Prior to last night’s London premiere of SuspiriaDakota Johnson flashed her partially unshaven armpits for photographers. Different grooming disciplines for different folks, I suppose, but we all know that the general tendency over the last 15 or 20 has been to trim, snip and shave. Among both genders, I mean. Dakota is an outlier. There’s no way wage-earning women are going to start walking around with bushy armpits…no way. Any more than they’re going to abandon the genital airstrip or chean-shaven aesthetic. When was the last time any woman or man went bushy in any respect? I forget how many years ago it was that Howard Stern spoke about using a razor all over, but he’s not alone.
A new Atlantic piece by James Fallows passes along a first-hand conspiracy story from Democratic strategist James Strother. The gist is that the late Republican torpedo specialist Lee Atwater (the guy behind the Willie Horton ad) confessed to Strother on his death bed in ’91 that he “set up” 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart. The cancer-stricken Atwater, 39 years old, allegedly told Strother that “I did it!…I fixed Hart.” The whole Monkey Business episode with Donna Rice, Atwater meant, and that damning photo of Rice sitting on Hart’s lap. All of it a political trap.
Atwater somehow took advantage of and/or worked with Billy Broadhurst, the “political groupie and aspiring insider” who had taken Hart on the fateful Monkey Business cruise. Rice and another woman were invited to join the cruise, and the photo of Rice on Hart’s lap was planned and of course used after Hart suspended in his 1988 campaign. Fallows writes that there’s no proof of this other than Strother’s account.
As much as I admire Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, which is all about how Hart’s campaign was destroyed by allegations about a possible Rice affair, it would have been that much stronger a film if the Strother-Atwater story had been woven into the plot. Right now the movie has two hand-of-doom elements — Hart’s cavalier self-destructiveness in not hiding his indiscretions more covertly or skillfully, and the Miami Herald reporters who were tipped off about Hart’s affair with Rice. If the Strother-Atwater story has been used, it would have trumped both of these elements.
Did Hart have certain extra-marital tendencies before the Rice scandal? According to legend, yes. Would he have gotten into trouble with some other lust object if the Rice thing hadn’t happened? Possibly. But the Atwater confession certainly adds spice to the brew.
Strother and Atwater had the mutually respectful camaraderie of highly skilled rivals. “Lee and I were friends,” Strother told me when I spoke with him by phone recently. “We’d meet after campaigns and have coffee, talk about why I did what I did and why he did what he did.” One of the campaigns they met to discuss afterward was that 1988 presidential race, which Atwater (with Bush) had of course ended up winning, and from which Hart had dropped out. But later, during what Atwater realized would be the final weeks of his life, Atwater phoned Strother to discuss one more detail of that campaign.
Atwater had the strength to talk for only five minutes. “It wasn’t a ‘conversation,’ ” Strother said when I spoke with him recently. “There weren’t any pleasantries. It was like he was working down a checklist, and he had something he had to tell me before he died.”
I’ve seen Doug Liman‘s new version of Fair Game (’10), which will hit digital platforms 10.23 and Netflix on November 1st. I loved Liman’s true-life political spy saga when I caught it eight and a half years ago in Cannes. I guess it doesn’t mean all that much that I’m also a fan of the new version, which is roughly six minutes longer. The 2010 version was just shy of 108 minutes; the newbie is 114 minutes.
Based on truth and an exceptionally smart script by Jez and John Butterworth, Fair Game is the story of how former CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and her husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) were burned by Scooter Libby (David Andrews), the top aide of vp Dick Cheney, when Wilson publicly challenged the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq had secretly purchased carloads of yellow-cake uranium from Niger to fortify its alleged weapons-of-mass-destruction program, which the Bushies used to justify the 2003 Iraq invasion.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg is reporting that Olivia Colman, who plays the role of Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite, is officially campaigning for Best Actress. Despite fair assessments to the contrary.
Any straight-shooting, non-agenda-driven assessment of this admired period drama would conclude that Colman’s character is roughly analogous to Robert Shaw‘s Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting. For Queen Anne is a mark, which is to say a character being played or duped or exploited in order to serve the interests of others, which in this case are Rachel Weisz‘s Sarah Churchill and Emma Stone‘s Abigail Masham.
The Wrecking Crew, The Killing of Sister George, Krakatoa, East of Java…really? To go by the 1969 marquees and posters in Quentin Tarantino‘s currently filming Upon Upon A Time in Hollywood, you could get the idea that ’69 was a moderately shitty year in movies.
But of course, Tarantino is deliberately emphasizing the dicey titles and avoiding the good stuff. For ’69 also saw the release of George Roy Hill‘s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, John Schlesinger‘s Midnight Cowboy, Dennis Hopper‘s Easy Rider, Paul Mazursky‘s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Henry Hathaway‘s True Grit, Larry Peerce‘s Goodbye, Columbus, Peter Hunt‘s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Vilgot Sjöman‘s I Am Curious (Yellow), Costa-Gavras‘ Z, Alan Pakula‘s The Sterile Cuckoo, Sydney Pollack‘s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Sam Peckinpah‘s The Wild Bunch.
Actually Robert Aldrich‘s Sister George wasn’t too bad. One of the first mainstream lesbian films, unless I’m misremembering. Somber. Ground-breaking sex scene between Susannah York and Coral Browne.
