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Look at Benicio del Toro as he chats with BUILD’s Ricky Camilleri — he’s a ’50s beatnik, a Russian revolutionary, a wolfman, a Silicon Valley malcontent. I know Benicio very slightly, and I’ve heard the stories. Deep cat, wicked laugh, hungry poet, a man of appetites. Or, if you will, “the thinking man’s Hollywood badass.”

I was persuaded that Benicio was extra-level 24 years ago. That’s when I first saw him as Kevin Spacey‘s outgoing assistant in George Huang‘s Swimming With Sharks. In January ’95 I saw him in The Usual Suspects at Sundance, enjoyed the hell out of his Fred Fenster riff in that police line-up scene, and the rest was history.

Three personal encounters: (a) In April ’95 I persuaded Benicio (plus Bryan Singer, Elizabeth Shue, Lara Flynn Boyle, Gregg Araki, Don Murphy, et. al.) to pose for a Los Angeles magazine piece about the new neo-noir. Benicio didn’t want to pose with a gun, and I sided with him — I felt his pain. A low-key argument with my editor ensued; (b) A brief “hey” at West L.A.’s Lazer Blazer; (c) I next ran into Benicio at Gare du Nord on 1.1.00 — the day after the big Millennial new year. Standing on the platform with a suitcase, cool as a cucumber….”yo!”

I’ve no argument with Benicio being the new Lee Marvin or Warren Oates. Why have these analogies surfaced? Because critics are hugely impressed with Benicio’s Richard Matt in Ben Stiller‘s Escape at Dannemora (Showtime, 11.18). Me too, although I’ve only seen two episodes’ worth. I’ll be working on the remainder this weekend.

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N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd has seen Adam McKay‘s Vice (Annapurna, 12.25). The basic shot: “It uses real-life imagery, witty cinematic asides and cultural touchstones to explore the irreparable damage Vice-President Dick Cheney did to the planet, and how his blunders and plunders led to many of our current crises.

“With an echo of his Batman growl, Christian Bale brilliantly shape-shifts into another American psycho, the lumbering, scheming vice president who easily manipulates the naïve and insecure W., deliciously played by Sam Rockwell. While W. strives to impress his father, Cheney strives to impress his wife, Lynne, commandingly portrayed by Amy Adams.

“Before we had Trump’s swarm of bloodsucking lobbyists gutting government regulations from within, we had Cheney’s.

Before Trump brazenly used the White House to boost his brand, we had Cheney wallowing in emoluments: He let his energy industry pals shape energy policy; he pushed to invade Iraq, giving no-bid contracts to his former employer, Halliburton, and helping his Big Oil cronies reap the spoils in Iraq.

“The movie opens at Christmas, but it’s no sugary Hallmark fable. It’s a harrowing cautionary tale showing that democracy can be sabotaged even more diabolically by a trusted insider, respected by most of the press, than by a clownish outsider, disdained by most of the press.”

For what it’s worth I read a 2016 draft of McKay’s script, which was titled Cheney. I suppose you could call it vaguely “harrowing”, but I mainly got a sense that McKay wanted his audience to smirk and guffaw at Cheney’s maneuverings. It was mainly about dark, deadpan humor.

This morning I read Brooks Barnes‘ 11.9 N.Y. Times piece about the anxieties and convulsions that have seized Hollywood culture (“A Year After #MeToo, Hollywood’s Got a Malaise Money Can’t Cure“). And honestly? The thing that really moved me — the only element that didn’t pass along feelings of despondency — was the L.A. nightscape photo by Hunter Kerhart.

Takeaway #1: Behind closed doors, older entrenched white guys ** are furious and depressed and taking sedatives. Yeah, I know — poor babies, right?

Takeaway #2: Apart from the flush salaries and perks, Hollywood has become a miserable, hellish place in which to work — contentious, combative, paranoid, Stalinoid, progressive but quota-driven, polluted with downmarket crap (superheroes, sequel-itis, horror films) and seemingly devoid of any semblance of pride, joy, comfort or (are you joking?) ’70s-style creative swagger.

