Mr. Chatterbox Called It

In a 2.15 piece called “This Is Beneath Me,” I wrote the following about Brad Pitt‘s post-divorce adventuring: “Brad’s next serious girlfriend or wife needs to be someone better than Angelina Jolie and way better than Jennifer Aniston, and by that I mean someone classy like Amal Clooney…a lawyer or a diplomat, a brilliant book author or stage director or brain surgeon, someone brilliant and accomplished but without Jolie’s curious history.”

Well, a new Us magazine cover story says Pitt has been romantically involved “since last fall” with 42 year-old Neri Oxman, “a renowned architect and professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology whom Pitt reportedly sought out after seeing a series of 3-D printed furniture pieces she designed.”

Us reports that Pitt “‘has been spotted going into her apartment building on multiple occasions late at night and emerging the next morning after she leaves to teach,’ the source said.” [HE to readership: That means they’re doing the hunka-chunka.] “He’s also said to have headed abroad with his alleged new squeeze, accompanying her to a conference in South Africa at which she was a featured speaker.”

Previously married to Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, Oxman dumped a “very wealthy man” she’d been dating shortly after meeting Pitt.

More than a couple HE readers pooh-oohed my 2.15 Amal Clooney-type hypothesis. One guy said, “Naah, Brad needs to settle down with some hot 28-to-32 year old actress, knock her up and live in an open marriage so if he wants to fuck around on set, he can. He’s a good ole boy. An Amal Clooney situation makes no sense. He has never given much of a shit about social causes, etc.”

No “Rainy Day” in Cannes?

I’m told that Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York will not be announced as a Cannes Film Festival selection tomorrow morning. The reason, I gather, is not because festival honcho Thierry Fremaux didn’t want to show it, and not because Amazon didn’t want to provide a DCP, but because Allen and producer Letty Aronson (i.e., his sister) didn’t want the controversial attention.

Rather than stand up to the naysayers and Rainy Day costar Timothee Chalamet, who announced several weeks ago that he’s donating his salary for working on the film to a #TimesUp organization, Allen and Aronson have apparently opted out.

It may be that A Rainy Day in New York isn’t very good, in which case I would understand Allen’s reluctance to show it in Cannes. But at least a couple of not-all-that-great Allen films have screened in Cannes before (Irrational Man, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger) and so not showing Rainy Day is also, one could infer, about a lack of sterner stuff or certainly an instinct to avoid a turbulent episode.

Ducking and hiding in the midst of a persistent but highly questionable controversy (i.e., the Dylan Farrow allegation that was re-stated in a 12.7.17 L.A. Times op-ed piece, and the Robert Weide defense that was posted on 12.13) is a way of saying “whatever you guys want to believe or not believe is fine with me, but I’m not going to submit to a tabloid circus in Cannes in order to promote my latest film, however good or bad it might be…I just don’t want to get raked over the coals by the Cannes press corps about this whole matter once again so the hell with it…Amazon will probably release it with a minimum of fanfare but I’m moving on to my next film.”

As one insider put it, “Woody himself and his own team might not think that going to Cannes is the best idea at this particular moment.”

A pair of second-hand “insiders” have confided that nothing has been said about A Rainy Day in New York since earlier this year, and that “they’re already talking about working on the next one.” Duck and cover, avoid the heat, choose the path of least resistance, etc.

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Falcon Design Issues

I’ve been looking at the Millennium Falcon for nearly 41 years now, but until today I’ve never actually studied the layout. And I have to say that I’m shocked — shocked! — that the cockpit (#6) isn’t centered over section #10 (or just above the freight loading bay) but located off to the right, or to the left if you’re standing in front of the Falcon’s front area.

Imagine driving a car not from the front seat and looking over the hood, but from inside a little glass-enclosed cockpit mounted on the right fender and extending a couple of feet from the main chassis. Who the hell would want to drive a car like that?

