Posted on 2.29.16: “In a few days Quentin Tarantino‘s New Beverly Cinema will be screening a beware-of-Ryan O’Neal double bill — Love Story (’70) and Oliver’s Story (’78).

“A little more than 37 years ago I laughed at a defaced version of an Oliver’s Story one-sheet on a New York subway station wall. It won’t be very funny if I use the original graffiti so I’m going to use polite terminology. The dialogue balloons had O’Neal saying to costar Candice Bergen, “I’m sorry but may I have sex with you in a way that can’t get you pregnant?” Bergen answered, “If missionary is really and truly out I’d prefer oral.”

“I was poor and struggling and mostly miserable, but the graffiti made me laugh. It still makes me laugh today. I guess you had to be there.”

In the wake of Bo Goldman‘s passing I’m fully aware of what I’m supposed to say, which is that his screenplays were wonderful.

Well, I’m sorry but over the decades I never regarded Goldman as much more than a good, respected, dependable craftsman.

That’s not a putdown as very few screenwriters have made their way into that kind of pantheon, but I never thought of Goldman as one of the pip-pip-pips. I’ve understood for decades that everyone thought he was great, and I never offered an argument.

I’ve never mentioned that 34 or 35 years ago I was assigned to write coverage of Goldman’s screen adaptation of Susan Minot‘s “Monkeys“, and I honestly didn’t think it was all that rich or profound or even, to be perfectly frank, good.

Tonally Goldman’s Monkeys reminded me of the fractured and despairing family weltschmerz that Goldman’s Shoot The Moon was consumed by.

The best line in that 1982 Alan Parker film, which I never liked all that much, was when Albert Finney said that “San Francisco could die of quaint.” I also got a huge kick out of Finney destroying Peter Weller‘s backyard landscaping with his station wagon…crazy nuts.

But I loved Goldman’s script of Melvin and Howard, for the most part. And I admire his screenplays for Scent of a Woman and The Flamingo Kid (uncredited).

I never loved anything about Milos Forman‘s One Flew over The Cuckoo’s Nest (’75), Goldman’s adapted screenplay included, and I’m saying this as a guy who once played Dr. Spivey in a Stamford, Connecticut stage production of the 1962 play, written by Dale Wasserman and based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel.

Mervyn Leroy‘s The FBI Story (’59) is a longish (149 minutes), slightly stodgy but moderately engaging programmer about FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart) and his nearly-four-decade history with J. Edgar Hoover‘s bureau, reaching back to the early 1920s.

Interspersed with Hardesty family vignettes (Vera Miles plays his wife Lucy), LeRoy’s film is essentially a propaganda piece about the FBI’s stalwart and vigilant pursuit of justice and the handcuffing (and occasional shooting deaths) of all manner of bad guys.

I re-watched LeRoy’s film last night to pay special attention to the nearly 20-minute section that deals with the FBI’s Osage Native American murder investigation, which of course is what Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/ Paramount, 10.6) is about.

Based on Don Whitehead’s same titled 1956 book and written by Richard L. Breen and John Twist, The FBI Story devotes 19 minutes to the Osage murder case (starting around the 37-minute mark and ending at 56 and change).

The FBI investigation was actually led by regional lawman Tom White, played in Scorsese’s film by Jesse Plemons — a plain-spoken, cowboy-hat-wearing fellow in a three-piece suit who leads a team of FBI subordinates.

Hardesty is the chief investigator in LeRoy’s film, of course, but covertly — he arrives in Oklahoma (“Ute City in Wade County”) pretending to be a cattle buyer. Hardesty also has a small team of bureau guys working with him, but they’re also pretending to be something else (a casket salesman, a snake-oil salesman).

The main, historically verified location in Scorsese’s film is Fairfax, Oklahoma.

The intentional exploding of a home belonging to Bill Smith and his wife, Rita, is depicted in both The FBI Story and Killers of the Flower Moon. The explosion happened in the early morning hours of 3.10.23.

One of the Osage murder victims, Henry Roan, is depicted in both films. William Belleau portrays Roan in Scorsese’s version. In LeRoy’s film the character is called Henry Roanhorse, and is played by Eddie Little Sky.

Scorsese’s Osage massacre mastermind, based on fact and David Grann’s 2017 historical account, is William Hale (played by the too-old Robert De Niro).

