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Herbert Ross‘s Pennies From Heaven, a big-studio adaptation of Dennis Potter’s original BBC musical drama, opened almost exactly 40 years ago — Friday, December 11, 1981.

I was a huge admirer of Potter’s 1978 original presentation (critics adored it), and my reaction to the Ross (which I reviewed for The Film Journal) was something along the lines of “as remakes go this is truly a brave and striking effort, and almost as good as the BBC version. I adore many of the musical sequences, but something feels wrong…it’s a film about how grim and draining and merciless life was for so many during the Depression, yes, but it’s also a kind of heavy-sauce mood trip, almost a horror film…a feeling of walls closing in.”

Ross and Potter’s versions were pretty much identical. A struggling Depression-era loser named Arthur Parker (played by Steve Martin in ’81, Bob Hoskins earlier) lives in a fantasy retreat of popular songs in order to keep his spirit going and endure life’s constant misery. The contrast between the harsh reality of Arthur’s actual life vs. the the dreamworld songs that fill his head (and those of costars Bernadette Peters, Christopher Walken, Jessica Harper and Vernel Bagneris) either moved you or sank you, but how could anyone fail to admire the audacious concept?

I’ve always been a fan of what Pennies From Heaven was about and how it got there. Brave and highly inventive, honoring the Potter while advancing its own signature, etc. Martin and Bernadette Peters were excellent. The black-and-white homage to a Fred Astaire + Ginger Rogers dance number in Follow The Fleet was pretty great, as I recall. I remember being extra impressed by Walken’s big dance number. But I haven’t once re-watched it over the last four decades. Not once.

Because somewhere around the halfway or two-thirds mark Pennies From Heaven drops a pill into your system that feels more dispiriting than anything else. It keeps leaning in the direction of despondency, death and doom. It’s a movie that says “most of us are rats on the treadmill, and the game is totally rigged against us so you may as well resign yourself to the endurance of it all…in all likelihood the only respite you will experience with any regularity will be in the realm of fantasy.”

Lars von Trier‘s Dancer in the Dark (’00), which I’ve seen three or four times, used pretty much the exact same premise. This time Bjork was the tragic and incorrigible daydreamer who, like Martin and Hoskins before her, ended up on the gallows.

Pennies From Heaven was a bust — $22 million to produce, $9.1 million in theatrical revenues. My pet peeve was the way Bagneris’s accordion player was initially portrayed as another sad but sympathetic loser, and then he turns out to be a rapist and a murderer of a young blind girl. Bagneris seemed like a weirdo to begin with, and for some primal reason I was repelled by the idea his character turning into a secret maniac, and of Martin being convicted for Bagneris’s crime…this was my big drop-out moment a la William Goldman.

Could Netflix or Amazon or Hulu be persuaded to fund a remake today? Or a similar musical tragedy with the same basic premise?

82 year-old Fred Astaire on Ross’s film: “I have never spent two more miserable hours in my life. Every scene was cheap and vulgar. They don’t realize that the ’30s were a very innocent age, and that [the film] should have been set in the ’80s. As is it’s just froth. It makes you cry it’s so distasteful.”

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Why would Brad Pitt degrade his brand by costarring in a obviously ham-fisted, aimed-at-blithering-idiots, piece-of-shit adventure comedy like The Lost City (Paramount, 3.25)? It’s been 37 years since Romancing The Stone and nobody will give a shit anyway, but that’s more or less the template. (Or, if you will, Romancing The Stone meets a slightly less bullshit-stuffed Jungle Cruise.) Kathleen Turner played a reclusive romance novelist back then and Sandra Bullock is playing a romance novelist now. Channing Tatum is the new Michael Douglas, a brawny hero with feet of clay. Beware of directors Adam and Aaron Nee.

I will not watch this film. If I do, I will hate it.

Last night Ben Affleck told Jimmy Kimmel that his reported remarks to Howard Stern about supposed links between his alcoholism and his waning marriage to Jennifer Garner, which sounded to a lot of people like “Jennifer made me an alcoholic,” were taken out of context and turned into toxic click-bait by voracious online rewriters.

Affleck did reportedly say that he and Garner “probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats,” and if they hadn’t divorced “I probably still would’ve been drinking…part of why I started drinking was because I [felt] trapped…I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”

There was certainly more to their marriage than just this awkward summary.

Two thoughts:

(a) A “bad” or unfulfilling relationship (sexual boredom? constant conflicts over values and lifestyle issues? feelings of being intellectually stifled or constantly misunderstood or challenged?) can result in a repeating, no-way-out negative dynamic, and that can make a husband or a wife feel trapped. A couple can sometimes gradually work through this stuff; other times it’s hopeless. Anyone who’s been married knows what I’m talking about.

