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Leaving Neverland is a talking-heads horror film — an intimate, obviously believable, sometimes sexually explicit story of two boys — Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck, now pushing 40 — who became Michael Jackson’s special “friends” — i.e., lovers, masturbation buddies, fellators — while their more or less oblivious parents went along, thinking that the relationship was more of a kindly innocent bond.

Wake up: Jackson was a finagling fiend, a smooth predator, the kindest serpent.

You should have seen the faces of the audience members during the ten-minute intermission of Leaving Neverland at the Egyptian. They had that look of hollowed-out nausea, submerged disgust…trying to hide their revulsion.

Michael Jackson, Wade Robson sometime around ’88, when Robson was seven or eight.

The Jackson-guilt denialists are finished. Jig’s up. Once this four-hour doc hits HBO, forget it.

Leaving Neverland is also, of course, a very sad story. Damage and dysfunction are passed on and on. You’re only as healthy or sick as the amount of ugly secrets you’re carrying around. Oh, and the two complicit mothers of the victims are dealt tough cards at the end by their trying-to-heal sons.

From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review: “[Director] Dan Reed forces us to confront the reality that the greatest pop genius since the Beatles was, beneath his talent, a monster. Leaving Neverland is no thriller, but it’s undeniably a kind of true-life horror movie. You walk out of it shaken, but on some level liberated by its dark expose.”

From David Ehrlich’s Indiewire review: “Steel yourself for specifics, as dancing around them would defeat the purpose of this documentary: Jackson was a man who convinced their most innocent relatives to bend over and spread their butt cheeks while he masturbated to the sight; who forced them to suck on his nipples while he serviced himself; who installed an elaborate system of alarm bells at the Neverland Ranch so that he would hear if anyone was going to walk in on an eight-year-old boy with the pop star’s penis inside his mouth.

“Penetration was a more complicated process, but one that got increasingly possible as the boys grew older. There was even a mock wedding ceremony at one point; the kid involved still can’t bear to look at the ring. The mothers chaperoned many of these vile trysts, oblivious to (or in denial about) what Jackson was doing to their sons behind closed doors. A teenage sibling even defended the pop star in court. She didn’t know any better, but will still regret that decision until the day she dies.”

Incidentally: I waited outside (25 degrees) in a ticket-holders line for 40, 45 minutes. Sundance staff & Park City police (checking bags, wanding everyone) didn’t exhibit the slightest interest in allowing the 9 am screening of Leaving Neverland to start on time. It started at 9:28 am — 9:30 am after the Sundance promos.

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16 months ago Björn Runge‘s The Wife premiered during the 2017 Toronto Film Festival. At Roy Thomson Hall, to be precise. I was there in the mezzanine, mesmerized by Glenn Close‘s slow-boil performance as a strong but resentful wife of a Nobel Prize-winning author (Jonathan Pryce). After it ended I was convinced — dead certain! — that Close would land her seventh Oscar nomination, and that she might actually win this time.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jon Frosch wrote that Close’s performance is “like a bomb ticking away toward detonation” — perfect. But she’s not just playing her husband’s better in terms of talent and temperament. She’s playing every wife who ever felt under-valued, patronized or otherwise diminished by a swaggering hot-shot husband along with their friends and colleagues as well as — why not? — society as a whole.

In the months that followed I kept re-stating my belief that Close’s Oscar-winning moment would finally be at hand. I said it again after catching a Wife screening in midtown Manhattan. The mostly over-50 crowd whooped and cheered, and you could just feel it.

“This Academy contingent is going to vote for Close en masse, no question,” I wrote. “Over the last 30-plus years she’s been nominated for six Oscars (The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs) without a win — this will be the clincher.”

But deep down I wasn’t 100% sure. Noteworthy journos kept saying “yeah, maybe, Close is very good,” etc. My response was “no, not maybe — definitely.”

Early last November I felt slightly irked by an Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson Indiewire podcast about likely Best Actress contenders. Olivia Colman, Lady Gaga, Melissa McCarthy, Charlize Theron, Rosamund Pike and even Hereditary‘s Toni Collette were discussed, but not Close. This despite 22 out of 25 Gold Derby spitballers having predicted a Close nomination. What exactly was Kohn and Thompson’s blockage?

