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A little more than four years ago, director-screenwriter-playwright Neil LaBute was abruptly cancelled by MCC Theater, an upscale Off Broadway company that had produced and supported his controversial plays for 15 years. LaBute has worked steadily in features and TV since and is doing “fine”, but the MCC surprise seemed to signal an across-the-board dismissal of LaBute by #MeToo and #TimesUp progressives.

LaBute’s provocative plays and films (In the Company of Men, Your Friends & Neighbors, The Shape of Things, Fat Pig, Some Girl(s), Some Velvet Morning, Reasons To Be Pretty) have been derided by certain critics as misanthropic and misogynist. His speciality is dramatizing misunderstandings, woundings and acidic currents between contentious men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

Anyway, it would seem (and I’m emphasizing the “s” word) that LaBute didn’t do anything specific to warrant the MCC termination. It seems, rather, that he just continued to write the same kind of stuff, and that post-2017 the woke comintern simply said “enough” and decided to get rid of him.

Last night I watched LaBute’s House of Darkness, an elevated horror film that uses (borrows?) themes and situations from Promising Young Woman and Midsommar. When and if it opens, House of Darkness, which costars Kate Bosworth and Justin Long, will probably be attacked as a metaphorical woman-hating horror film. Or a man-hating #MeToo horror film. Or something like that.

It’s definitely trafficking in social metaphor — #MeToo and #TimesUp and others in the women’s progressive movement looking to bring pain and terror to the male jerks of the world.

I don’t think House of Darkness does anything phenomenal. All it does is apply the basic LaBute attitude software to Promising Young Midsommar.

Long plays a typical Labute-ian sexist sleazeball bullshitter, and Bosworth (they’ve been actual, real-life lovers since last year) plays one of the Dracula sisters.

Bosworth and two other women play feminist avengers, and Long is a boozy, middle-aged version of Keanu Reeves‘ Jonathan Harker.

Unlike the bright and sunshine-filled Midsommar, LaBute’s film takes place in the dead of night inside a large, European-styled, castle-like abode (i.e., the real-life Dromborg Castle in Fayetteville, Arkansas). Suffice that horrible punishment happens to Long’s dipshit bad guy, whom no sensible woman would want to be within 100 yards of anyway.

The bottom line is that there’s barely a mention of LaBute’s film online. I searched around last night and it simply doesn’t exist except on IMDB Pro. No stills, no trailers, no nothin’. Very little on LaBute’s IMDB Pro page and nothing whatsoever on his Wikipedia page. No mention of the film on Long and Bosworth’s IMDB and Wikipedia pages.

It’s as if people on their respective staffs or teams went to some difficulty to erase any mention of this film. It’s almost unheard of for mentions of a completed but unreleased film to be this difficult to find.

Why guest programmer Claudia Puig chose to book this lost-at-sea film at the Santa Barbara Film Festival is anyone’s guess. Perhaps she decided to include it out of respect for LaBute’s reputation during his late ’90s-early aughts heyday?

Perhaps the producers tried to sell it and failed, not just theatrically but with streamers and cable stations….everyone shrugged. (Maybe.). I called a couple of producer’s reps today and they said they’d never heard of it.

But House of Darkness isn’t that bad. It’s creepy, diverting, socially thoughtful — altogether a half-decent sit.

It’s doubly weird that producers allowed the SBIFF to be the first-anywhere festival to show House of Darkness. And without a word of fanfare. They knew, of course, that people like me would see it and write about it, etc.

Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and the Pheonix-residing Crane sisters (Janet Leigh‘s Marion and Vera Miles‘ Lila) were, of course, never in the same room together. But once you get past this and after you contemplate the fact that Lila has her palm pressed against Sam’s rib cage, you immediately consider the possibilities.

Could straight-arrow Sam have been two-timing Marion with a concurrent affair with Lila? No — that would have been too much, too reckless, too thoughtless for a financially pressed owner of a hardware store.

