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Right now (and I’m using that term loosely) the plan is to catch two Sundance ’18 films plus do an interview. I’m blowing off a screening of Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s Monsters and Men at 12:15 pm, but am definitely chatting with Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot costar Jonah Hill at the Waldorf Astoria Canyons. Then comes Marina Zenovich‘s Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind at the MARC (5:30 pm), and then I won’t be seeing Jessie Peretz‘s Juliet Naked (6:45 pm) — publicists can’t help with a ticket (!). Finally there’s a 9:45 pm screening of Gus Van Sant‘s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot. And if I really want to burn both ends, there’s a Don’t Worry midnight after-party at the Grey Goose.

Needled and annoyed by Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri, N.Y. Times film critic Wesley Morris has delivered a nicely composed takedown essay, one that’s fun to read and re-read and share with your friends.

Being juicy and chewy and quotable, it will, make no mistake, hurt Three Billboards‘ rep among that sector of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that reads the Times and mulls this stuff over and yaddah yaddah.

Morris has called the Fox Searchlight release a “misfire,” “grating,” otherworldly, quirkily pretentious, “a cupcake rolled in glass,” an “off” thing and more or less the new Crash-ola.

Morris also finds the film irritating from a racial pigeonhole perspective. Two black characters (Amanda Warren and Darrell Britt-Gibson) seem “almost Muppet-like,” he says, and Ebbing’s temporary black police chief (Clarke Peters) comes off as Sidney Poitier-ish, he says.

Morris doesn’t mention that he’s a proselytizer for Jordan Peele‘s Get Out, but he is, trust me (“Jordan Peele’s X-Ray Vision“), and he knows that if his piece winds up wounding Three Billboards that part of the Best Picture heat storm will shift over to Get Out along with the already-favored The Shape of Water.

There’s an “illusion” about Three Billboards that’s been “presented by the people running the [award] campaigns,” Morris write, “and [this] in turn…has become the custom for lots of us.

“Three Billboards can’t be just the misfire that it is. The enthusiasm for it has to represent the injustice the movie believes it’s aware of — against young murdered women, their suffering dysfunctional families and black torture victims we never see — but fails to sufficiently poeticize or dramatize what Mr. McDonagh is up to here: a search for grace that carries a whiff of American vandalism.

“Of course, few movies can predict their moment, but Three Billboards might be inadequately built for this one.”

I’ve always been a “Hal Ashby devotee”, but what does that phrase really mean? That I’ve long had to balance my worship of Ashby’s legendary ’70s films with the awkward, less than fulfilled, in some cases cocaine-flaked failures of his ’80s features.

All hail Harold and Maude, The Last Detail — generally regarded as Ashby’s masterpiece — Shampoo (which Ashby didn’t really direct as much as submit and relinguish to the will of Warren Beatty), Bound for Glory, Coming Home (Ashby’s second-best film) and Being There (which has lost much of its potency since ’79, at least in my own head). And offer a sad shrug to Second-Hand Hearts, Lookin’ to Get Out, Let’s Spend the Night Together (a better-than-decent Rolling Stones concert doc), The Slugger’s Wife and the half-resurgence of 8 Million Ways to Die.

So I’ve long been uncertain about his legacy — who hasn’t been? But six and a half years ago Nick Dawson‘s “Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel” convinced me that with any kind of half-fair perspective, Ashby’s decade of ’70s glory definitely out-classes and outweighs the tragedy of the ’80s and how the derangement of nose candy enveloped and swallowed the poor guy.

Hence my strong interest in Amy Scott‘s Hal, a 90-minute doc about Ashby’s high and low times that will debut at Park City MARC on Monday afternoon, and then screen three more times — Tuesday evening at the Prospector, Thursday morning at the MARC and Friday morning at the Holiday 2.

From Sundance program notes: “As befits a subject whose stretch of work especially in the 1970s included Harold & Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo and Coming Home (he was Oscar-nominated for that one), interviewees include collaborators Jeff Bridges, Jane Fonda and Louis Gossett Jr. as well as Alexander Payne, Judd Apatow, Lisa Cholodenko, Beau Bridges, Haskell Wexler and Norman Jewison.

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Hollywood Elsewhere arose at 5 am, left for Burbank Airport at 5:55 am, the Southwest flight left at 8:06 am and I was in Salt Lake City airport by…I forget, 10:45 am or something. $40 shuttle to Park Regency. Not much snow on the ground, but a storm is coming. Met flatmates Jordan Ruimy and Ed Douglas, and walked over to the Park City Marriott for press passes. I then sat down in the Marriott lobby and filed the story about Indiewire’s “Woody Allen is dead” piece. Update: It’s now 1:27 pm. Heading back to condo to unpack, maybe nap for an hour, then hit Fresh Market for foodstuffs.

Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, Kate Erbland, David Ehrlich and Jude Dry have posted a piece that basically says “we don’t know if we believe Dylan or Moses Farrow…well, we’re mostly on Dylan’s side because we want to be with Greta and Timothee and the other cool kidz…but whatever the truth may be, we’re mainly interested in announcing that Woody Allen‘s career is almost definitely at an end. But why did this take so long?”

HE to Kohn, et.al.: “So your response to the obviously debatable if not disreputable Woody hoo-hah is to run a POST-MORTEM about the end of his career because the jackals are circling? Because Timothee Chalamet was pressured into washing his hands by his agent and publicist? Ballsy move, guys. Incisive journalism. Have you read the Robert Weide piece that answered the Farrow essay?

“If you’re so certain that Allen is suddenly MORE GUILTY THAN EVER BEFORE because of Dylan Farrow’s L.A. Times piece, why don’t you stand up LIKE MEN and post an essay titled ‘MOSES FARROW IS FULL OF SHIT’?”

Kohn replies: “The piece is an honest assessment of the last few weeks. So many actors are distancing themselves from Allen and the actions of his recent cast speak for themselves. I love many Allen films; that’s not the point here. He has been rendered commercial anathema and it’s obvious that very few actors will work with him now.”

HE retort: “There are many actors of character (Alec Baldwin for one) who will stay with Allen. There is also the option of European financing. Allen might fold his cards, yes, but if I were Allen I would commit to making films forever and ever until he dies, if for no other reason than to deliver a hearty ‘fuck you’ to you, due respect, and David Ehrlich and the rest of the Indiewire team for declaring that he’s over & done with.

“And WHAT ABOUT MOSES FARROW? Is he a liar? If you believe that, fine, but please explain your reasons for thinking so.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

Kohn replies: “Again, the piece is an analysis of the commercial situation surrounding his career, not an argument for or against allegations against him. Easy, tiger.”

My response: “But the commercial situation surrounding his career has been triggered by the conflating of #MeToo and Dylan Farrow’s L.A. Times essay, and a general non-analytical presumption that he molested his daughter. If you’re not saying that Dylan is truth-ing and Moses is lying, then you should be. Or not. I happen to believe Moses, but that’s me. In any case all you guys are saying is ‘uhm, yeah, whatever but his career is probably over.’ You’re sitting on the sidelines, and that ain’t much.”

Read the Weide, read the Weide, read the Weide.

Three weeks ago I was half-agreeing with Tucker Carlson about the outraged reactions to Matt Damon’s mansplaining remarks (“spectrum of behavior”, “shouldn’t conflate”) in a televised chat with Peter Travers.

“There’s not a single sentiment in [what Damon said to Travers] that’s not defensible or that 90 percent of the American population would find over the top or outrageous,” Carlson said. “It’s all within bounds or it would have been last year.”

But the blowback was pretty bad, and Damon is only human.

During an interview this morning on the Today show with Kathie Lee Gifford, Damon apologized and pleaded for forgiveness for having the temerity to share what he thought. The gist of Damon’s earlier comments were that (a) there are some really bad guys out there (i.e., Harvey Weinstein) as well as (b) some mildly shitty guys, (c) some flawed but not-so-bad guys (Sen. Al Franken) as well as (d) regular guys who’ve never pawed or assaulted anyone and are okay to have around. But that category (a) shouldn’t be conflated with categories (c) and (d).

“I really wish I’d listened a lot more before I weighed in on this,” Damon told Gifford. “Ultimately, what it is for me is that I don’t want to further anybody’s pain with anything that I do or say. And so for that I’m really sorry. A lot of those women are my dear friends and I love them and respect them and support what they’re doing and want to be a part of that change. But I should get in the back seat and close my mouth for a while.”

“I have been asked in a few recent interviews about my decision to work on a film with Woody Allen last summer,” Timothy Chalamet said on Instagram Monday evening. “What I can say is this: I don’t want to profit from my work on the film, and to that end, I am going to donate my entire salary to three charities: TIME’S UP, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN.”

In other words, Chalamet considers his fee for acting in Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York to be dirty money, which is tantamount to calling Allen a dirty filmmaker, or more precisely a guilty filmmaker.