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Excerpts from Damon Linker‘s “How Twitter Could Be The Death of Liberal Democracy,” posted yesTerday (1.22) on The Week:

“In 1984, George Orwell famously described a totalitarian political order in which people were kept as docile subjects in part by a daily ritual called ‘Two Minutes Hate’ in which the population directs all of its pent up fury at ‘Goldstein,’ a possibly fictional enemy of the state.

“Thanks to Twitter, we now know that the same dynamic can arise spontaneously, with fresh ire directed at a new manifestation of the partisan enemy nearly every day. It shows us that under certain circumstances — our circumstances — people can and will fasten onto an endless succession of real-life Goldsteins for the sheer, addictive joy of it — for the pure, delirious pleasure of denouncing manifestations of evil in our midst. Nothing, it seems, is quite as satisfying as singling out our fellow citizens for their moral failings and indulging in fantasies of their fully justified punishment.

“Too little attention has been paid to what may be the most potent facet of the social media platform: its ability to feed the vanity of its users. There’s always an element of egoism to intellectual and political debate. But Twitter puts every tweeter on a massive stage, with the nastiest put-downs, insults, and provocations often receiving the most applause. That’s a huge psychological incentive to escalate the denunciation of political enemies. The more one expresses outrage at the evils of others, the more one gets to enjoy the adulation of the virtual mob.”

“They display an impulsiveness and unhinged rage at political enemies that is incompatible with reasoned thinking about how we might go about governing ourselves, heal the divisions in our country, and avoid a collapse into civic violence that could usher in tyranny.”

At 7:22 am, Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh posted “Oscar Nominations: The 15 Biggest Snubs and Surprises.” Hollywood Elsewhere, currently waiting for a McCarran Airport flight to Salt Lake City, respectfully differs with some of Setoodeh’s assessments.

Snub #1: Bradley Cooper‘s direction of A Star is Born fails to land a nomination.

Setoodeh: “Cooper got Afflecked. The Academy director’s branch is notorious for snubbing actors who step into the director’s chair. Cooper was considered a lock for A Star Is Born, has now joined the ranks of Barbra Streisand (Yentl), Ben Affleck (Argo) and Angelina Jolie (Unbroken), as actors-directors who failed to receive their proper due.”

HE: One, Cooper got shafted in part because he’s perceived in some quarters as aloof and self-absorbed. Two, A Star Is Born was over-hyped by celeb-filmmaker endorsements (Sean Penn, Robert DeNiro, Barbra Streisand) followed by Kris Tapley‘s notorious pre-Toronto testimonial piece in Variety. Three, it was obvious from the first screening that Unbroken was a whiff. Why should Jolie have been Best Director-nominated for delivering Japanese POW camp torture porn with a weird Christian undercurrent?

Snub #2: A no-go for Beautiful Boy‘s Timothee Chalamet.

Setoodeh: The star of Call Me By Your Name and the forthcoming Dune was “due” a nomination for playing a drug addict, blah blah.

HE: No, he wasn’t — he wasn’t effing “due” because his meth-head performance was (a) all strenuous “acting”, and (b) it didn’t emotionally connect with anyone. Plus the film was torture to sit through, and was doubly painful for Steve Carell‘s mope-a-dope dad character. Only now can it be said: Beautiful Boy blew chunks when it opened in Toronto, and it still does. Plus Chalamet hasn’t yet paid off the piper for throwing Woody Allen under the bus when the matter of his guilt has never been close to conclusive, and is actually doubtful if you read Moses Farrow‘s essay.

Snub #3: John David Washington in BlackKklansman.

Setoodeh: “While Spike Lee’s drama picked up six Oscar nominations, Washington somehow failed to crack the best actor category for playing real-life police officer Ron Stallworth.”

HE: Washington’s performance was okay, but he was the weak link in that film. Why? His face is uninteresting, opaque. Look into his eyes and there’s nothing burning or churning underneath. He’s just good looking, and that’s never enough.

Snub #4: Academy shafts Ethan Hawke‘s award-showered performance in First Reformed.

