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I bought the idea of Robert Redford playing a career thief in Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock (’72) because he wasn’t really invested in the character, John Dortmunder. Redford was obviously cruising easy as he went through the escapist motions, plus he was only 35 and really good-looking back then.

20 years later, the 55 year-old Redford played a computer hacker in Phil Alden Robinson‘s Sneakers (’92), but his character, Martin Bishop, wasn’t a ne’er-do-well as much as a clever operator looking to play both sides.

In David Lowery‘s upcoming The Old Man and the Gun (Fox Searchlight, 10.5), the 81 year-old Redford plays the real-life Forrest Tucker, a career criminal and prison escape artist. It looks and sounds like good fun. I don’t really believe the elderly Redford as a hardcore bank robber, but the trick of these films is to nudge you into going along despite your reluctance. Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter, Tom Waits and Elisabeth Moss costar.

The last really good old-criminal movie, of course, was Phillip Borsos‘ The Grey Fox (’82). It starred Richard Farnsworth (61 during filming) as real-life bank robber Bill Miner.

The Old Man and the Gun director David Lowery, Robert Redford during filming.

This morning Deadline‘s Andreas Wiseman actually described the new additions to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival as “very exciting.”

Let me tell you what exciting would be. Exciting would be an announcement that the three big no-show Netflix titles — Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Paul Greengrass‘s Norway and Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind — will screen following a surprise resolution of the Cannes-Netflix dispute.

I’m intrigued by the addition of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree (competition) and Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney (midnight), but not so much by Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built (sans competition), Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (screening on closing night) and Ramin Bahrani‘s Fahrenheit 451 (midnight).

HE’s Jordan Ruimy has heard that Ceylan’s film is “slow as molasses and his most experimental movie,” and that Cannes accepted the film “with reservations.”

No one was a greater Von Trier fan than myself during the period of Breaking the Waves (’96), The Idiots (’98), Dancer in the Dark (’00), Dogville (’03) and The Boss Of It All (’06). But Antichrist, Melancholia and the Nymphomaniac films underwhelmed. I’m sensing shock and brutality from The House That Jack Built, which isn’t a competition film — unusual for Von Trier.

The Gilliam won’t screen until after the awards ceremony on the evening of Saturday, 5.19. My plane back to the States (actually to Dublin) leaves that night at 11:35 pm so I guess not.

Bahrani’s 99 Homes, his Florida real-estate movie with Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon, was a predictable slog; ditto At Any Price, the Dennis Quaid-Zac Efron father-son drama. You can see what Fahrenheit 451 is up to at a glance — same 99 Homes dynamic only with Michael B. Jordan in the Garfield role.

McDonald’s Whitney doc may be dismissible unless he’s straight-from-the-shoulder about Whitney Houston‘s drug problems, and especially her self-destructive relationship with Bobby Brown. I’m getting tired of people tippy-toeing around the facts.

A week ago I was invited to participate in a silent theatrical environment thingy called PLAY (242 South Broadway, LA 90012), which is the creation of actress (and Damian Chazelle’s partner-fiance) Olivia Hamilton.

I was instantly terrified, of course. I didn’t want to be dismissive or impolite, but Hollywood Elsewhere doesn’t pretend or play or dance around or any of that carefree pre-school stuff. Life is duty, focus, nose to the grindstone, devotion, manning up, late hours, etc. I don’t want to revert to being a five-year-old, but I’m not putting anyone down who might enjoy this. It’s just not me. I’m too grumpy, too deep, too Siddhartha. (Or do I mean Steppenwolf?)

But I didn’t have the courage to level with Olivia and just tell her this. I just kept putting it off. And then six or seven hours before showtime last weekend, I couldn’t stand my cowardice any more so I wrote her a “sorry with apologies” note.

HE to Hamilton: “It just hit me that ‘the silent PLAY‘ begins sometime after 10 pm this evening. Please forgive me, but (a) I’m too afraid of attending in general and (b) I can’t attend something that starts this late. I’m sorry for not reading the particulars until just now. I’m a daily columnist and on too strict of an early-morning wake-up schedule. Plus I’m a coward.

“If there’s any way I can help by posting, say, a video piece about ‘the silent PLAY,’ I’d be happy to do that.

“My blood ran cold at the thought of attending this to begin with — socks, silence, play, masks, wigs, etc. But I was going to throw caution to the winds and attend anyway because [Santa Barbara Film Festival director] Roger Durling told me it’s great.” HE Interjection: I’m not exactly “blaming” Durling for getting me into this, but he was definitely the instigator.

“Please forgive me, Olivia. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or not show support as far as I’m emotionally able. Please send me any video clips or essays or anything of that nature, and anything in the way of a first-person review or what-have-you, and I’ll be glad to post it. I really want to help and do what I can short of ‘playing.’ I feel guilty, but I feel even more intimidated and terrified of attending. Not to mention the late hour.

