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It was reported yesterday that Louis C.K. came out of hiding Sunday night for 15 minutes. After being outed last November by the N.Y. Times for being a weenie wagger and then confessing to same a few days later, the 51 year old comedian performed a surprise 15-minute set at Manhattan’s The Comedy Cellar.

The message was “okay, I took myself out of circulation nine months ago for good reason, but now that I’ve done some isolation time — call it a meditative prison sentence — I’d like to begin to inch my way back into performing again…is that cool or, you know, what do you think?”

Guys seem willing to cut him a little slack while women are like “what, he’s back already?”

HE’s view is “well, what he did was obviously grotesque, but how many months of living in the shadows does he have to commit to before he’s allowed to start performing again? He didn’t kill, rape or sexually stalk or harass anyone, at least not on a sustained basis. And he didn’t expose himself to children. He copped to being a creep and threw himself on the church steps. He needed to go away, obviously, but what kind of a sentence does he need to serve? A year? Two years?”

Is the general #MeToo position that he deserves (a) a death sentence, (b) a life of wandering in the desert like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, (c) five or ten years of wandering or (d) something less severe?

Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman told the Times’ Melena Ryzik that “there can’t be a permanent life sentence on someone who does something wrong.”

What Louis C.K. did with those women who spoke to the N.Y. Times wasn’t just hurtful and offensive — it was astonishing. Before that story ran I’d never even heard of a guy whipping it out as a form of foreplay or whatever. My reaction was “who does that?”

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I’m sorry but I’m getting the wrong kind of signals from this barely-there teaser for Brady Corbet‘s Vox Lux, a seemingly angst-ridden music-industry drama that focuses on 18 years in the life of Celeste, a gloomhead pop superstar (Natalie Portman). I don’t mean the kind of signals that suggest a possibly bad or frothy or ineffective film (I read a draft of the script a year or so ago and it wasn’t half bad), but indications that some of us may not give that much of a shit.

Making it in the music business is no small feat, and lasting, much less maintaining relevancy, in the limelight for over 15 years is even tougher, and so I vaguely resent films that suggest superstardom is mainly about having great hair and the right kind of wardrobe and expert lighting design and multitudes screaming your name.

Put another way, I vaguely resent movies about hugely popular performers that fail to convey how difficult it is to be even a competent, half-decent musician-performer (I’m saying this as a formerly mediocre drummer), much less fulfill a phenomenal potential. Geniuses don’t have to sweat the inspiration part, but they still have to work and perspire their asses off to make the song (or the novel or the film or the haute couture line) come out right. Movies always seem to ignore the creative struggle aspect.

Oh, and a Scott Walker score isn’t enough. There has to be a good, solid film to complement his input…sorry.

Corbet’s 110-minute drama, currently without distribution, will premiere soon at the Venice Film Festival. Raffey Cassidy, Jude Law, Stacy Martin and Jennifer Ehle costar.

Frank Tuttle‘s This Gun For Hire (’42) is primarily a violent thriller, but the combination of frostiness and vulnerability in Alan Ladd‘s Raven, a professional assassin, feeds into a vibe of brusque indifference and existential despair. Released two years before Billy Wilder‘s Double Indemnity, I’ve always regarded This Gun For Hire as the first high-impact film noir. Which puts it into the pantheon of 1940s releases. Pretty much every film-loving dweeb subscribes to this view.

But for some odd reason Universal has never released a Bluray or streamed it in HD. Here we are in 2018, and the only way to watch this still engrossing, hard-boiled drama is on that same shitty DVD Universal released 14 years ago. Why don’t they get the lead out and remaster it? It would be fairly criminal to just let it remain a 480p experience.

Ladd’s breakout performance made him a big star, but his flush days lasted only about 15 years, give or take. The poor guy died at age 50, of an accidental suicide in January of ’64.

“Once Ladd had acquired an unsmiling hardness, he was transformed from an extra to a phenomenon. Ladd’s calm slender ferocity make it clear that he was the first American actor to show the killer as a cold angel.” – David Thomson, “A Biographical Dictionary of Film.”

“One shudders to think of the career which Paramount must have in mind for Alan Ladd, a new actor, after witnessing the young gentleman’s debut in This Gun for Hire… Obviously, they’ve tagged him to be the toughest monkey loose on the screen. For not since Jimmy Cagney massaged Mae Clarke‘s face with a grapefruit has a grim desperado gunned his way into cinema ranks with such violence as does Mr. Ladd in this fast and exciting melodrama. Keep your eye peeled for this Ladd fellow; he’s a pretty-boy killer who likes his work…Mr. Ladd is the buster; he is really an actor to watch.” — from Bosley Crowther‘s review of This Gun For Hire (’42).