(b) Imagine if Garner had been the one who succumbed to alcoholism and sought a divorce while agreeing to joint custody, and who later said to Howard Stern the same things that Affleck said. Imagine if she’d said “I really wasn’t happy and every day was an ordeal, and yet there I was, stuck in a bad marriage, and I had to figure some way out of it…if I’d stayed with Ben I probably would’ve remained an alcoholic.” No one in the twitterverse or on The View or anywhere else would’ve trashed Garner like Affleck got trashed yesterday. Because the media always turns a blind eye when a woman admits to some kind of selfish behavior or failing, because if they don’t cut her a break or rush to her defense they’re probably sexist pigs under the skin. But if an older guy (white or BIPOC) admits to some selfish failing the media always chimes in with “look, a suspected asshole just admitted he’s an asshole!”

Of course I love Wes Anderson creations…of course I do! It’s just that many of my Anderson faves are his commercials, and those dozens upon dozens of YouTube parodies. Feature-wise I’ve always been and will always be fully respectful of Anderson’s brand or stylistic stamp, and that includes, believe it or not, The French Dispatch, which I had a mostly unpleasant time with at Telluride last September.

But I am a genuine, whole-hearted fan of only a handful of Wes’s films — Rushmore (which I’ve always adored like a brother), Bottle Rocket, The Grand Budapest Hotel, the original black-and-white Bottle Rocket short, most of The Royal Tenenbaums. But I dearly love the Wes signage, specifically the shorts and parodies. The SNL Anderson horror film short is heaven.

I will always be on Team Anderson, and I will never resign. Partly because I’m 100% certain that one day he’ll reach into his heart and decide to broaden his scope, or perhaps even re-think things somewhat. (Wes is still relatively young.) He has to — artists have no choice. I just hope and pray he’ll make more of an effort to blend his hermetic Wesworld aesthetic with the bigger, gnarlier, more complex world that’s been there all along.

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Two and a half years ago I suggested that 2007 was and is one of the great film years, or roughly at par with 1999, 1971 and 1962 and 1939.

I listed 25 2007 films of serious merit — American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd. Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps even a touch better.

The idea in re-posting this is to note that 15 years have elapsed since ’07, and to ask if anyone feels that any of these annums have measured up to ’07 or any of the previous banner years.

I happen to believe that everything started to go badly the following year — 2008 — with the debut of Iron Man and the subsequent increasing power of the superhero genre (DC Extended Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe), and that “my” kind of movies haven’t been the same since. Strong, distinctive films have broken through every year, of course, but the pickings have been getting slimmer and slimmer since ’08, and especially since the Robespierre thought plague began to poison the water in ’17.

But don’t let me stop anyone. If you’re persuaded that ’09 or ’11 or ’16 were up to snuff, please make your case.

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Herewith a tough but fair assessment from Variety’s Owen Gleiberman about why West Side Story (and it breaks my heart to say this) appears to be a flopperoo, at least as far as viewing appetites outside your X-factor Millennial, older GenX and boomer demos are concerned.

Not technique- or chops-wise but vision-wise in terms of reading the cultural zeitgeist, Gleiberman is saying that Spielberg’s instincts are perhaps no longer in synch with things, at least not in a razor–sharp way and certainly not like they were between Duel and Schindler’s List/Jurassic Park. He’s gotten older. It happens.

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Arrogant assumptions + klutzy presumptions that it wouldn’t all come out in the wash don’t translate into “disgrace” for ex-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. He’s not a panting sexual animal, and isn’t in the same league with brother & ex-governor Andrew at all. It was rash and sloppy for the SNL team to slander him with the “d” word.

By the way, with Chris Wallace resigning from Fox is it feasible for the Trump-loathing Chris to fill his slot? Probably not, I would imagine.

Last night I watched Joel Coen and Frances McDormand‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth (Apple, 12.25). For some reason I woke up at 4:30 this morning, and just as my head was clearing a friend texted to ask what I thought.

“Not half bad!,” I replied. “I found it striking, gripping, strict and to the point. The grim grip of horror that resides in the human heart. A literate, thinking person’s story of doom foretold. The austere approach was more captivating than expected, given the Venice turndown and the spotty word of mouth.

“It’s relatively short (105 minutes), so much so that it almost felt like Macbeth’s greatest hits (abridged). I loved the spooky sets and the dense fog and the circling hawks and definitely the performance by recent NYFCC award-winner Kathryn Hunter, who plays the three creepy witches. And I was very impressed with Alex Hassell’s highly disciplined performance as Ross. And I adored Bruno Delbonnel’s sharp and silvery cinematography.