Setoodeh offers no thoughts so allow me. A sufficient number of voters simply didn’t like the idea of a pastor strapping on a suicide vest as a way of addressing environmental pollution. Plus they didn’t like a bare-chested Hawke bloodying himself with barbed wire, and they didn’t much care for the drinking and the cancer threat. And they strongly disliked the cruel way Hawke’s character treated that mousey middle-aged woman who cared for him. News flash: Academy voters aren’t especially deep or thoughtful.

Snub #5: Michael B. Jordan‘s Black Panther performance gets the go-by.

Setoodeh: “Not a single actor in its cast was recognized, [not even] Jordan as Erik Killmonger, for playing the best villain in the genre since Heath Ledger as the Joker.”

HE: Setoodeh had to have been kidding when he wrote this. If you’re playing a guy whose last name is Killmonger, you’re automatically and instantly disqualified from any sort of awards consideration.

Snub #6: Nicole Kidman passed over for Destroyer and Boy Erased.

Setoodeh: “In a less competitive year for actress, Kidman who have added her fifth (and maybe sixth) career nominations for Destroyer or Boy Erased. In the former film, playing a Los Angeles detective, she disappeared onscreen with a limp and facial prosthetics. And out of Toronto, there was a lot of buzz for her supporting role as the Baptist mother who took her son to gay conversion therapy.”

HE: Out of Toronto there was NO BUZZ AT ALL for Kidman’s Boy Erased performance…none, zero, zipposky. The reaction I heard was that Kidman wasn’t bad but that guys like Setoodeh need to calm down. As for Destroyer, Kidman’s nomination was a no-go from the start because you can only occasionally understand what she’s saying, what with her raspy, scratchy Clint Eastwood-like delivery. The makeup people who turned her Erin Bell character into a George Romero zombie should have been nominated, but they were also shafted.

By the way: Setoodeh says that Willem Dafoe “managed to sneak into the Best Actor race” for his Vincent Van Gogh performance in At Eternity’s Gate. That’s Setoodeh-speak for “I didn’t much care for the film or Dafoe’s performance.” Dafoe was in fact masterful in Julian Schnabel‘s film. Setoodeh believes that BlackKklansman‘s John David Washington was more deserving of a nomination. He really thinks that.

My Southwest flight to Salt Lake City and the Sundance Film Festival leaves tomorrow morning around 9 am, but due to a longish Las Vegas layover I won’t arrive at the Park Regency condo until 5 pm or so. Like last year, Hollywood Elsewhere is bunking at the Park Regency with World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy and seasoned film journo and festival guy Robert Koehler.

My first Sundance in 25…now 26 years without a press pass! I have a sacred duty to fulfill, of course. A duty to myself, the general “never say die” esprit de journalism and the intrepid tradition of Hollywood Elsewhere to fly my ass up there, put on the overcoat and the black cowboy hat, tromp through the snow (Park City is currently at 27 degrees and besieged by winter storm “Indra”) and see everything I can.

I’ve been asking filmmaker and publicist friends to please help with public-screening tickets, and I know I’ll be getting into a fair number of films. Maybe 15 or so. Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets. The Steven Soderbergh basketball flick at Slamdance, for sure. (Not to mention other Slamdance films, which I’m credentialed to see.) Dan Gilroy‘s Velvet Buzzsaw. The Harvey Weinstein, Mike Wallace, David Crosby and Roy Cohn docs, certainly. Not to mention the accusatory four-hour Michael Jackson doc and the origins of Ridley Scott‘s Alien doc, MEMORY. Whatever I can see.

Some of the alleged hotties: Shia LaBeouf‘s Honey Boy, Nisha Ganatra‘s Late Night, Scott Z. Burns‘ The Report, JD Dillard‘s Sweetheart (if there’s a way to see it without actually attending a midnight screening), Rashid Johnson‘s Native Son, Tomorrow Man (recently sold to Sony Pictures Classics) costarring John Lithgow and Blythe Danner.

Word around the campfire is that Rhys Ernst‘s Adam, Chewitel Ejiofor‘s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and Pippa Bianco‘s Share are a tad underwhelming, at least according to one Boy Scout. Joe Berlinger‘s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Zac Efron-as-Ted Bundy pic, is said to be strikingly performed but “dramatically flat.”

Sonya — The White Swan, a Sonja Henie biopic, has been screened in Los Angeles but I’ve heard nothing. Ditto Bart Freundlich‘s After The Wedding, which is opening the festival on Thursday night.