A good pilot can get used to anything, I realize, but it just seems weird to visually navigate this “bucket of bolts” from a fishbowl compartment on the far right. It’s silly to complain about this now, of course, but from a command-and-control perspective it still seems like one of the most lopsided, poorly-designed vehicles I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’m also not wild about the crew quarters (#14). You’ll notice the room is pretty small, and that it contains three bunks, two bathroom compartments and one toilet [after the jump]. I’m actually presuming that the Falcon has two toilets but the architect forgot to draw the second one. I’m also guessing that Falcon being the Falcon, the bathroom ventilation system probably doesn’t work like it should, or certainly not like the bathrooms on any large Empire vessel. I’m thinking of Lando Calrissian exiting the bathroom and finding Princess Leia waiting outside, etc. Nuff said.

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And The Oscar Goes To…

Last year the New Academy Kidz (i.e., the younger, more diverse members invited to join in 2015 and ’16 by former Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs) decided that horror-genre films can and should be regarded as Oscar bait, as evidenced by Best Picture nominations for The Shape of Water and Get Out.

And so, naturally, John Krasinski‘s hugely successful A Quiet Place, having earned a first-weekend haul of $50 million, is now being trumpeted as a potential Best Picture contender. Or it is, at least, in the speculative mind of In Contention‘s Kris Tapley.

Hollywood Elsewhere says no — Krasinski’s film is very well done but (a) having a baby in the middle of a scourge of sound-driven monsters is flat-out ridiculous, (b) the hearing-aid finale doesn’t quite slam it home and (c) at the risk of sounding hopelessly out-of-it, just because a very smart and efficient film has made a lot of money…am I allowed to say this?…making a lot of money doesn’t necessarily put a film in the class of a Best Picture contender.

I know, I know…the New Academy Kidz, whose taste buds, one could argue, aren’t exactly refined and high-end, don’t necessarily see things that way. They don’t much care for traditional old-fart Oscar-bait material, they have a place in their hearts for horror and genre stuff, and they want to give others in the industry a chance so sure…why not?

Revisiting Schlondorff Epic

Brad Anderson‘s Beirut (Bleecker Street, 4.11) is a gripping, finely crafted adult war drama of the highest order — exactly the kind of smart, disciplined thriller (91% Rotten Tomatoes rating) that I live for.

Set in Lebanon’s war-torn capital in the early ’80s, it’s about a former U.S. diplomat (Jon Hamm) returning to Beirut to help save a kidnapped friend from way back. All kinds of danger, intrigue, suspicion. My idea of a truly satisfying, adult-level war drama. Hamm savors his meatiest, best-written role since his Don Draper days in Mad Men, and gives the best big-screen performance of his life. Really.

Earlier today I was speaking with Beirut’s producer-writer Tony Gilroy, the legendary director-screenwriter (Michael Clayton, Duplicity, The Bourne Legacy) who arguably saved Rogue One from disaster by coming in with a big rewrite and then directing new portions.

Halfway through our chat Gilroy mentioned Volker Schlondorff‘s Circle of Deceit (aka Die Fälschung), a 1981 drama that was shot in Beirut as the Lebanese civil war was raging blocks away. He insisted that I see it at the earliest opportunity.

Gilroy’s first viewing of Circle happened in the early ’90s, when he was working on the Beirut script (a task that took him a full year) for Ted Field‘s Interscope. He says he spoke to the projectionist after Circle ended, and that the projectionist said “what was that?”

The film costars Hanna Schygulla as Ganz’s temporary lover and Jerzy Skolimowski (director of Deep End, Moonlighting, The Shout) as his journalistic ally.

I rented a standard-definition version of Circle of Deceit on Amazon, and plan on watching it by the weekend.

Circle follows a German journalist (Bruno Ganz) sent to Beirut to report on the Lebanese Civil War. The conflict began in ’75, took 120,00 lives and generated an exodus of a million residents, and didn’t end until ’90. Circle was filmed in 1980 “under remarkable conditions with its crew confined to ‘safe’ portions of Beirut while the fighting went on elsewhere, but with ubiquitous evidence of real warfare everywhere.”

The New York Times described it as “a balanced, thoughtful, extremely moving vision of wartime tragedy.”

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If You Don’t Love Mistakes…

Either you’re the kind of movie hound who loves seeing the helicopter shadow during the opening credits of The Shining, or you’re not. If you don’t enjoy this kind of thing, fine, but Hollywood Elsewhere adores it. Ditto the pancake on Martin Balsam‘s face in Psycho, the kid plugging his ears in North by Northwest, etc. Because I watch films in a dimension outside of “suspension of disbelief.” My attitude is “I am suspending disbelief in my suspension of disbelief, and therefore I’m a free man on this train.” What are the other biggies that I’m missing?