The great Neil Simon has passed at the age of 91. Great as in hugely popular, prolific, hard-working, driven. I always admired his success and relentless output and came to respect some of his more mature material of the ’70s and ’80s, but I never regarded him as a heavyweight. Which he didn’t need to be because he was “Neil Simon.”

I was always impressed and often amused by Simon’s screenplays, which were usually adaptations of his hit Broadway plays, but I never thought they were profoundly moving or emotionally devastating or anything in that realm. They were mostly safe, likable and easily digestible stories about middle-class relationships (love affairs, marriages, families) for all ages but mostly for people born between the 1920s to the mid ’40s, or those who came of age with a “life can be brutally hard” sensibility that definitely resulted in a pre-boomer attitude.

Born in 1927, Simon grew up during the Depression and World War II and obviously believed that the gift of laughter was worth its weight in gold. His plays were never silly or juvenile and occasionally had bite and tension, but they were always “likable” and uplifting. Simon was a smart, very shrewd guy who used his life experience (struggling New York Jewish) to propel and sharpen his stories, but he always needed to entertain. And that he did. He wrote clean and true and, having come from TV comedy in the ’50s, knew about timing and pacing. His dialogue always felt “written,” but in a pleasingly professional way.

Simon was always a New York playwright first and a Hollywood screenwriter second.

A few months ago I re-watched Gene Saks‘ adaptation of Barefoot in the Park (’67), which Simon wrote in the very early ’60s (which were basically the ’50s extended up until the Kennedy assassination) and which opened on Broadway in October 1963. Costarring Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick and Charles Boyer, it’s very easy, witty and unthreatening. Always alert and “real” as far as it went, and never tiresome or lacking in pep.

As a failed screenwriter I know something about how difficult it is to write well and concisely while generating laughs and sustaining dramatic tension, and so I have nothing but respect for that play and film. But there’s nothing earth-shattering about it.

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“We have the problem that they tell us Logan is a great movie. Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is. I went to see Logan ’cause everyone was like ‘this is a great movie’ and I was like really? No, this is a fine superhero movie. There’s a difference but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.” — Ethan Hawke quoted on 8.23 by The Film Stage‘s Rory O’Connor.

The same thing is happening now with reports about Disney pushing Ryan Coogler‘s Black Panther as a serious Best Picture contender. I wouldn’t be surprised if it lands a Best Picture nomination — in fact I’m predicting flat-out that it will.

But it can’t win, of course. One, it doesn’t really kick into gear until the last hour. And two, it’s basically a Marvel movie adhering to the same basic story beats that other Marvel flicks have followed, the difference being the native African representation factor and the whole historic pride thing that goes along with that, and of course the huge box-office factor. At the end of the day it’s going to win the Best Popular Film Oscar — we all know that.

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During last night’s chat with John Brennan, Bill Maher said something about the Trump miasma having put America and Americans in the midst of one of the three biggest critical crossroad moments in our nation’s history, the first two being the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

It’s now clear that a highly significant minority (i.e., the entire country outside the cities) is ready to abandon the basic tenets of democracy and for that matter sanity in order to submit to a crime-family autocrat who at least, they’re telling themselves, is trying to preserve a semblance of white-male dominance as they remember it from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Beast that he is, Trump’s supporters are rationalizing that at least he’s standing foursquare for heartland white culture (or claiming as much) and trying to prevent the multiculturals and LGBTQs from gaining too much ground.

From “How Far America Has Fallen,” a N.Y. Times opinion piece by columnist Roger Cohen, posted on 8.24:

“The thing about all the shocking Trump revelations is that they are already baked into Trump’s image. His supporters, and there are tens of millions of them, never had illusions. I’ve not met one who did not have a pretty clear picture of Trump. They’ve known all along that he’s a needy narcissist, a womanizer, a lowlife, a liar, a braggart and a generally miserable human being. That’s why the Access Hollywood tape or the I-could-shoot-somebody-on-Fifth-Avenue boast did not kill his candidacy.

“There’s a deeper question, which comes back to the extraordinary Western landscape and the high American idea enshrined in it. Americans elected Trump. Nobody else did. They came down to his level. White Christian males losing their place in the social order decided they’d do anything to save themselves, and to heck with morality. They made a bargain with the devil in full knowledge. So the real question is: What does it mean to be an American today? Who are we, goddamit? What have we become?