“Love and mercy, Jeffrey Wells, HE”

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Criterion’s 4K Bluray of Leo McCarey‘s The Awful Truth pops today. The six-minute nightclub scene (Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy) is far and away the best in the film. There really isn’t another scene that I can remember the dialogue from. “Gone With The Wind,” “New York is okay to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there,” “not Oklahoma City itself?”, etc. Am I thinking about getting the Bluray? I’d pay to stream it in a second, but plunking down $32 bills for a movie that’s smothered with billions of digital mosquitoes?

Some kind of Twitter challenge popped this morning from the Filmstruck gang — define yourself with four films, two reflecting the basic emotional reality of things and two about wishful thinking.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s emotional definers are (1) Billy Wilder‘s The Spirit of St. Louis (’57) because it says that life is about the big challenge and the long haul, and that despite all indications that God is a myth a caring, compassionate entity can nonetheless lend a hand at a crucial moment, and (2) Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory (’57) because it reminds that life is unfair and in fact horrid for the grunts, and when the shit hits the fan it’s better to be Kirk Douglas than Ralph Meeker, Joe Turkel or Timothy Carey.

HE’s wishful thinking movies are (3) the first half of David Lean‘s Lawrence of Arabia (’62) because it reminds that intrepid adventurers can manage the near-impossible if determination is truly with them, and (4) Fred Zinneman‘s High Noon, which says that when the chips are down you can’t trust anyone except yourself, and even then you’ll need a certain amount of luck to make it through the gauntlet.

Focus Features will open Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a doc about the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, in theatres on 6.8.18.

My gut tells me this is a total lock for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination for two…no, three reasons: (1) Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister before becoming a children’s TV star, was the personification of everything Donald Trump never was, isn’t today and never will be, so everyone who will want to salute that; (2) The doc was highly praised (RT 95%) during last January’s Sundance Film Festival; and (3) Everyone who loved Neville’s Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom will be favorably disposed.

I’m not exactly the kind of guy who strolls around with a gentle, open-hearted, sunny-faced attitude, but I admire guys who can pull that off. Rogers was also something of a progressive, forward-thinking lefty, which makes me admire his memory all the more. And I’m a longtime admirer of Neville (Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, Keith Richards: Under the Influence). Missed the Rogers flick during Sundance, but would love to see it soon (i.e., before leaving for Cannes on 4.29). What say, Focus?

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R. Lee Ermey, the ex-Marine who became a well-employed actor after playing the loud-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket, has bought the farm. He was only 74, but he was a right-winger who hated Obama and said some fairly awful things, and as a result had trouble getting hired by liberal Hollywood over the last few years. (Or so I’ve read.) I was about to say “Tough shit, twinkletoes!” but then I thought, “Naah, ease up and back off….don’t do a Bob Clark.”

The Hartman yellathon is Ermey’s masterpiece. (I would actually call it a comic masterpiece.) He was good but only sufficiently so in his other acting roles. He had plenty of work over the 33-year period that followed Full Metal Jacket, or from ’87 until Ermey put his foot in his mouth and skull-fucked himself in 2010.

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All my life I’ve regarded John Huston (1906-1987) as quite the fellow, and now at long last I’m reading his autobiography, which was first published in 1980. A 1994 trade paperback version was just delivered by Amazon.

Huston was first and foremost a lion, and not incidentally a director of above-average and sometimes brilliant films for over 45 years in a row.

The ones he made during his first decade are unassailable — The Maltese Falcon, Across The Pacific, Let There Be Light, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, The Red Badge of Courage and The African Queen. Huston’s early to mid ’50s output was pretty formidable also — Moulin Rouge, Beat The Devil, Moby Dick and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.

For the next 30 years Huston’s films were in and out, but at least they included The Unforgiven, The Misfits, The Kremlin Letter, Fat City, The MacKintosh Man, The Man Who Would Be King, Under The Volcano, Prizzi’s Honor and The Dead.

From David Thomson‘s “New Biograhical Dictionary of Film”: “Huston was…the movie director who told manly, energetic stories, and [who] liked to end them on a wry chuckle. He was himself a writer, a painter, a boxer, a horseman, a wanderer, a gambler, an adventurer and a womanizer.

“More than most he relished the game of getting a movie set up and the gamble of out-daring and intimidating the studios. His best pictures reflect those tastes and that attitude and had an expansive, airy readiness for ironic endings, fatal bad luck, and the laughter that knows men are born to fail.”

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The legendary Milos Forman has passed at age 86. An acclaimed Czech-born director, sometime actor (Heartburn) and all-around bon vivant, he lived a long and hungry life — not the fastest operator but always the striver.