“McDormand really nailed her eerie, obsessive, sharp-taloned Lady Macbeth — she was almost coming from the same place as Hunter. Now and then Denzel’s delivery of this or that passage was quite affecting; at other times (“Cans’t thou not minister to a mind diseased…pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?”) a bit under-nourishing. But he’s still The Great Denzel.

“I still vastly prefer the 1971 Polanski version but Coen and McDormand definitely found their own tone and approach. It’s a film that warrants respect.”

The cast of Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth, a play about medieval Scotland, is pretty close to one-third African American. Presentism is par for the course these days, of course, but Coen and wife-producer-costar Frances McDormand seem to have moved beyond your obligatory woke casting requirements.

Which is a switch for Joel, at least compared to remarks he and brother Ethan made during an interview with The Daily Beast‘s Jen Yamato in February ’16 while promoting Hail Ceasar.

Yamato had brought up the issue of diverse casting and multi-ethnic representation. Even though Hail Ceasar was set in the racially illiberal early ’50s, her beef was basically #WhyIsHailCaesarSoWhite? Joel’s attitude was quite resistant and in fact fairly dismissive. Boiled down, his view was “why should I ethnically mix up my cast just for political reasons?”

It’s probably fair to say that a different Joel was at the helm when it came to casting The Tragedy of Macbeth. I know nothing, but I suspect that McDormand told him “you can’t really play it that way now, plus there are so many great actors of color out there…you should get in on this.”

Obviously Joel could have ignored the presentism requirement and made Macbeth as a traditional all-paleface play a la Roman Polanski and Orson Welles, and if anyone had complained he could have used the same argument he threw at Yamato. So why didn’t he? Because the Yamato mindset is industry-wide now, and he figured “well, I guess I need to get with the program…why make trouble for myself?…why not just embrace presentism and turn it into a plus?”

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During his four days of debate prep with the secretly infected Donald Trump, Chris Christie got Covid and wound up in the hospital and in serious trouble. Apparently chief of staff Mark Meadows knew Trump was infected during those four days. A pig, an animal and a complete sociopath, Trump may have infected as many as six people during that prep. And Meadows, says Christie, kept this information under wraps “for a book…he saved it for a book.”

Sundance ’22 will announce the slate tomorrow (12.9)…I think. Late last month Indiewire‘s Kate Erbland and Eric Kohn speculated that Luca Guadagnino‘s Bones and All, a cannibalism in the ’80s love story starring Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet, might debut there.

But it won’t. An authoritative source told me this morning that Bones “is still in the works and will not be ready for months.” Which sounds to me like it might not even be ready for Cannes — more likely the early fall festivals (Venice/Telluride/New York)?

I thought Bones might be a Sundance fit given that Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name enjoyed a triumphant Park City debut in January 2017, or nearly five years ago. But of course Sundance was an entirely different equation back then. The Park City gathering was still a powerhouse indie launch thing (Manchester By The Sea was the big explosive film of Sundance’s 2016 fest.) Since then, of course, Sundance has changed identities. It’s now the Sundance Wokester Festival….a secular event for people of the wokester faith & cloth.

In short, even if Bones was ready for Sundance ’22 it probably wouldn’t be a great idea.

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Aaron Sorkin‘s Being The Ricardos opens theatrically on Friday (12.10); Prime Video streaming starts on Tuesday, 12.21. I caught it a second time a few days ago — it’s still a tightly constructed, well-written period dramedy with good zotzy performances all around, especially from Nicole Kidman**.

Anyway, here’s an I Love Lucy tidbit I was never aware of until yesterday…

During the first five seasons (’51 through ’56) I Love Lucy was set in a mythical apartment building on Manhattan’s East 68th Street. For the sixth and final season (’56 to ’57) the Richardos and the Mertzes moved to Westport, Connecticut, a flush Fairfield County hamlet that’s directly adjacent to my hometown of Wilton. The show continued to be shot in Hollywood, of course, but the producers, sticklers for accuracy, based the Ricardo home on an actual colonial abode located at 1 Old Hill Road.

Posted on Fairfield’s Hamlet Hub, 9.14.15: “According to the filing information for the district’s National Register of Historic Places certification, ‘The two earliest houses in the district are the 1730 Lt. John Taylor House and the 1736 Daniel Freelove Nash House.’ The Taylor house [1 Old Hill Road, just west of downtown] was destroyed by fire in 1935 and replaced by a replica on the original foundation. It was the home of film and stage actor Arthur Kennedy during the 1950s and served as the model for the home of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo when I Love Lucy moved to Westport for its final season.”

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