Hale’s primary subordinate or dupe is his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Also mired in the mess is Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), an oil-wealthy Osage woman whom Burkhart has married at Hale’s urging, the idea being to grab her funds in the event of her death or incapacitation. (Mollie is also the sister-in-law of Henry Roan.)

The bad guy in The FBI Story is a William Hale stand-in — a 60ish Oklahoma banker named Dwight McCutcheon (Fay Roope, who played Mexican president Diaz in Viva Zapata). I can’t identity the twerpy actor who plays McCutcheon’s nephew (the Burkhart stand-in), but I know his face like the back of my hand. He’s referred to as “Albert” and not Ernest, and his wife “Mollie” is discussed but not seen.

Anyway, The FBI Story doesn’t begin to explore the many layers and various intricacies of the complete Osage murder tale, but it does manage to acquaint the viewer with the basics and wrap it all up with an arrest in the space of 19 minutes.

Killers of the Flower Moon, which does get into the layers and intricacies of the Osage tale and then some, runs 206 minutes.

“Was the 206-minute length really necessary?” I wrote from Cannes on 5.20.23. “It’s basically a bit more than two hours of scheming and murder and fiendish plotting between De Niro’s “King Hale” and DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart, and a bit less than 90 minutes of Plemons and his FBI team arriving in Oklahoma and getting to the bottom of it all.

“Killers is a good film but it feels too quiet and subdued and even…no, I won’t say mezzo-mezzo. It holds your interest and never bores. But it never really excites either. At the end of the day Killers doesn’t really generate enough juice.”

FBI Story secondary Osage players: Dwight McCutcheon as Fay Roope / Mary Lou Clifford as Indian Switchboard Operator (uncredited) / Eddie Little Sky as Henry Roanhorse / Jim Porcupine as Indian Switchboard Operator (uncredited) / Charles Soldani as Indian on Train (uncredited) / Vincent St. Cyr as Dan Savagehorse (uncredited) / Roque Ybarra as Murdered Indian (uncredited) / Chief Yowlachie as Harry Willowtree (uncredited).

With this morning’s debut of the grand and stirring trailer for Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Apple/Sony, 11.22), there can be no doubt that Dariusz Wolski‘s cinematography (Barry Lyndon-ish, exquisitely lighted, immaculately framed) will be Oscar nominated…no question about it. An absolute visual knockout.

Let’s go for the gusto and predict that Napoleon will almost certainly be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar…look at it! And given this, how could Scott not land a Best Director nomination?

I’m almost disappointed that this trailer has popped online, as I’d understood it would be exclusive to theatres (attached to Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One) for a few days. I bought a ticket to see MI:7 tomorrow evening specifically to catch the Napoleon trailer on a big screen.

As expected, Joaquin Phoenix‘s Napoleon Bonaparte doesn’t speak with a Pepe Le Pew French accent. Nobody in the entire cast does, it seems.

Phoenix will deliver a fascinating performance, I’m sure, but his obviously un-youthful, unmistakably creased, late-40ish features argue that he’s too old for the part.

Phoenix was roughly 48 during filming, and (let’s be honest) looked it. Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise-to-power heyday was between ages 20 and 40, or between 1789 (the launch of the French revolution) and the Battle of Wagram (1809). He met the 32 year-old Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) when he was 26, which was also Phoenix’s age, more or less, when he played the rancid Commodus in Scott’s Gladiator (’00).

Marlon Brando‘s performance as Napoleon in Henry Koster‘s Desiree (’54) was more age-appropriate. Born in 1924, Brando was 29 and 30 during filming.

Oh, and by the way? Catherine Walker‘s presumably brief performance as Marie Antoinette seems perfect. That impudent, fuck-the-peasants expression is just right.

Yesterday we paid the River Country folks to go tube-rafting down the Delaware. A few miles south of Frenchtown. I wanted a Deliverance-type experience, but there were no canoes to speak of. Chumps on rubber tubes. On one hand it was quite peaceful and soothing, and on the other hand the current was barely there. Every now and then the current would accelerate slightly and you could imagine you were Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn cruising down the Mississippi. But most of the time we were drifting at the speed of a 92 year-old guy shuffling toward the bathroom at 3 am. So I just gave into the lethargy.