Will audiences be treated to another Manchester By The Sea, a Call me By Your Name, a Big Sick? I would deeply love to experience this kind of thing but I’m not hearing about films of this calibre in the wings. Is anyone?

A typical Sundance-credentialed journo sees 20 to 25 films over this ten-day gathering. But outside the documentaries Sundance ’19 is looking (and it breaks my heart to say this) like it might be just as meh-level “woke” as last year — alternate lifestyles, afflictions, LGBTQ and POC agenda sagas, women in transition, this or that personal issue, healings, buried pain, social maladies, etc.

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Kamala Harris‘s presidential candidacy was announced today. I have admired her for a long, long time, principally for her confirmation hearing grillings, which have been second only to former Sen. Al Franken‘s. Harris is a tough, principled Bay Area liberal who doesn’t take any shit, and I would vote for her in a second. She’s going to make the most of her 2020 Presidential run (certainly in the primaries) and generally kick ass, and all power to her.

Harris is heavily favored by women of color, and “it’s hard to find a more important primary group than [these],” says CNN’s Harry Enten. “They are by far the most Democratic-aligned major demographic group. Women of color powered Hillary Clinton‘s sweep of the Southeast in the 2016 primary. Just last year, they were the base for Democrat Doug Jones‘s shocking victory in the Alabama special Senate election.”

But we all know the odds are against Harris. Not in the primaries, but in the general election. The bottom-line opposition portrayal will be “too flinty, too strident, too prosecutorial, too lefty California.” This impression alone will scare the living shit out of white Middle American pudgebods. Most Americans despise President Trump, but they’ll probably feel better about handing the White House over to a warmer, less p.c., more alpha-vibey candidate (Uncle Joe, Beto O’Rourke).

Harris is a clear and profound expression of where Democrats are at right now — mixed ethnic, female, humanist progressive. But she doesn’t have the organic “feelies” that O’Rourke has.

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Courtesy of CinnaJon, myself, Patrick Murtha, Spaceshiek, Jordan Ruimy and The Cinemaholic:

Cinnajon: “I had assumed Green Book was destined to be a Shawshank-like Best Picture also-ran, with middling box office, that takes on a second life when it hits cable. Now it sounds like the smear campaign may have provided an unexpected sympathy boost, which may buoy it to a much healthier first run than expected, if it remains in the driver’s seat. Wildly up-and-down trajectory to the finish line if this is how it actually plays out.

Jeffrey Wells: “Last night’s win was at least partly a sympathy vote after the vicious SJW attacks. I suggested a few weeks back that the industry should vote for Green Book in order to tell those odious lefty Stalinist bullies to go fuck themselves, and by golly that’s what partly happened! The p.c.-MOTIVATED haters started all the trouble, all the hate. Their post-GG takedown attempts amounted to pure viciousness and ugliness. Last night the PGA told them ‘nice try, assholes, but no sale.’ Thank you, Inkoo Kang! Thank you, David Ehrlich! Thank you, Indiewire p.c. comintern!

Patrick Murtha: “Not only is this exactly right, Jeff, but I also suspect that 2019 is going to be a year of MAJOR backlash against the PC / SJW / woke crowd. Are you sensing this also? People are just getting fed up. It is perfectly possible to continue loathing Trump & Co. while also rejecting the wokesters.”

Spacesheik: “I loved Green Book — screw the haters. The audience I saw it with loved it as well (this was in November in an AMC theater at Tysons Mall, before all the hype). They enthusiastically clapped at the end. The film is highly entertaining, with some great performances all around. I’d watch it again. I was shocked when Peter Farrelly‘s name came onscreen, its the complete antithesis of everything he’s done before – and for that he deserves credit. You can dismiss whatever you want, but you can see the film was made with a lot of love and compassion towards that era and history.”

Wells response: “Check but Green Book wasn’t made with love and compassion ‘towards’ that era as much as with a frank attitude and acknowledgment that this was what the realm of 1962 was unfortunately like.”

Jordan Ruimy: “The fact of the matter is that Green Book is a crowd-pleaser like no other. All three times I saw it the audience applauded during the credits, which almost never happens. It has an 8.3 IMDB score, by far the highest of 2018 contenders and a much-coveted A CinemaScore. It has struck a chord with Joe and Jane Popcorn. The fact that it’ll spread into an additional 1000 theatres next week could make the case for it louder and clearer.”