But after Norman Bates was arrested for the murder of Marion and Martin Balsam‘s Arbogast and the whole thing had been put to bed, could Sam and Lila have gradually become lovers? As a way of embracing life and renouncing death? This, to me, seems conceivable.

I always assumed that Peter Bogdanovich falling in love with and marrying Louise Stratten, the younger sister of his murdered lover Dorothy Stratten…I always thought he was motivated by the same spirit of renunciation and renewal — an attempt to replace the trauma of murder with the bloom of fresh love.

This recent trailer for Adrien Lyne‘s Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18) gives you a taste of the territorial rage and icy cruelty in Patricia Highsmith’s source novel, which was published 65 years ago. Lyne’s film, which costars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, began shooting in November 2019. One viewing tells you that a certain stubble-faced party is going to dispose of other parties, at the very least.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be gladly returning to the Santa Barbara Film Festival next week. I’ll remain there for eight or nine days. The SBIFF is the friendliest, sexiest, easiest-to-navigate major film festival in the entire civilized world. Start to finish, it feels a sea breeze. And with the new CDC ruling we might not have to wear masks all the time!

The Directors of the Year Award tribute on Thursday, March 3rd (Spielberg, Anderson, Branagh, Campion, Hamaguchi) is the kickoff event.

On Friday night Spencer‘s Kristen Stewart will sit for a longish, in-depth interview at the Arlington while receiving the Riviera Award.

The next day brings the dual Writers and Producers Panels on Saturday, 3.5.22. The writers will include Kenneth Branagh, Jane Campion, Zach Baylin (King Richard), Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter), Sian Heder (CODA), Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up), Denis Villeneuve (Dune) and Eskil Vogt (The Worst Person in the World), and will be tossed the usual softball questions by IndieWire’s Anne Thompson.

The Producers Panel, set for the afternoon of March 5 and moderated by the mild-mannered Glenn Whipp will include Laura Berwick (Belfast), Miles Dale (Nightmare Alley), Kevin Messick (Don’t Look Up), Rita Moreno (West Side Story), Sara Murphy (Licorice Pizza), Mary Parent (Dune), Tanya Seghatchian (The Power of the Dog), Patrick Wachsberger (CODA), Tim White (King Richard) and Teruhisa Yamamoto (Drive My Car).

The SBIFF Virtuosos Award ceremony will happen at the Arlington that evening (Saturday 3.5) with TCM’s Dave Karger moderating. Belfast‘s Ciaran Hinds, Caitriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan, plus Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza), Emilia Jones (CODA), Troy Kotsur (CODA), Simon Rex (Red Rocket) and Saniyya Sidney (King Richard).

The following morning (Sunday, March 6) will launch the Animation Panel, with SBIFF executive director Roger Durling moderating.

Not to mention King Richard‘s Will Smith and Aunjanue Ellis receiving the Outstanding Performers of the Year Award in a ceremony that begins at 8 pm on Sunday, 3.6 at the Arlington theatre, (b) Penelope Cruz receiving the Montecito Award on Tuesday, 3.8 at the Arlington, (c) Benedict Cumberbatch receiving the Cinema Vanguard award on Wednesday, 3.9 at the Arlington, (d) Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman receiving the Maltin Modern Master Award on Thursday, 3.10 at the Arlington, and (e) a ten-year anniversary screening of David O. Russell‘s Silver Lining Playbook with a Russell q & a to follow.

The SBIFF runs from March 2nd through 12th.

Madonna looks great for a 63 year-old. She looks great for a 33 year-old. Having been there and done that in my home town of Prague, I’m all for good tasteful “work”. But most of us would agree, I think, that it’s important to resemble the person you were 15 or 20 years ago. I’d better watch my step — this is the same kind of observation that Owen Gleiberman shared about Rene Zellweger five years ago.