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If you’re any kind of movie Catholic, you need to do the Point Blank Walker walk (clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop) at least once after arriving at LAX. No walking with friends or family — you have to do it solo in one of those long, linoleum-floored passageways between the upstairs arrival area and the baggage carousels. There are at least one or two remaining. The one I clop-clopped on this morning is part of the American Airlines terminal. I shot some video, but I got the aspect ratio wrong. Very embarassing.

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Having read the TMZ piece with the Asia Argento-Jimmy Bennett photos and Argento’s text to a friend about same, a colleague says the following:

“Asia says she wants to be part of the 90% that doesn’t give a fuck about this shit? Really? Fuck you, lady. You’ve been doing nothing but being a #MeToo crusader for a year. YOU are the one that made people freak about nearly every man in Hollywood. What the fuck?

“And by the way it doesn’t matter if Jimmy came onto her or not. It really doesn’t. Sure, if she wants to stand on the side of those who deny they assaulted people because those people were willing participants, just like Harvey Weinstein? Great. Go for it. But that is not who she has been in the public eye.

“She’s also ready to lay 100% of the blame on poor, dead Anthony Bourdain, who’s beginning to look more and more like the one who wanted it covered up because his reputation was also on the line.”

HE comment: In the TMZ text Argento describes a randy Jimmy plowing her soil and writing afterward that he loves her…totally into it. I wasn’t there, but this seems a lot more realistic than the image that certain Twitter snowflakes were advancing, that of a traumatized, sexually uncertain youth who felt assaulted by a ravenous older woman.

HE to London-based critic who shall be nameless: Are you still maintaining that my initial take on this episode was the “wrong” one?

Ozark star-director Jason Bateman is an HE reader, which is one reason why I’ve always paid special attention to whatever he’s up to, including the paycheck comedies. Another reason is that his performances are usually on the dryly ironic, underplayed side. A third reason is that he’s an above-average director (Bad Words, The Family Fang). Which is why I felt kinda badly as I wrote the following email, which I sent him this morning:

I have an apology to make. A big one. I try and watch as much well-reviewed cable fare as I can fit into my schedule, but between all the movies and filings and researchings and constant deadlines and whatnot, I don’t see everything. I tend to be picky. Plus I’m occasionally reluctant to get into series because of the long-haul commitment of eight to ten hours. Plus I have a prejudice about drug-dealing melodramas, especially if some of the characters are redneck biker types with tattoos and missing teeth. This is one reason why I avoided Breaking Bad; the other was that it costarred an actor I often referred to as “tennis-ball head,” and whom I can’t stand.

These are no excuses — I’m just telling you how I play it sometimes.

Last night I finally sat down and watched the first two episodes of Ozark (two of the four that you directed over the course of season #1) and was pretty much blown away. Which is to say hooked and committed. Marty Byrde is your best character, ever; ditto your best performance ever, in anything.

Clean, unfettered, no-nonsense direction. And the writing! Hats off to the decision by screenwriters Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams to give almost every character (even the lowest, scurviest ones) something arresting or eloquent or off-angled to say. I love it when everyone is sharp and clever and has sussed all the angles, regardless of their age (Marty’s two kids are great) or genetic inheritance or educational background. I was engrossed, riveted, satisfied.

I don’t know at what point I was finally sold, but I think it was the moment when the body of Laura Linney‘s boyfriend slammed into the pavement at 150 miles per hour. And I loved how you didn’t build up to this or show the cartel goons pushing him out — your character is just approaching the building, going over what he’ll say to his cheating wife, and WHUP!

Hats off, bowing down, obeisance before power.

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I noted last year that for a majority of journos with tight travel schedules and a pile of deadlines, the four-day Telluride Film Festival is actually a three-day if not a two-and-a-half-day festival. Which means that out of 30 films typically scheduled, go-getters can maybe catch 14 or 15, tops. And that’s if you’re really aggressive about it. If you’re only moderately aggressive you’ll wind up seeing 10 or 12.

The fest doesn’t begin until mid-Friday afternoon (i.e., post Patron’s Brunch), which affords an opportunity to see two or three films during the remainder of that day. Three or four pics are catchable on Saturday and Sunday for a likely total of 10 or 11 by Sunday midnight, and maybe a couple more on Monday before leaving town. And you have to review everything as you go along.

On top of which Telluride often schedules the highest-interest films against each other so you’re always missing out on Peter in order to see Paul. On top of which are the dinners and parties.

