“You asked me before about perjury, about 20 times in court. I don’t know why you people don’t understand the system. You wanna convict ’em but you’ve got these stupid search and seizure laws. And wiretap [laws]. Case #1 never got made without an illegal wiretap. And nobody’s ever gonna get convicted if a cop don’t commit perjury. You want the big dealer out of business? The only way I know how to push him outta business is to steal his cash. Otherwise somewhere down the line, he’s gonna buy out. He’ll buy himself a bondsman, a D.A., a judge. The scumbag dealer’s back on the street before the arresting officer. The only way I know how to stop him is to steal his cash.”

Billy Crystal is alive and crackling as we speak, obviously, but there’s no denying he had a great run in the early ’90s. A five-year period from ’89 to ’93, specifically. When Harry Met Sally… (’89) kicked things off. The came the near-great. enormously well-liked City Slickers (’91), which opened right smack dab in the middle of Crystal’s four-year-run as the Oscar host (’90 to ’93), which cemented his top-of-the-worldness. (Crystal also Oscar-hosted in ’97, ’98, ’00, ’04 and ’12.)

Things slightly downshifted for Crystal over the next five or six years — City Slickers 2, Mr. Saturday Night, Forget Paris, Hamlet, Deconstructing Harry, Fathers’ Day, My Giant. But he rebounded big-time with Harold Ramis‘s Analyze This (’99). Then he directed ’61, which I re-watched recently and has aged very well. And then he delivered a beautiful eulogy for Muhammud Ali two years ago. And he’s got the book. But the early ’90s!

I’d honestly forgotten that 10-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal played Crystal’s son, Danny, in City Slickers.

From Philip Lopate’s N.Y. Review of Books essay on Joseph McBride‘s “How Did Lubitsch Do It?” (Columbia University Press, 561 pp., $40.00): “McBride has set out to write not a biography (no need for that, since Scott Eyman’s ‘Laughter in Paradise’ is so satisfying) but an in-depth ‘essayistic investigation’ of the entire oeuvre. What has been lacking until this critical study has been a sustained, systematic, fully integrated overview of both Lubitsch’s German and American work. Without seeing his career as a single, unified whole, it cannot be fully understood or appreciated.”

Excerpt from “The Masters’ Master: Ernst Lubitsch and The Marriage Circle,” a McBride essay posted on brightlights.com, itself excerpted from “How Did Lubitsch Do It?”: “The name Ernst Lubitsch stood for the epitome of sophisticated humor and romance in what we now regard as the Golden Age of Hollywood. As fellow producer/director Mervyn LeRoy said when presenting him with an honorary Oscar on March 13, 1947, seven months before Lubitsch’s death, ‘He had an adult mind and a hatred of saying things the obvious way. Because of these qualities and a God-given genius, he advanced the technique of screen comedy as no one else has ever done.”

“[The German-born helmer’s] approach to style and theme was widely celebrated as ‘the Lubitsch Touch,’ a virtually indefinable yet almost tangible concept embodying an ever-fresh, delightful, tantalizing, slyly witty blend of style and substance. It combines a characteristic joie de vivre in the actors with an elegant visual design that conveys its meanings largely through sophisticated innuendo.

“But the phrase was something of a marketing cliché, like calling Hitchcock ‘the Master of Suspense,’ and Lubitsch himself was apt to joke about it. When people would ask him what it meant, he would say with a grin, ‘I would like to know myself…you find out and tell me, maybe?’ And he said, ‘I cannot give you a definitive answer because, fortunately, I’m not conscious of it. If I ever become conscious of it — Heaven prevent — I might lose it.’”

Speaking as the business affairs simpleton that I basically am, wouldn’t it be better for Comcast to buy 20th Century Fox rather than Disney? Because then Fox, a studio that had a fairly grand history from the 1920s until a decade or so ago, would continue to exist and generate its own material instead of being folded into Disney. That would be preferable, no? At the very least from a spiritual standpoint. Keep blaring that Fox fanfare!

I’m trying to imagine some kind of professional acrimonious situation in which I would actually try to harm another journalist’s livelihood — his or her access to screenings or festivals, let’s say — or diminish his or her advertising revenue. I’m trying to imagine even considering this kind of ugly behavior, but I can’t. It’s not in me. I’ve never tried to interfere with a fellow journalist trying to find work or generate this or that form of income. I’ve never whispered in an editor’s ear, “Don’t hire this or that critic”…ever.