Takeaway #3: Everyone “supports” #MeToo, diversity and representation in the ranks — forward into the future, etc. But at the same time the knives and clubs are out. It’s I Am Legend out there. And poor Viggo Mortensen, bruised and bloody on the floor, is wondering how he could have been so clumsy or stupid for a single second in the billions of seconds that have comprised his life. And the fires of hell (probably sparked by a campfire that some asshole forgot to douse) are consuming everything west of the 405.

N.Y. Times photo by Hunter Kerhart.

And on top of all this the vast majority of Americans — the flyover audience Hollywood is looking to simultaneously fleece and entertain and in rare moments emotionally seduce — hates politically correct culture.

If there’s one overriding conviction out there in Bumblefuckland it’s that the p.c. comintern is about fickle sensitivity, arch finger-pointing and instant Twitter lynchings. So much so that Average Joes not only felt sorry for the repulsive Brett Kavanaugh but doubled-down on their loathing of coastal elites by electing some seriously toxic righties a few days ago. Urban libtards are so despised that a sizable chunk of America supports Trumpian Mussolini culture as a bulwark against progressive upheaval. And yet Hollywood decision-makers, forced or obliged or seriously committed to accommodating themselves to p.c. changes, are ironically tasked with creating diversionary dreamscapes for people who despise the very ground they walk upon. Or something like that.

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Six years ago Svetlana Cvetko, Graemm McGavin, Rihannon McGavin and I visited Guillermo del Toro‘s Bleak House in Thousand Oaks — the greatest temple of horror-film worship that’s ever existed. Today Guillermo tweeted that Bleak House may be in danger of being consumed by the Woolsey Fire, and that he’s been forced to evacuate his home (which is right next door). I’m SICK over the possibility of Bleak House being engulfed in flames. It would be like the accidental burning of the Alexandria library.

From sea to shining sea and even in the rural, red-state regions, there’s a rule that everyone understands and lives by. You can use the term “the N word” but never the word itself. Because verbalizing that term, even for an instant, somehow bestows a brief spurt of cultural oxygen, and the rule is that this term must be kept in an airless, vacuum-sealed box inside a concrete underground bunker, never to be exhumed. Which is clearly how it should be.

The night before last Green Book costar Viggo Mortensen, participating in a Film Independent discussion at the Arclight, said the actual, two-syllable N word. I strongly doubt that anyone suspects Mortensen, a gentle, thoughtful, well-liked guy occasionally given to long-winded explanations of feelings and undercurrents, of even being an unconscious R-word person. He just said a stupid thing. Viggo has thoroughly apologized (“I will not utter it again”), but this was a lulu of a verbal blunder.

I hate to say this — I would certainly like to imagine otherwise — but Viggo may have possibly torpedoed his chances of winning a Best Actor Oscar. Or maybe not.

I think people should consider that many actors, especially the brilliant ones, have a naturally open, expansive, dig-down-to-the-bottom-of-things nature, and that Viggo’s instinct to be vivid and/or dramatic briefly overcame his sense of social decorum. Has anyone out there ever blurted out some crude, outre expression for the sake of dramatic emphasis, and then immediately realized that too much emphasis was used? That’s all that happened here — an actorly instinct collided with a strict social taboo.

In a statement given to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Gregg Kilday, Mortensen said the following: “In making the point that many people casually used the ‘N’ word at the time in which the movie’s story takes place, in 1962, I used the full word. Although my intention was to speak strongly against racism, I have no right to even imagine the hurt that is caused by hearing that word in any context, especially from a white man. I do not use the word in private or in public. I am very sorry that I did use the full word last night, and will not utter it again.”