Helicopter shadow is viewable only by watching a 1.37:1 version of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. HE to Leon Vitali: Any chance Warner Home Video will stream a 1.37:1 version?

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Major Bradley Cooper Factor in ’18 Best Picture Race

A week ago Awards Circuit editor Clayton Davis posted a 2018 Best Picture spitball chart.

Reps for director Martin Scorsese have insisted that The Irishman won’t open later this year due to extra time being needed to digitally de-age Robert De Niro and others in the cast. “Scorsese and Netflix may or may not be back in the fray with The Irishman,” Davis allows. “The IMDB has it listed for 2019 but [many] believe that if the quality is there and competition is thinning, Netflix will go for its first Best Picture nomination after missing out with Mudbound last year.”

If — I say “if” — The Irishman decides to jump in at the last minute it immediately becomes the Big Kahuna of Best Picture contenders. The Scorsese stamp, the super-sized budget and the old-guy star power (DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci) will immediately establish dominance.

I said the other day that competing heavy-hitters will include Barry JenkinsIf Beale Street Could Talk, Adam McKay‘s Backseat, Spike Lee‘s Black Klansman, Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots, Damien Chazelle‘s First Man, Steve McQueen‘s Widows, Bryan Singer and whatsisname‘s Bohemian Rhapsody, David Lowery‘s The Old Man and the Gun, Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, Mimi Leder‘s On The Basis of Sex, Bjorn Runge‘s The Wife and Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner.

A very strong voice within is saying “no, no, a thousand times no” to Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born (Warner Bros., 10.5), sight unseen for obvious reasons. Yes, the combination of New Academy Kidz and Lady Gaga fans could turn it into a contender and yes, Sean Penn says he loves it, but my God, the prospect of sitting through this film gives me the willies. To Boy Erased I say “really?”, and to Beautiful Boy I say “meth addiction?”

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“Never?”

Nately: What are you talking about? America’s not going to be destroyed.
Old Italian Man: Never?
Nately: Well…
Old Italian Man: Rome was destroyed. Greece was destroyed. Persia was destroyed. Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you think your country will last? Forever?
Nately: Well…forever is a long time, I guess.
Old Italian Man: Very long.

Watching this scene resonates because it’s been 49 years since this scene was shot, and 74 years since the occupation of Italy by U.S. forces. And because the old man (i.e., Marcel Dalio, the croupier in Casablanca) is sounding wiser and wiser these days.

If Art Garfunkel‘s Nately could see into the future, the answer to the old man’s question would have been as follows: “Well, America will start to eat itself in 2016 with the election of a bestial authoritarian demagogue as President, and with subsequent polls showing that between 35% and 40% of registered voters actually support this animal, largely due to his having exploited racial paranoia and resentment over perceptions that America’s European Anglo-Saxon heritage is being flanked and overwhelmed by persons of African and Middle-Eastern ancestry. Along with their agreement with his view that climate change is fiction. And this will be the beginning of a period of crazed American xenophobia, and from this will come eventual destruction.”

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HE to Netflix: Sheath Your Sword, Show Cinema Love

It was reported yesterday that Netflix is threatening to withdraw five major films, including Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Paul Greengrass‘s Norway and Orson WellesThe Other Side of the Wind, that were slated to premiere during next month’s Cannes Film Festival. Netflix is angry about a decision last year by festival topper Thierry Fremaux to exclude their films from competition, which was prompted by Netflix’s refusal to book films theatrically in France. Withdrawing these films would be Netflix’s “fuck you” to the festival and French exhibitors combined.

HE to Netflix: You should bend on this one. You really should. Your no-theatrical-release policy has cast a pall over the film industry. I’m not saying that a good film going straight to Netlix is necessarily cause for mourning on the part of its makers and fans, but a lot of people in this industry feel that way. You have to acknowledge that the faith of theatrical is in everyone’s bloodstream, and that you can’t just say “no theatrical, fuck off, we live in a streaming world, get used to it.” That’s harsh. That’s cruel.