The Cinemaholic: “I love Green Book but the PGA win is actually going to do more harm to film’s chances than good. The woke crowd is going to tear the film to pieces. I am waiting for Oscar nominations to see how it does there. If Farrelly and Vallelonga get nominated, you know that all the p.c. journalists will have a big meltdown again. Anyway, all this is so much fun. And yes, A Star Is Born is over. Roma will win Best Picture (as I have been maintaining since September).”

CinnaJon: “It seems like it’s already run the gauntlet of being torn to pieces, and is now emerging on the other side stronger and more embraceable than when it first entered the fray. The film could be the beneficiary of people reaching an exhaustion point with outrage culture. Voting GB is a pushback to all that.”

Criterion’s new Notorious 4K-scanned Bluray delivers a serious HE “bump”. Within seconds I was sitting up in my seat and going “wow!” Satiny smooth and gleaming, mineshaft blacks, shimmering silver tones and clean as a hound’s tooth.

I’ve been watching this 1946 Alfred Hitchcock noir classic since I was a proverbial knee-high, and all through the evolving formats — theatrical, broadcast TV, VHS, laser disc, DVDs, previous Blurays. This is easily the best-looking version I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t even watch it on my premium 65″ Sony HDR 4K (which is back in Connecticut) but a run-of-the-mill 55″ Insignia 1080p monitor.

That said, the Criterion Bluray contains a fold-out brochure, and on the very front is an image of Cary Grant‘s Devlin character that will make your blood run cold.

Created by illustrator Greg Ruth, it’s the darkest and ugliest image of Grant mine eyes have ever beheld. It’s like a shot of his corpse on a morgue slab after he’s died of scarlet fever. Or a candid taken after somebody snuck into Grant’s bungalow while he was napping and smeared his face with greasepaint.

I’m not kidding — Grant’s skin is so dark and heavily shadowed he could be playing the debonair brother of Laurence Olivier‘s “Mahdi” in Khartoum. Or maybe a stand-in for Henry Brandon‘s “Scar” in The Searchers.

Seriously — this is the worst “hit” upon Grant since Daisy Ridley told Carrie Fisher that she didn’t know who he is.

On his website Ruth describes the shot as a spot-on image of a “tuxedoed and conflicted” Devlin, but it’s not even derived from Notorious — compare Grant’s bow tie in the Ruth art compared to a standard Notorious still [after the jump].

The idea, I presume, was to suggest that Devlin is a chilly, dark-hearted soul (which he arguably is until the final reel) but Ruth’s image suggests Devlin has taken an overdose of sleeping pills after lying under a sun lamp for ten hours.

Here’s an essay Ruth has written about his Notorious creations.

If I’d been the senior editor of the Notorious brochure and Ruth had submitted the Grant death-mask shot for approval, I would have made a face and said “what exactly is your problem, bruh? I mean, this image tells me there’s really something wrong with you. Have you seen the film? Grant isn’t playing the devil in Notorious — he’s playing a bothered, women-fearing, emotionally brusque CIA agent. Plus he redeems himself in the end.”

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I shouted out loud when I read about the death of journalist, critic and box-office maven Len Klady. I just heard about it 15 minutes ago…good heavens! I knew Len for a good 32 or 33 years, minimum. Not as a close friend but I sure as hell knew him in a kind of invited-to-the-same-press-event bon ami sense…”hey, Len,” the usual party chit-chat, sussing it all out, walla-walla, etc. A dark cloud over Canada. Hugs and condolences for his friends and Movie City News colleagues, and especially Len’s wife, critic and author Beverly Walker, whom I’ve also known for ages. Huge shock, very sorry. A heavy smoker, Len had been sick for a couple of months. At-home hospice care. Passed away this morning.

Movie City News box-office guy Len Klady, United 93 costar and former FAA bigwig Ben Sliney at 2007 press event. (Taken by yours truly.)