Mortensen added, “One of the reasons I accepted the challenge of working on Peter Farrelly’s Green Book was to expose ignorance and prejudice in the hope that our movie’s story might help in some way to change people’s views and feelings regarding racial issues. It is a beautiful, profound movie story that I am very proud to be a part of.”

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My first thought after hearing about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg breaking three ribs last night was “good God, no…not another Supreme Court vacancy with Trump nominating another Kavanaugh-like partisan…Jesus, please!”

My second thought, of course, was concern for Justice Ginsburg’s well-being. It’s one thing to crack a couple of ribs in your 40s or 50s, but people in their 80s don’t hold up as well. I was actually heartened to read a N.Y. Times account that says Ginsburg “went home after her fall” in her Supreme Court office. In short she didn’t immediately call a doctor because she’s made of sterner stuff. I know it’s not appropriate to call her “a chip off the old Lee Marvin block” but this is how I would handle a fall if I was in her shoes — take the pain, suck it in, brush it off.

But Ginsburg “experienced discomfort over the night” and “was admitted to George Washington University Hospital, where doctors found three broken ribs on her left side,” according to a spokesperson. My head is worried but my heart tells me she’ll get through this.

I suppose I felt particularly startled because last night I watched Justice Ginsburg perform a heroic walk-on at the finale of Mimi Leder‘s On the Basis of Sex, the Ginsburg biopic that will premiere at AFI fest tonight. I attended a guild screening at the SVA theatre on West 23rd Street. The embargo lifts after tonight’s showing.

For three days in early October 2009 I visited the set of Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs in Shreveport, Louisiana. The time I spent chatting with the cast and crew and watching a couple of scenes being shot was interesting and occasionally fascinating. I was mezzo-mezzo with the film that resulted (no one thought it approached the level of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 original) but we’ll let that go for now.

I actually don’t know why I’m mentioning Lurie or the film because the defining event of my Shreveport visit was hooking up with a 39 year-old blonde from Florida. Let’s call her Melissa.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

On 11.9 a six-CD deluxe re-issue of the Beatles’ White Album will go on sale. Boilerplate: “The album’s 30 tracks are newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio, joined by 27 early acoustic demos and 50 session takes, most of which are previously unreleased in any form.”

The late George Martin once remarked that there were too many sub-par tracks on the White Album, and that it would have been a better package if the chaff had been removed. I agree with him. The White Album is an angry, jagged, bloated thing — constantly arguing with itself and indeed the very concept of unity. It’s full of ego wars and me-me-me.

Here’s the HE version of a better, pruned-down version — a single disc, 14 tracks, and in this order:

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

An exclusive Peggy Siegal party for Julian Schnabel‘s Vincent Van Gogh film, At Eternity’s Gate (CBS Films, 11.16), happened today in the Hollywood hills.

The main honorees were director Julian Schnabel and the great Willem Dafoe, whose performance as the tortured and gifted Vincent Van Gogh is surely his finest since inhabiting Jesus of Nazareth 30 years ago in Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (’88). At the very least Dafoe (who was well on his way to a Best Supporting Actor win last year until Sam Rockwell stormed the Bastille) has to be Best Actor nominated…c’mon! This is great, primal, world-class channelling. Ask anyone.

(l. to r.) At Eternity’s Gate star and like Best Actor niminee Willem Dafoe, Al Pacino, director Julian Schnabel and co-screenwriter and co-editor Louise Kugelberg.

Tatyana Antropova, Guillermo del Toro.

Al Pacino, who arrived somewhat late.

San Fernando Valley view from the patio.

The fraternal, warm-hearted Guillermo del Toro conducted a q & a with Schnabel, Dafoe and co-screenwriter and co-editor Louise Kugelberg. Al Pacino (The Irishman) and Benicio del Toro were also in attendance.

Hollywood Elsewhere correspondent Tatyana Antropova, a longtime Van Gogh admirer who read Irving Stone‘s “Lust for Life” in her late teens, attended on my behalf.

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