Are there a few journalist-critics whom I don’t personally like all that much? Sure, a few, but I’ve never tried to harm them professionally. Ever.

This is how I was in high school, actually. I would never put anyone down, or at least no one who hadn’t put me down first. I would never huddle with the weasels in my clique and sneer at some other kid because we didn’t like cut of his jeans. People do this in high school all the time, of course, and then they go on to do it in the workplace. People talking shit about others is a national pastime. Some people can be real vipers when they put their minds to it.

Have I ever acted in an ugly or unbecoming fashion? Yes, I’ve slipped a few times, and I sincerely apologize for this. But I’ve never tried to hurt a fellow journo in the pocketbook. Ever.

I’m mentioning this because a couple of critics tried to do this to me last weekend. They actually called or wrote this or that publicist or film festival or distributor and said, “Please help us snuff this guy out…we don’t like him and we want him dead.” They actually did this. Because they dislike me personally. Which, in and of itself, is fine with me. I don’t like them either, but that’s where it stays.

Worse, there’s one distributor whose ad director, based on my correspondence, may have actually said to one of these would-be assassins, “Sure thing, we hear you, we’ll join your cause.” Words fail.

Boiled down, the Donald Trump “make America white again” nightmare — fascistic bully-boy mindset, Putin-suckling, dismantling of democracy, catering to the stupidest sector of the electorate, attacks on press, Charlottesville, anti-immigrant policies, trade-tariff wars, Scott Pruitt‘s destruction of the environment — was ushered in by the failure of Hillary Clinton to run an effective presidential campaign.

Every day I wake up shattered by the spreading Trump miasma, but I also curse Hillary’s name — every damn day. She did this to us. She and her centrist, Democratic-establishment cronies.

I voted for Hillary like any sane person, but she lost because she was a testy, dislikable, highly conflicted candidate without that natural charisma, but more specifically because of nine factors:

(a) The James Comey letter, (b) that awful secretive nature which led to the private email server, (c) nodding with approval as DNC honcho Debbie Wasserman Schultz schemed, rigged & plotted against Bernie Sanders, (d), that entirely justified, 100% accurate “deplorables” comment, (e) fainting during that World Trade Center memorial service, (f) that cackle, (g) those eye bags, (h) choosing Tim Kaine as her VP rather than Bernie or Elizabeth Warren, and (i) failing to campaign more aggressively in Wisconsin and Michigan.

But the biggest killers were the Comey letter, the fainting, the “deplorables,” the plotting-against-Bernie thing, choosing Kaine and the personal-style trifecta — that awful cackle, that braying voice and that testy substitute-teacher vibe combined with the eye bags.

She did this — she allowed the most odious, fiendish, openly fascistic and wantonly destructive president in the nation’s history to seize power and take us all down in the process.

Speaking of unrelated nightmares: https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2017/08/brief-nightmare/

I’ve never had much interest in the fanatical anger that hardcore Star Wars fans have been venting since The Last Jedi popped last December, and especially (I guess) since the tanking of Solo.

And I’ve never felt anything but loathing for the haters who went after poor Kelly Marie Tran (i.e, “Rose Tico”), who handled herself pretty well in The Last Jedi, I thought. She’s a good actress who rose to the occasion.

But I was struck just now by a comment posted this morning (6.11) in a Deadline thread. By a guy named “James 1701.” (I think.) It seems to lay out all the basic beefs. I don’t give a damn about this stuff, but please read and comment — I’m curious what the HE crowd thinks. In fact, try reading some of the other comments first — they offer context.

“Not a hate bandwagon. It’s totally legit. Force Awakens was alright but forgettable. Not a great movie and they forgot to include any character development, backstory explanation, or originality. It introduced a Mary Sue for the main character and some ridiculous SJW ideals for everyone [else]. It murdered a beloved character [Han Solo] with no build-up or reason whatsoever, and it completely omitted the most popular character in the entire franchise. The other new characters were just straight-up awful and the main bad guy is an email.”

Kylo Ren is “an email”? I’ve never called anyone or anything that, but it’s kinda funny.

Back to James1701: “Rogue One continued this trend but was added a Darth Vader scene and a tie-in to A New Hope.

“The Last Jedi was horrendous and made The Force Awakens [seem] even worse. More character assassination, less back-story, more SJW bullshit, and it just killed off the most popular character while making him look like a fool.

“And then Solo followed in these footsteps.