…if a semblance of All In The Family could return as a present-tense social-issues Hulu series, except Archie could be…well, a bit like myself…sensible liberal older guy, perhaps an editor & founder of an online publication or web business of some kind, grappling with the pressures of HR woke terror in the workplace, clashing with Millennial or Zoomer daughter and BIPOC son-in-law who are living with him while they save for a house…basically Hollywood Elsewhere meets Norman Lear…except Archie Wells wouldn’t be as smug or under-educated as Carroll O’Connor was…it could write itself.

If you wanted to self-delude you could tell yourself that this flash-and-dance number from Dexter Fletcher‘s Rocketman is mostly uncut — a single dazzling shot. It certainly seems that way from the 1:10 mark (once Taron Egerton appears from an opening in the fence) until he retreats into the pub and joins his bandmates around the 3:40 mark. 150 seconds!

It’s more likely three or four shots seamlessly blended together, but at least an energetic effort was made to persuade otherwise.

Any way you slice it this is easily the best sequence in the entire film.

Posted on 9.9.19:

Hollywood Elsewhere suspects that classic-film distributor and alleged rights-squatter Wade Williams, the apparent owner of distribution rights to William Cameron Menzies‘ Invaders From Mars (’53) since the mid ’70s, has a top-secret plan for creating and then distributing a restored 4K Bluray of this legendary impressionist classic.

It was just over five years ago when Williams projected, in a letter to director Joe Dante, that a high-grade restoration of Invaders elements was probably just around the corner and that a reputable distributor of this restored film would soon emerge.

But of course, Williams being Williams, nothing ever happened.

HE can now officially share the above-referenced, fully considered suspicion. Wade’s plan may involve waiting for the inevitable deaths of hundreds of thousands of the film’s boomer-aged fans — movie fanatics who were deeply impressed by Invaders‘ spooky vibe and penetrtating, dream-like hallucinatory impressions during their soft-clay years.

It is entirely reasonable to suspect that Wade’s plan may be to wait for these film buffs (particularly boomers who experienced said reactions to Menzies’ film in their adolescent years)…it’s quite possible that the plan is to wait until all the boomer-aged fans of this film are dead and gone. Once departed and their remains scattered to the winds, Williams will finally assist with a restoration effort and then release and approve a 4K scan of the best extant materials.

Then again a respected inside-track guy who knows all the players has confided the following: “From my knowledge, Wade Williams doesn’t hold controlling rights to Invaders From Mars, nor does he control the original camera negative, so any activity that may occur need not have his approval.”

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Two days ago I wrote that Austin Butler doesn’t look enough like Elvis — at best he’s a young John Travolta. The new trailer suggests that Butler doesn’t have the surly Elvis drawl either. (Kurt Russell‘s Elvis voice was ten times better.) It’s one thing to not resemble Elvis but to sound like him, and another thing to not have the voice but to own a serious look-alike thing, but to come up short on both counts is a huge problem — it really is.

Forget reanimating the actual long-gone Elvis of yore — Butler doesn’t even seem like a good Elvis imitator. He just doesn’t have it.

And yet Baz Luhrman‘s Elvis trailer gets one thing absolutely right — it conveys the effect of Presley’s explosive sexual current and how the wiggles and pelvic thrusts made young girls pant, or at the very least pause.

All this time I’ve been wondering if the Elvis guys (director-writer Luhrman, screenwriters Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner) would be including the “fat Elvis” chapter, or roughly the last three years of his life. Unless the trailer is lying by omission, the apparent answer is “no.”

There is, however, a seriously fat Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker, and he’s wearing one of the best fat suits I’ve ever seen in a film…seriously, hats off. Or do I mean “fats off”?

I can’t seem to identify the fair-haired kid who plays 11 year-old Elvis in Tupelo, but this is almost exactly what Elvis looked like as a tweener. Odd that Luhrmann chose correctly in this realm, and yet totally dropped the ball with the adult-sized version.

