Douglas said, to snag screenplay credit for Spartacus, even though it had been written, of course, by the then-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. Douglas was incensed that Kubrick would even suggest such a remedy, but he did.

Kirk Douglas, Stanley Kubrick on the set of Paths of Glory.

Who could be pretentious enough to wear this overcoat? The collar is ridiculous.

Right now I’ve got nine likely Best Picture nominees for 2020. What am I forgetting? Which of these nine seem dicey (if any)? I have a notion that if Harriet is well acted and carefully crafted (and who knows if it will be?), it’s going to be a big contender. And don’t forget Soderbergh’s The Laundry.

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (Netflix, sometime in October) — A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa. (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons).

2. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Sony, 7.26) — A faded TV actor and his stunt double embark on an odyssey to make a name for themselves in the film industry during the Helter Skelter reign of terror in 1969 Los Angeles. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino).

3. Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — The story of Fred Rogers, the honored host and creator of the popular children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. (Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard)

4. Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women (Sony, 12.25) — Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War. (Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan)

5. Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate) — Fox honcho Roger Ailes and sexual harassment allegations that resulted in his resignation. (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Duplass)

6. Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet (Focus Features) — A feminist 12 Years A Slave, based on the story of freedom fighter Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo), her escape from slavery and subsequent missions to free dozens of slaves through the Underground Railroad in the face of growing pre-Civil War adversity. Cynthia Erivo, Janelle Monae, Joe Alwyn, Deborah Ayorinde, Clarke Peters, Leslie Odom Jr., Tory Kittles, Vondie Curtis-Hall.

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Steven Spielberg really and truly wants to ban all future awards-hungry Netflix films from the Oscar party, including Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman. Unless, that is, Netflix gets serious about extended theatrical bookings.

Spielberg has flat-out said that “films given token qualifications in a couple of theaters for less than a week shouldn’t qualify for the Academy Award nomination.” Now, at the annual Academy Board of Governors meeting in April, he intends to propose a rule change that would make Netflix films ineligible for Oscar consideration.

Amblin spokesperson: “Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation. He’ll be happy if the others will join [his campaign] when that comes up [at the Academy Board of Governors meeting]. He will see what happens.”

Hollywood Elsewhere agrees with what Spielberg is trying to do here. He’s just trying to implement strict but fair award-season rules, and to guard against future Roma-styled spending blitzkriegs, and at the same time take steps that will protect (in a very precise and limited way) theatrical exhibition during award season.

In other words Hollywood Elsewhere would definitely prefer that Netflix honchos commit to serious 90-day theatrical bookings before going to streaming. I for one genuinely hope they’ll be forced to do this for their award-season contenders. Amazon is loosening its theatrical attitudes and procedures, but Hollywood Elsewhere stands foursquare behind the idea that serious award-season contenders need to be held to three months in theatres before going to streaming. Really.

I’m not talking about garden-variety, day-to-day streaming — that’s obviously the main way that people see movies these days. But award-season contenders should be subjected to different rules.

The Academy governors will listen politely to Spielberg, but let’s get real — the toothpaste is out of the tube and there’s no putting it back in. What are the odds that the Academy is going to exclude The Irishman, a total Netflix package, from Best Picture competition later this year (and into ’20)? Right now I would say they’re not high, but at the same I recognize that Netflix won’t bend its operational strategy unless the Academy totally puts its foot down about award-season theatrical commitments.

I just hope that enough people join Spielberg in insisting on this award-season stipulation.

With the opening of Captain Marvel days away, I need to reiterate that Brie Larson was dead-ass wrong when she said the following last June: “I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time. It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color.”

In other words, if a movie wasn’t specifically “made” for you or your demo — if a film’s theme or subject doesn’t address your gender, age group or ethnic identity — you might want to see something else because you might have difficulty appreciating its finer aspects.

Larson’s statement also implies that there’s no such thing as a seasoned critic being able to recognize whether or not a filmmaker knows what he/she is doing in terms of implementing a vision by way of craft, technique and artful dodging. She seemed to be saying that subjectivity — gender, age, identity — is as important as learned perception, and perhaps a bit more so.

I’ve been in this racket since the late ’70s and there really is a thing called “being smart, educated and experienced enough to really know what you’re talking about.” Being white or over 40 is not necessarily a hindrance in this regard (the over-40 part actually helps for the most part), and being female or a person of color is not necessarily a plus when it comes to assessing films like Captain Marvel, A Wrinkle in Time or Ava DuVernay‘s When They See Us.

I know this is the wrong thing to say in our highly politicized environment, but a good film is a good film.

Netflix will debut Ava DuVernay‘s When They See Us, a five-part dramatic reenactment of the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, on 5.31.19. I wrote about the DuVernay project when it was first announced 19 months ago,

Excerpt: “Ken and Sarah Burns‘ The Central Park Five, a 2012 documentary, was one thing (i.e., not without problems but compelling). But a dramatic miniseries will be a whole ‘nother challenge.

“The case was about the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a female stockbroker, in Manhattan’s Central Park on 4.19.89. Five young black dudes — Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusef Salaam — were wrongly prosecuted and falsely imprisoned, only to be exonerated and freed several years later.

“The whole episode was a clear expression of racist hysteria (particularly on Donald Trump‘s part) and institutional corruption.

“Duvernay is nonetheless facing two significant problems in terms of her main characters — one being the bizarre police confessions by the five alleged assailants.

“If DuVernay fudges, sidesteps or fabricates (as she did to some extent with her depiction of Lyndon B. Johnson‘s actions in Selma), she’s going to run into trouble.”

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Dave Itzkoff has a 2.28.19 N.Y. Times story called “Can Captain Marvel Fix Marvel’s Woman Problem?” The problem, historically speaking, is a leering, less-than-enlightened attitude about Marvel’s female characters over the decades. The idea is that Captain Marvel might popularize a less sexist, more liberated agenda. Yes, I’m putting myself to sleep as I write this.

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