Everyone is presuming that you’re not going to open Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman without an initial theatrical opening of some kind, so you’ve already capitulated to some extent. Can’t you loosen up a bit more?

Due respect but from my perspective you’ll be doing a rotten, rotten thing by preventing Cuaron’s film from playing in Cannes, not to mention the Greengrass, the Welles and Morgan Neville‘s Welles documentary, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead. Not to mention Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark. Bad karma, bad vibes, too much ego.

Yes, exhibition has all but divested itself from quality-level films and has devolved into a brothel of CG spectacle and almost nothing else, but great cinema has been nurturing and flourishing in theatres for the last century or so, and you can’t just say “okay, no more theatres” just like that. Cinemas are not just places to project images but churches of communal worship — chapels, cathedrals, temples, mosques, synagogues and fundamentalist Elmer Gantry tents. You can’t just raise your hand and tell a worldwide community of movie lovers that they’ll have to do their praying at home now. You can’t just shut all that down. It’s wrong.

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Paying The Price

Update: John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place is an exceptional, toptier horrorthriller. I saw it late Friday afternoon and realized immediately that my initial reluctance to give it a chance was misplaced. It has some logic problems but the over-riding silence element is brilliant and in fact riveting.

Earlier: I didn’t want to see A Quiet Place that much, to be honest, and so I forgot to remember to attend the 3.29 all-media at the Arclight. Now it’s playing and projected to make $40 million this weekend, and so I have no choice but to pay to see the damn thing at the Grove, and before 4pm if I can. Because I obviously don’t want to be silent or out of the game. I’m not looking forward to this. I’m really not. Grim up, pay up and take it. Martin Ritt‘s Sounder.

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“The Battle of Britain” w/ Kenneth More

In a 4.3 podcast interview with The Moment‘s Brian Koppleman, Beirut screenwriter Tony Gilroy talks for the first time about the re-writing and re-shooting of Rogue One. Key Gilroy quote: “I came in after the director’s cut [and] I have a screenplay credit in the arbitration that was easily won.” Indeed — the WGA wouldn’t have given Gilroy that credit unless his rewrite was fundamental.

Gilroy quote #2: “I don’t think Rogue One is a Star Wars movie in many ways…to me it’s a battle of Britain movie.”

Gilroy quote #3: “There were no assholes involved in the process at all, on all the upper level, there were no assholes, it was just a mess [and there was] fear, and they had just gotten themselves…and because it wasn’t really my movie…for a while, I slept every night. For my own movie, I wouldn’t sleep, but because it was somebody else’s movie…”

Gilroy quote #4: “At a certain point, it kinda tipped, at a certain point everybody’s looking at you like, [ya gonna fix this or what?], but through a lot of it I was pretty calm, I was pretty chill.”

Gilroy quote #5: “I was in London, I was having a great time every day, I was throwing strikes every day, I was so happy to be engaged, my endorphins were firing, I was happy with what I was doing in front of me, I had…my god, [the production resources], it’s a Ferrari, man, oh my God. I had a great time.”

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Anspach

I felt a pang when I read about the passing of actress Susan Anspach. She was felled three days ago (Monday, 4.2) by a heart attack. She was 75. The Hollywood Reporter obit was only posted today so I guess the news is just getting around. Anspach’s son Caleb Goddard, whose father is Jack Nicholson, announced her death earlier today.

Anspach made her mark in Hal Ashby‘s The Landlord (’70), Bob Rafelson‘s Five Easy Pieces (’70) and especially Paul Mazursky‘s Blume in Love (’73). She was quite the vibey presence in these films, very silky and sexy with the ability to suggest a complex and particular inner life. To more than a few she was an object of erotic fascination. There, I’ve said it.

No offense but I don’t even remember Anspach in Jeremy Kagan‘s The Big Fix.

Her last performance that left a significant impression was in Dusan Makavejev‘s Montenegro (’81), in which she played a bored housewife who gets into “slut-strutting” (a term used by a smart female critic) during a visit to the country formerly known as Yugoslavia (i.e., Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia).

I’m sorry but sometimes the end comes suddenly. Life is short, but then you knew that. Wings of a dove.