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This is definitely a sad week for guys associated with the National Lampoon‘s heyday. Three days ago Ivan Reitman, whose first big score came from producing National Lampoon’s Animal House (’78), died in Montecito at age 75. And now P.J. O’Rourke, who served as editor-in-chief of the National Lampoon in the late ’70s and for many decades was one of HE’s favorite satirists and comic essayists, has passed from lung cancer at age 74.

I interviewed O’Rourke in August ’15 to help promote Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Doug Tirola‘s doc about the NatLamp’s hey-hey. Here’s the mp3.

I’ve been chuckling at the flip, iconoclastic, world-weary smirkings and pot-shots of P.J. O’Rourke since the mid ’70s — a long journey. I can’t think of another rightie libertarian whose stuff I’ve laughed at quite so often. Come to think of it I can’t think of another rightie libertarian whose stuff I’ve laughed at, period.

One way or another I’ve always been a fan of his material. (For the most part.) Mainly, I suppose, because O’Rourke was editor-in-chief at the National Lampoon during that legendary publication’s last decently creative period, or ’78 through ’80, and because I truly worshipped that mag back in the day so there’s a carry-over effect.

O’Rourke is the author of 16 satiric, smart-ass books (including last year’s “The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again),” which I haven’t yet read) and is currently a monthly columnist for the Daily Beast.

Two of my favorite O’Rourke books are “Holidays in Hell” and “Modern Manners“. I’ve also always loved the title of “Republican Party Reptile“, or more precisely the illustration of Dwight D. Eisenhower wearing a mohawk (which was dumped when O’Rourke’s publisher explained that relatively few targeted readers knew or cared who Eisenhower was). Honestly? I’ve never read “Republican Party Reptile”. No offense but why would I? I’m a leftie, and in some respects I’m selfish enough as it is.

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A trailer for Baz Luhrmann‘s Elvis pops on Thursday — three months before its likely Cannes debut, a bit more than four months before it opens on 6.24. And I’m taking this moment to voice a concern.

Austin Butler is Luhrmann’s Elvis, and ever since this was announced I’ve been wondering why. Because Butler doesn’t look like Elvis. He doesn’t have those surly eyes and lips, I mean, or that vaguely bashful “aw shucks” Memphis rockabilly thing. And he sure as shit isn’t pretty enough.

You have to wonder why Luhrmann didn’t choose someone who could actually be the resuscitated, back-from-the-dead Elvis of the ’50s. There are dozens of spot-on Elvis imitators out there (and a few on YouTube), and a certain portion of these can probably act. Nobody wants to watch a guy who doesn’t quite look or sound like the Real McCoy — they want to watch something close to a dead ringer. So why didn’t Luhrmann find one?

I’ve been worried about Butler ever since he played his big scene as Charles “Tex” Watson in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (“I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s bizness!”). The instant he said that line, I muttered to myself, “Nope…not good enough.”

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This Rear Window fan poster was composed by Jonathan Burton. The immediate question, of course, is why does James Stewart‘s L.B. Jeffries, a Greenwich Village-residing photographer with a broken leg and a wealthy, high-society girlfriend (Grace Kelly)…why does Jeffries have a massive bald spot, partially covered by greasy hair strands? Stewart wore his usual toupee in this 1954 classic. Is he half-bald because Burton himself is half-bald? What kind of illustrator does this? And what’s with the jug ears?

Based on a 1959 Tennessee Williams play, the film version of The Night of the Iguana (’64), directed by John Huston, is rather awful, which is to say dreary and stifled. But I’ve always wanted to visit Mismaloya, the small Mexican beach village (just south of Puerto Vallarta) where it was shot. The main stars were Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon. Elizabeth Taylor hung around during most of the filming. Huston wound up buying a home nearby.

People stopped watching films on VHS when DVDs emerged, or sometime in mid ’97. Pretty much everyone had adopted DVDs by the turn of the century, or roughly 21 years ago. (The first DVD players were priced at $799 and up.) And yet a couple of days ago some ornery old codger posted a photo of his Alfred Hitchcock VHS library.

https://apple.news/IKh3Y9WHmQB6oaC-vJDMyjg