I’m given to understand that the following films are locked for Telluride ’18: Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, Mike Leigh‘s Peterloo, Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind, Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Favourite, Olivier Assayas‘ Non-Fiction, Marielle Heller‘s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner, David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun, Yann Demange‘s White Boy Rick, Karyn Kusama‘s Destroyer, Joel Edgerton‘s Boy Erased, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War and Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Shoplifters. (14)

HE solution to Telluride gridlock: With everyone arriving on Thursday afternoon, the festival should begin on Thursday night with hottie screenings at all the venues (Chuck Jones, Werner Herzog, Palm, Galaxy, Pierre, Backlot) starting at 7 pm and then again at 9:30 or 10 pm. Hell, stage a midnight screening or two. And then more hottie screenings on Friday morning starting at 8:30 or 9 am. Those who wish to attend the Patrons picnic could squeeze it in around 11 or 11:30 am, but a full load of screenings would continue for those who’d rather catch films than eat.

By launching on Thursday night and starting screenings early on Friday morning, four or five fresh opportunities to catch the must-sees would be on every visiting critic’s plate. And for those who might prefer to take a more leisurely, old-time approach, they can still start things off with the picnic and then the first Patrons screening at the Chuck Jones at 2:30 pm, and no harm done.

Now doesn’t that make sense?

Vulture‘s Hollywood guy Kyle Buchanan is the new “Carpetbagger” for the New York Times. He’ll be the fourth to carry that brand, the previous three being Cara Buckley, Melena Ryzik and the late, great David Carr.

The carpetbagger term fit Carr because he was basically a brainy, independent-minded New York guy (lived in Montclair) who never really played the Hollywood game. Buchanan, on the other hand, has been playing it all along, Los Angeles-based in more ways than one, schnorring and observing his way through the six-month-long award season with the rest of us.

Buchanan will launch his Times coverage with the early fall film festivals — Telluride, Toronto, New York. This morning I asked Buchanan who will succeed him as the new Vulture award-season person. “To be determined,” he said.

It always bothered me when Buckley and Ryzik would declare that Oscar season begins in December….no! It begins with Telluride and ends with the Oscar telecast, which this year will take five and a half months. Get that through your heads.

Buchanan quoted by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson: “I’m excited to cover Hollywood out of Hollywood. Mostly, though, I hope to bring the same wit and curiosity to the job that my predecessors did. Yes, there are a lot of silly things about the Oscars — and trust, I love covering the silly things too — but I believe that when you really understand awards season, this is a continually exciting and surprising beat where the stories lend us a prism through which we can better know the world. Even a simple snub isn’t always just a snub: It can tell us a lot about what we canonize as a society and reveal where our blind spots still lie.”

Well said, Kyle. This is what L.A. Daily News critic and Oscar disser Bob Strauss is either incapable of understanding or refuses to consider.

An 8.19 N.Y. Times story reports that Asia Argento paid a go-away fee of $380K to former child actor Jimmy Bennett after the latter accused her of sexual assault in 2013, when he’d just turned 17. Argento is being called a hypocrite for having this episode under her belt while strongly promoting a #MeToo agenda vis a vis her assaultive encounters with Harvey Weinstein. But what she went through with Harvey — oppressive sexual intimidation that resulted in something like a form of Hollywood date rape — doesn’t sound remotely analogous to what happened between her and Bennett.

My limited understanding is that Argento manipulated the youth into submitting to oral sex and then rode him like Hopalong Cassidy. As in “come over here, kid.” Okay, maybe Bennett wasn’t into it. Maybe he found getting blown to be traumatic. Maybe on some level what Argento did with Bennett was vaguely akin to Kevin Spacey’s reported assault of Anthony Rapp. I wouldn’t know.

I have to be honest — my first reaction was “manipulated”? Five years ago Bennett was a teen actor trying to land parts. Has anyone ever heard of a male actor of any persuasion who wasn’t randy, particularly one in his hormonal prime? Has there ever been a young actor in the history of the planet whose basic attitude was “gee, I’m not sure if I’m ready for sex”?

Has anyone ever read about what Mickey Rooney was up to in the 1930s, when he was in his mid teens? Were there any half-willing older female actresses whom Rooney ran into that he didn’t have it off with? When he was 24 Rooney reportedly had a longish affair with 14 year-old Liz Taylor. Imagine what the twitter comintern would’ve done with that, etc.

I was 17 once. I got shitty grades in school because I spent half my day dreaming about some older ravenous hottie having her way with me. I started dreaming about older naked women when I was nine or ten. I couldn’t get laid to save my life in my mid teens — I was a teenage incel before anyone knew the term — and it was a very sad and lonely time, let me tell you. I don’t mean to sound callous or indifferent, but my understanding of “assault” does not include notions of some Asia Argento-level woman winking and saying “come over here, Jeffie” when I was 17.

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