I’m not sure if the following notion is worth exploring, but I’m wondering which noteworthy 21st Century films would be enhanced if you watched them while tripping on LSD. I say this not having come within miles of the stuff since the pre-Watergate Nixon administration, but there used to be this notion that certain films would take on a quality of dimensional extra-ness (more poignant, hilarious, emotional, profound, meaningful) if you watched them after dropping a tab of Orange Wedge or Blue Cheer.
Curious as this might sound, Sydney Pollack‘s Castle Keep, which is kind of a trippy film to begin with, plays really well under this condition. So do Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show and What’s Up, Doc?. But not Targets.
I’m not saying all high-school girls are fickle and flighty, but a lot of them are. Or were, at least, when I was an awkward, insecure schlemiel.
In my senior year I had it bad for a great Irish blonde named SallyJoQuinn. Or so she seemed at the time. Short, slender, magnificent blue eyes, straight blonde hair, smallish feet, slender hands with chewed nails. No dad at home; just her single mom who worked as an administrative something-or-other at the high school. I can’t recall if the parents had divorced or if the father had died or what.
All I could do was dream about putting the moves on Sally. She wasn’t entirely averse to my attentions as a couple of hot and heavy episodes did happen. Once in my car (i.e., my father’s train-station car) and once while lying on a bed of brown pine needles in a woodsy area near the town reservoir.
Hollywood Elsewhere will catch today’s 3 pm New York Film Festival press screening of Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’s Gate. The CBS Films release (opening on 11.16) is a Vincent Van Gogh-in-Arles film that allegedly contains Willem Dafoe‘s greatest performance since The Last Temptation of Christ. The costars are Rupert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner and Niels Arestrup.
I know the territory to some extent. I’ve been to Arles. I’ve stood inches away from some of Van Gogh’s paintings at the Musee D’Orsay. I’m very familiar with the Montmartre apartment building that Vincent and Theo shared in 1886 or thereabouts. I’ve seen Vincente Minnelli‘s Lust for Life a couple of times. All of it, the whole Van Gogh ride, all my life.
To hear it from The Limey‘s Terry Valentine (i.e., Peter Fonda), 1966 was the only year in which “the ’60s” were fully in flower. There were countless manifestations — spiritual, creative — and hints of coming disturbances. April ’66 saw the famous Time magazine cover that asked “Is God dead?”, which was used by Roman Polanski during the filming of Rosemary’s Baby a year later. The following month saw the release of Bob Dylan‘s Blonde On Blonde (and the coughing heat pipes in “Visions of Johanna”) and Brian Wilson‘s Pet Sounds, and three months later Revolver, the Beatles’ “acid album” which turned out to be their nerviest and most leap-forwardy, was released. All kinds of mildly trippy, tingly, unnerving things were popping all over.
But you’d never guess what was happening to go by the mood, tone and between-the-lines repartee during the 39th Oscar Awards, which honored the best films of 1966 but aired in April ’67, or roughly seven weeks before the release of Sgt. Pepper. Bob Hope‘s opening monologue is punishing, almost physically painful to endure. And look…there’s Ginger Rogers!
Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons won six Oscars that night — Picture, Director (Fred Zinneman), Actor (Paul Scofield), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction — and there’s no question that it still “plays”. Well acted, beautifully written by Robert Bolt. But it also feels a bit smug by today’s standards, a little too starchy and theatrical.
What 1966 films play best by 2018 aesthetic standards? Certainly The Sand Pebbles, which should have won Best Picture, and which contained Steve McQueen‘s most open-hearted, career-best performance. The second best ’66 film by my yardstick was and is Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blowup (that London-based film completely absorbed and reflected what was going in in late ’65 and ’66). The third finest was Richard Brooks‘ The Professionals, a crafty, ace-level western actioner that plays beautifully by today’s measure and which contains Lee Marvin‘s second-best performance (after “Walker” in ’67’s Point Blank).
Other ’66 hotties: Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Lewis Gilbert‘s Alfie, John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds and GrandPrix, Milos Forman‘s Loves of a Blonde, Billy Wilder‘s The Fortune Cookie, Norman Jewison‘s The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, ClaudeLelouch‘s AMan and a Woman, Gille Pontecorvo‘s The Battle of Algiers, Richard Lester‘s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pier Paolo Woody Allen’s What’sUp, TigerLily?, Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Karel Reisz‘s Morgan!, or a Suitable Case for Derangement.
Yesterday the Daily Mailran a story about Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount, 6.26.20), which is currently lensing in the San Diego area.
The article claims that Cruise barely looks older than he did in the original Top Gun, which was shot when he was 24. But he does look a bit more creased, of course. There was no missing that fact in last summer’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout. Every 56 year-old looks older than they did in their mid 20s.
Two weeks away from starting principal photography, Annapurna bailed yesterday on Fair and Balanced, a Roger Ailes biopic to directed by Jay Roach based on a script by Charles Randolph, and costar John Lithgow as Ailes, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch and Margot Robbie as a fictional Fox News-employed character.
Who abruptly pulls the plug on a big-name, fact-based docudrama only 14 days before the start of shooting? Answer: No one unless something else is going on. Something unusual, head-turning, perhaps turbulent.