“Rian Johnson, Kathleen Kennedy, Jar-Jar Abrams and the rest of Disney have crapped all over fans, insulting then and calling them racist and idiots. They’ve quite literally just killed the just successful movie franchise of all times. They honestly shouldn’t even make Episode 9. They should just start over and redo episode 7 with a totally new creative team and pretend The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi never happened.”

Soon after last weekend’s news of Anthony Bourdain‘s suicide, a friend sent me a 6.5 Daily Mail story about Asia Argento hanging the previous weekend with journalist Hugo Clement in Rome. There was a suggestion that Argento’s seeming infidelity might have acted as a “trigger” incident that affected Bourdain in a negative way. A People piece is suggesting something along these lines.

I immediately dismissed it. No semi-mature person, even one grappling with depression, offs themselves over this kind of thing. Bourdain seemed way too wise and seasoned to act like a broken-hearted teenager. Or maybe Bourdain and Argento had a fluid relationship that allowed for occasional dalliances with other people. Who knows?

Apparently some people have been talking about the Argento-Clement thing because a few hours ago Rose McGowan released an open letter about the Bourdain-Argento relationship — a letter intended to dissuade people from coming to the wrong conclusion.

“I write these truths because I have been asked to,” McGowan began. “I know so many around the world thought of Anthony Bourdain as a friend and when a friend dies, it hurts. Many of these people who lost their ‘friend’ are wanting to lash out and blame. You must not sink to that level. Suicide is a horrible choice, but it is that person’s choice.

“Anthony and Asia had a free relationship,” McGowan explained. “They loved without borders of traditional relationships, and they established the parameters of their relationship early on. Asia is a free bird, and so was Anthony. Was. Such a terrible word to write. I’ve heard from many that the past two years they were together were some of his happiest and that should give us all solace.

“When Anthony met Asia, it was instant chemistry. They laughed, they loved and he was her rock during the hardships of this last year. Anthony was open with his demons, he even wrote a book about them. And through a lot of this last year, Asia did want the pain to stop. But here’s the thing, over their time together, thankfully, she did the work to get help, so she could stay alive and live another day for her and her children.

“Anthony’s depression didn’t let him, he put down his armor, and that was very much his choice. His decision, not hers. His depression won.”

This isn’t a “review” of Incredibles 2 as I left after 45 minutes. I was in pain — my mind was under attack by hornets and bumblebees. There are some pissants out there who feel that walking out is never cool, but occasionally it’s not only valid but necessary. I’ve bailed on films before and I probably will again.

14 years ago I fell hard for The Incredibles. The revved-up mixture of wit, laughter and a clever premise (superhero family with p.r. problems, frowned upon by powers-that-be), and all of it catapulted by hilarious, well-choreographed action. A perfect stew.

Incredibles 2 felt to me like a whole different animal. 2018 and 2004 are different realms, and for me the charm-and-finesse factor this time was pretty much out the window. Too hyper, too ADD, too antsy, too nutso, too FX- and spectacle-driven, too corporate, too family-friendly…it drove me nuts. I had to get out of there. Really.

49 years ago NASA did everything they could to minimize the drama, the tension and the risk factor of the first manned landing on the moon. They talked about it like it was a complex dental procedure or maybe something a little gnarlier. Even Norman Mailer‘s book, “Of A Fire In The Moon,” delivered a vaguely dull feeling. Now comes Damien Chazelle‘s First Man (Universal, 10.12), and of course he’s done everything he can to emphasize the drama, the tension and the risk factor. I’ve got the script on my Macbook Pro; reading it soon.

Put-put-putting down the Hoi An river and the memories that go with that — the warm air, the foodie aromas, the magic-hour light, the hornet sound of scooters, the laid-back tropical vibes…for some reason all of this reminds me of Anthony Bourdain, who was alive and well and doing great when this video was shot five and a half years ago, or in November 2012. Vietnam was — always will be — the biggest thing I had in common with the guy. I wept a little today.

Not the actors, of course — the rural Pennsylvania characters they played. And not back then but now — 40 years older, grayer, heavier and hugely pissed off that the white America they grew up with is a thing of the past. There are very few films that I despise more than Michael Cimino‘s reprehensible, frequently nonsensical proletariat social drama, which I was initially impressed by in some respects (that awesome cutaway from a Pennsylvania wedding ceremony to the jungles of Vietnam) but hated in others. Russian roulette….bullshit. A loving tribute to rural ignorance and delusion that brought a tear to my eye…not.