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An HE-plus essay posted on 11.26, and offered today as a taste. I’ve been reviewing my HE-plus stuff over the last six months, and a lot of it is pretty good:

Throughout my 20s I had a fairly low opinion of shrinks (i.e., psychologists, psychiatrists). And for good reason, I felt. It had to do with my assessment of a certain suburban therapist, a chilly, officious guy in his 40s whom I was forced to see when I was 17.

I had a weekly appointment with this asshole on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings at 7 pm, and as it happened one of my meetings came right after suffering a brutal beating from my dad. Our fight had erupted in the kitchen during dinner and had resulted in a gash on the side of my head and a good amount of blood soaking my shirt.

My parents had arranged me to see this guy because I was regarded at the time as incorrigible and unreachable.

I was a problem teen for the usual reasons. I hated almost everything about my gulag life. I despised my parents equally, I thought, but harbored the strongest loathings for my alcoholic dad. I had no flirtations going with any girls, and I secretly hated half of my “friends.” I felt only negative things about school, had experienced almost nothing in the way of adventure, and little joy except for the movies I slipped into and TV shows I enjoyed. My only high-school escape valve came from getting bombed with my friends on beer.

I’d been into drawing since I was 10 or so, and had done fairly well with essay writing in grade school. But all of that went south when I entered junior high and puberty, and the misery index shot up. The feelings of lethargy and depression were unceasing.

But then a switch flipped in my junior year. I began typing up and passing around a kind of satirical gossip sheet about my friends and the stupid social bullshit that went on between us. It was a primitive version of Hollywood Elsewhere, come to think, except it wasn’t very good. Clumsy syntax, sloppy sentence structure, crude this and that, an over-reliance on sexual humor.

A copy of my clumsy gossip rag was snatched by the head disciplinarian of my high school, and within a day or two my father and I were sitting in his office as he howled and harangued about the pornographic content. Wiser authority figures would have said, “You’re being a creative entrepeneur with this thing…you just have to get better at it.” All I heard, of course, was that I was a social undesirable heading for a life of shame.

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I’ve been a mildly angry guy most of my life. Contrarian, questioning authority, a pushback instinct. Born of my father’s alcoholism and aloofness, etc. Over the last 25 years of journalistic endeavor it’s been slipping out by way of the “three sees” — cerebral, channelled, controlled. But in my late teens the anger was more eruptive and hair-triggerish, and one day in a high-school hallway it almost ruined my life. Except it didn’t, thank God.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

It doesn’t matter if Beto O’Rourke is supported wholeheartedly by the picky progressives or if he’s the “best” Democratic choice to succeed Donald Trump in 2021, whatever the hell that means. What matters is (a) defeating the Cheeto, and (b) replacing him with someone whose instincts are basically populist and not too corporate-kowtowing, someone who’s forward-looking with a multi-ethnic reach-out attitude to the Great Middle, who’s not psychotic or delusional or necessarily beholden to the politically correct fanatics, and who respects the Constitution and the ideals and traditions of this country and who’s basically Bobby Kennedy reborn, only taller.

Beto has reportedly been searching his soul on a solo road trip (like Willem Dafoe purifying his soul in the desert) and trying to suss things out. Fine, whatever but not too much of this. He needs to just grim up and go for it, period. Step up to the plate and then figure it out as he goes along. He’ll definitely, definitely, definitely beat Trump if he wins the 2020 Democratic nomination. I can’t say that about any other candidate, declared or undeclared, right now. Including Uncle Neck Wattle.

From “Democratic Operatives Are Building Beto O’Rourke’s Campaign Without Him,” a new Atlantic piece by Edward Isaacc Dovere:

“’I think Beto’s really having a hard time making a decision, and he’s surprised at how hard it is,’ said Garry Mauro, the last Democrat to be elected statewide in Texas (in 1994, as land commissioner) and someone who’s been in touch with O’Rourke recently.

“There has been no official contact, but Mauro said O’Rourke is clearly registering how excited people remain about him, and he and his team are aware of Draft Beto. “I don’t think for one second that the Draft Beto movement is going unnoticed and doesn’t have impact. Of course it does. How could it not?”

“O’Rourke didn’t respond to a phone call or questions sent by text about what he makes of Draft Beto and whether the group’s existence is indeed informing his decision. He’s on a road trip, by himself, eating blackberry cobbler and crashing in motels, having conversations, and then posting Bukowski-style essays about what he sees.

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