Along with other actors, Chalamet has presumably arrived at this belief by way of faith and solidarity with Dylan Farrow and her longstanding charge that Allen sexually abused her as a child. It’s well known that facts, evidence, two investigative agencies and Farrow’s own brother, Moses Farrow, strongly dispute Dylan’s recollection, but that’s not Chalamet’s concern at this point.

The 22 year-old actor is playing it smart for the sake of his career and the maintaining of a progressive, forward-looking, Time’s Up-embracing industry profile among his contemporaries. It is far easier and safer to throw in with the anti-Woody gang (Greta Gerwig, Mira Sorvino, Rebecca Hall, Natalie Portman, Reese Witherspoon). Throw the 82 year-old filmmaker under the bus, terminate his career, wash your hands.

Chalamet had no choice, right? His career would have definitely been hurt if he’d taken Allen’s side or adopted a neutral posture. He had to join the throng.

Hollywood Elsewhere has been saying all along that Chalamet’s Call Me By Your Name performance is far richer and miles above Gary Oldman‘s broad performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. But I can’t honestly say that I admire Chalamet at this point in time, or that tonight’s statement has shown him to be a man of balls and character.

For the 17th time, the facts are right here in Robert Weide’s 12.13.17 piece, “Q & A With Dylan Farrow.” I realize that facts are secondary in this matter, but they should matter to some degree…no?

McMafia, the eight-part BBC1 minseries that will begin airing on AMC on 2.26, is based on a same-titled book by Misha Glenny and directed by James Watkins.

Glenny chose the name McMafia “because of how professional, organized and homogenous international gangsters have become,” it says here.

As Semiyon Kleiman (David Strathairn) tells banker Alex Godman (James Norton), “These people dress like bankers, they speak a dozen languages, they eat in the best restaurants, stay in the best hotels. But underneath all that sophistication, there’s an open grave in the Mexican desert with 50 headless corpses inside.”

McMafia “has been criticized for its stately pace and complex plotting,” a review stated. “It can feel a little po-faced, lacking the wit of a Hugh Laurie or a Tom Hollander, who both brought light and shade to The Night Manager.

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Welcome, much-needed changes to the movie industry have already been brought about by #Time’s Up and #MeToo, but it was suggested during a dinner last night that some kind of new Hays Code agreement might eventually be adopted by the motion picture, TV and streaming community. I wasn’t told, mind, that this idea is actually being kicked around, but a friend believes that the current climate might lead to such a measure, and who knows?

The new Hays Code agreement could partly seek to eliminate gender discrimination and pay disparity between men and women. I for one think that’s a pretty good notion if fairly implemented.

The friend also suggested, however, that another goal might be to institute sexual morality advisories that would discourage depictions of sexual misconduct and assault against women and minors without appropriate consequence. The sexual morality portion would be a matter of tremendous concern to filmmakers, he said. I don’t think I need to explain why this concern would be manifest among directors and screenwriters of all stripes and stations.

Again, I’m not saying that such an agreement is actually being discussed by anyone, but where there’s conversational smoke there’s sometimes fire. Maybe. I’m mentioning this because before last night I’d never heard such an idea, even in the loosest of conversations. We are witnessing, after all, the gradual emergence of a new form of liberal Calvinism these days, so it wouldn’t be totally crazy if a #Time’s Up production code was eventually agreed upon and instituted.

When we say Hays Code (named for Will Hays) we really mean the Breen code (named for Joseph Breen). It was adopted in response to what some regarded as a climate of tawdry morality in movies of the early 1930s. The code was a set of moral guidelines that was applied by major studios from 1934 to roughly 1968.

The code began to slowly erode in the late ’50s and early ’60s, but it ended with a bang when Elizabeth Taylor said “goddam you” to Richard Burton in Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff (’66).

Last night I spoke to a knowledgable industry friend who agrees with Mark Harris about Woody Allen’s career being toast. While he’s appalled and horrified by the current terror and believes that the only sane response is to duck and wait it out, he also thinks A Rainy Day in New York will be over, done and finito for the Woodman.

He also suspects that Amazon will jettison A Rainy Day in New York, although they’ll look like gutless political cowards if they do this. On the other hand Call Me By Your Name star Timothee Chalamet, who costars in Rainy Day, will have to answer very carefully when a questioner brings up the Allen hoo-hah on the next red carpet.

He said that Woody needs $25 million to make his films, all in, and that he’s not going to be able to raise this without significant name-brand U.S. actors along with general support from the U.S. film industry. My friend didn’t say that Allen’s films are obviously winding down anyway in terms of quality, but others have noted this.