Forman is best known for a high-flying decade (’75 to ’84) when he was Hollywood’s go-to guy for flavorful, distinctive adaptations of three distinguished plays — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Hair and Amadeus. And for his attempt to movie-ize Ragtime, the 1975 E.L. Doctorow novel.

But his grandest era was his Czech New Wave run in the mid to late ’60s, when he directed the acclaimed Loves of a Blonde (’65), a quirky, episodic thing with a native sense of humor, and The Fireman’s Ball (’67), which got Forman into a bit of trouble with the Communist Czech government for lampooning their bureaucratic mindset.

Forman continued to fly high during his American breakout period in the early ’70s, mainly due to the critical popularity of Taking Off (’71), an offbeat American family comedy that costarred Buck Henry and Lynn Carlin.

From Forman’s Loves of a Blonde (’65).

Incredibles 2 is obviously going to be sharp, funny and witty, swiftly paced, adult-friendly, visually exciting…the kind of family-friendly animated feature that I can actually watch and enjoy. Movies of this sort are few and far between, but then you knew that. Disney will release this burst of Brad Bird energy on 6.15.18. For the record: Hollywood Elsewhere totally loved Bird’s original Incredibles, which is now 14 years old.

With Steven Spielberg‘s The Post about to appear on Bluray in a few days, it’s an opportune time to recall just how decisively this journalism drama, which almost everyone admired, was ignored to death in the 2017 Oscar race.

Every Gold Derby and Gurus ‘o’ Gold spitballer predicted that The Post would be a hot Best Picture contender, at least among the 50-plus set. Indeed, it gathered a Best Picture Oscar nomination along with a Best Actress nomination for the formidable Meryl Streep. On top of which the National Board of Review honored The Post as 2017’s Best Film, and it received six Golden Globe noms including Best Motion Picture, Drama.

But the real story, unknown at the time by business-as-usual critics and prognosticators, is that the New Academy Kidz were determined to deep-six The Post because it was too Oscar-baity, too boomer-friendly and too “who cares?”

Hollywood Elsewhere has just learned that a secret NAK meeting was held at a private residence in Burbank last November, and that the NAK leadership used this occasion to explain and ratify its basic agenda.

“The Post is exactly the kind of lofty, self-important, high-toned Best Picture contender that we don’t want to give Oscars to any more,” the NAK chairman said in a speech to approximately 175 members, according to one witness. “And perhaps not even nominate. The old white farts who used to run things are being put out to pasture, and we’re the new crew…younger and more diversified and trying to tip the vote in our direction, however and whenever we can.

“From here on we’re going to do what we can to undermine high-dignity movies and support films that we like, and that might mean horror films, cheeseball genre movies, Creature From The Love Lagoon fantasias…anything that doesn’t walk or talk like traditional, Kris Tapley– or Tom O’Neill-sanctified Oscar bait material…the kind of film that those National Board of Review geezers will salivate over sign unseen.

“That kind of movie represented by The Post may not be completely over and done with as far as the Oscars concerned, but it sure as hell won’t get any more carte blanche Best Picture nominations from here on in. Not from us, it won’t. Because we’re the New Academy Kidz, and this is our moment.”

The other night Amy Schumer described the basic I Feel Pretty drill: “I play Renee Barrett [and] she has really low self-esteem. She feels really bad about herself. When the trailer came out they were saying I wasn’t disgusting enough to play that role, and thank you. But it’s not about an ugly monster. She just has low self-esteem. She just hits her head in a [workout salon], and all of a sudden she sees herself as a super-model.”

Stephen Colbert: “So you do the pasta and the wine?” Schumer: “Very much so…kind of almost every night…I’m what you look like if you have pasta and wine.”

You understand the system out there, right? You can’t share your honest reaction to Schumer’s appearance, which is that she looked decidedly different in Judd Apatow‘s Trainwreck, which she went on a serious weight-loss program for. Now she seems a good 15 pounds heavier, and — hello? — doesn’t look as attractive. But Schumer can smile at Colbert and say in a matter-of-fact way that she’s what people look like “if they have pasta and wine.” And we’re all allowed to laugh, but only if she says it.

A couple of months ago I explained that Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein‘s I Feel Pretty (STX, 6.20) is basically about the power of a positive self-image. It’s about a plump, bordering-on-fat woman who discovers a wildly positive view of herself after being hit on the head during a workout session. She suddenly sees a total knockout in the mirror. If she thinks she’s beautiful then she is, etc.

The premise, I added, “is similar to that of John Cromwell‘s The Enchanted Cottage (’45). It was about a disfigured Air Force pilot (Robert Young) falling in love with a shy, homely maid (Dorothy Maguire), and how their feelings for each other transform them into handsome/beautiful, at least in their own eyes. The audience saw them as highly attractive also but the supporting characters in the film didn’t.”

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