What about the European market? I said. Allen is worshipped in France, etc. Allen’s producers won’t be able to raise $25 million from European financiers alone, he said, because the European market for his films isn’t large enough.

He’ll have to scale his fee and production costs way down to make a European-centric feature — $10 million or even $9 or $8 million. He’ll have to shoot guerilla-style, hip pocket, on the fly, available light, etc.

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Jordan Ruimy and I recorded a chat three or four hours ago, but the batteries in my recently purchased Olympus recorder died about 12 minutes in….brilliant. But two good things came out of our chat, and they both belong to Jordan, at least in this context.

Oscar-bait movies are regarded askance by younger industry types plus the new guild and Academy members. And this, Ruimy believes, is why Steven Spielberg‘s The Post never caught on. People smelled Oscar-bait calculation from the get-go, and they don’t like the mindset (an “important” story or theme done classy, aimed at 50-plus types, bucks-up stars and screenwriters) and the “game” of it all.

The 45-and-unders looked at this well-written, respectably made prestige flick with two boomer superstars (Streep, Hanks) and said, “Where is it written that we all have to stand up and salute Oscar-bait movies like little toy soldiers every fucking November and December?”

The fact is that two of the hottest Best Picture contenders — Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water and Jordan Peele‘s Get Out — are pretty close to B movies, or at least what used to be regarded as B-level material — a romantic monster flick and a dark horror-zombie satire.

Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (’56)

Jack Arnold and William Alland’s The Creature From The Black Lagoon (’54).

In the mid 50s the forebears of these films — The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Invasion of the Body Snatchers — never had a chance of any kind of Oscar attention, much less respect, but The Creature from the Love Lagoon and Invasion of the White Suburban Obama Lovers are right at the top of the heap today.

Ruimy also believes that Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri may start losing cred due to backlash articles that I, frankly, haven’t paid attention to. One is Matthew Olson‘s 1.8.18 Digg piece titled “Expect The ‘Three Billboards’ Backlash To Dominate All Oscars Talk — Here’s Why.” Another is a Maeve McDermott USA Today piece called “The Growing Racial Backlash Against ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’,” posted on 1.3.18.

And don’t forget Bill McCuddy‘s adamant declaration that “Oscar voters will not pick Aquaman.” Older, grayer, creasier Oscar voters, he meant. The under-45s are fine with Aquaman, as noted above. Ruimy also sees an element of vulnerability in The Shape of Water.

So where does that leave us? It’s possible that both of these Fox Searchlight pieces will lose a cetain amount of steam over the next three or four weeks, and that Greta Gerwig‘s Lady Bird will surge in and take the big prize. Ruimy also believes that Get Out might also surge and scoop up the Best Picture Oscar, but I won’t have it…no!

On 1.12.16 I posted about a visit to North by Northwest‘s cropduster junction. Here it is again, and with larger photos:

Daryl H. Thornhill, grandson of Roger Thornhill, has paid a visit to a hallowed place — a place where his ancestor was nearly murdered by machine-gun fire from a cropdusting biplane. Daryl is standing at “Prairie Stop, Highway 41” — actually an area near the intersection of Garces Highway and Corcoran Road near Wasco, a suburb of Bakersfield. Right by the side of the road, in fact, and taking shots with his iPhone 6 Plus. The weather is sunny and mild. Dead calm.

A SUV appears from behind a far-off thicket of small trees. It approaches and stops about 60 or 70 feet from where Daryl Thornhill is standing. A rural-type fellow in a lumpy brown suit gets out. Thornhill and Brownsuit regard each other. Thornhill decides to walk over and break the ice.

Thornhill: Hi. (pause) Hot day.
Brownsuit: Seen worse.
Thornhill: (Beat) Have you ever seen a film called North by Northwest?
Brownsuit: Can’t say I have ’cause I haven’t.
Thornhill: Well, a couple of websites say they shot a famous scene from that film right here, right on this spot. 12168 Corcoran Road.
Brownsuit: Can’t trust what you read on the web.
Thornhill: My thought exactly. It’s flat out here, but otherwise the area bears almost no resemblance to the area in the film. No corn crops, no tilled soil, no telephone poles. The area in the film looked like rural Illinois or Indiana. This looks like….well, not classic farmland at all. Desert scrub, fruit trees. It looks more like the area outside Ravenna in Antonioni’s Red Desert.
Brownsuit: Red Desert?
Thornhill: Another movie.

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