Serious question to Cannes-based Jordan Ruimy: “Given the mostly encouraging reviews for Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch so far (an 88% Metacritic rating) and no other film doing as well with the critics so far, is it fair to suggest that Dispatch seems likely to emerge as a prime contender for the Palme d’Or?
The five biggies (and correct me if I’m wrong) are The French Dispatch, Drive My Car, Benedetta, Compartment #9 and Val.”
Ruimy to HE: “Dispatch is minor Anderson.”
HE to Ruimy: “Not as good as Grand Budapest Hotel?”
Ruimy to HE: “Hell no.”
The scene in Cannes as the end-credits wrap following the world premiere of THE FRENCH DISPATCH, as Wes Anderson-y a movie as any… pic.twitter.com/qmShSnzqfc
— Scott Feinberg @ Cannes (@ScottFeinberg) July 12, 2021
HE to Ruimy: “Okay.”
Ruimy to HE: “[David] Ehrlich didn’t even like it.”
HE to Ruimy: “I was influenced by Peter Debruge‘s Variety rave…so he’s just capitulating to the underlying desire to praise films because it feels good or something?”
Ruimy to HE: “I think a lot of critics are doing that. Cannes ’21 is being celebrated as the reemergence of cinema. There’s a celebratory mood in the air here.”
HE to Ruimy: “So there are no real HOTTIES so far…not really. No big consensus films.”
Ruimy to HE: “Benedetta is too shocking for [some]. I guess Dispatch is the de facto Oscar movie here so far, but it’s very minor. The photography is stunning, but the anthology aspect of it does a major disservice to Anderson’s style. He works better with a large tableaux and a two-hour narrative.”
I think we’ve all understood for the last 10 to 15 years and certainly since the pandemic hit that the lore and religiosity of film…the faith and investment and occasional wonder of movies as it used to exist in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and even the early aughts is over…a few welcome exceptions aside, the beating heart of movies as it used to be is in permanent cardiac arrest…double kaput and triple fucking finito.
But just to be sure that we all understand this without the slightest trace of ambiguity, former Paramount and 20th Century Fox honcho Barry Diller has repeated the death mantra in so many words:
“The movie business is over,” Diller said in an exclusive interview with NPR’s David Goura during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference. “The movie business as before is finished and will never come back.”
Diller’s remarks sounds better if you add the “f” word so here they are again, augmented: “The movie business that we used to know is fucking over. It’s fucking finished and will never fucking come back.”
“There used to be a whole run-up,” Diller said, remembering how much time, energy and money studios invested in distribution and publicity campaigns. The goal, he said, was to generate sustained excitement and enthusiasm for new movies. “That’s finished,” he said. “I used to be in the movie business where you made something really because you cared about it,” he said, noting that popular reception mattered more than anything else.
Best Diller quote: “These streaming services have been making something that they call ‘movies.’ They ain’t movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so.” The definition of “movie,” he said, “is in such transition that it doesn’t mean anything right now.”
Even among hardcore cineastes, interest in or even awareness of Otto Preminger‘s Exodus (’60) is minimal. A 208-minute historical drama about the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, Exodus is a sluggishly paced if decently made film, handsomely shot in widescreen 70mm color by Sam Levitt (The Defiant Ones, Anatomy of a Murder, Pork Chop Hill) and efficiently performed by Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Sal Mineo, Jill Haworth, Lee J. Cobb, et. al.
Preminger’s decision to hire and openly credit the formerly blackballed Dalton Trumbo as the sole Exodus screenwriter did a lot to end the Hollywood blacklist era of the ’50s. Kirk Douglas‘s Spartacus, which opened two months before Exodus in early October, has also been credited with doing the same. The Spartacus-Exodus one-two punch.
60 years on, there’s only one remnant of Preminger’s film that has lingered into the 21st Century, and that’s Saul Bass‘s Exodus logo — that image alone has held on and persisted. Nobody remembers the film, but everyone knows that image of armed rebellion and revolution.
True story from a critic friend, edited by the author so as to obscure his/her identity:
I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. But I so enjoy telling this story.
Let me start like this: Any job description in a help-wanted ad seeking to hire a critic should include these words: “Must be a bit of a dick.”
The ads never say that. But they should. Because, no matter how nicely you do it, some people don’t take criticism well. Inevitably, you will have to say something negative in a public forum about the creative expression of another human being. Whether you mean to be or not, they’ll think you’re a dick.
Here’s the thing: Sometimes, it’s really enjoyable to be as witty and as nasty as you can when you’re writing a review. Because you’re being a dick, which is, by definition, fun.
I knew early on that I had the ability to provoke and the willingness to do so (along with a shocking inability to foresee possible consequences of my
actions). I take a certain pride in a well-turned phrase and an irreverent sense of humor.
But while I’d experienced the immediate reactions of local artists — actors, directors, musicians — to my reviews in the early years of my career, I’d
rarely had the sense that, when I wrote a movie review or a review of a rock concert, the people I was writing about ever actually saw what I wrote.
Which brings me to my point about being a dick, and my Richard Donner story.
In 1994, during a moment when there was a microburst of interest in westerns because of the success of Unforgiven and Dances With Wolves, I’d been assigned one of those trend stories that editors love: the return of the Western. So I started making calls.
One of those went to a publicist at Warner Bros., which was a few months away from releasing Richard Donner’s remake of the 1950s TV hit, Maverick, starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster ands James Garner. Could I get a few minutes on the phone with Donner, I asked, to talk about westerns?
Donner was a director and producer of commercially successful middlebrow (or worse) films starting in the 1960s, including Superman with Christopher Reeve, The Goonies (most overrated kids film of all time), The Omen and the Lethal Weapon films, which, to my mind, had ruined action movies.
In those days before cell phones and e-mail, the reply came with surprising swiftness. I got a call back the same day from the Warners’ publicist, telling
me, no, Richard Donner would not speak to me about westerns — or anything else, apparently.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Did you write a review of his film Radio Flyer“, the publicist asked.
It had been two years, but I knew exactly what he was talking about: I believe I called it “a feel-good film about child abuse.”
“Yeah, well, that was apparently a very personal film for him, so he’s not going to talk to you,” the publicist said.
Until that point — 1994, in a career that started officially when I turned pro in 1973 — I had no sense of anyone reading my reviews other than the
people within the immediate circulation area of my newspaper. I forwarded them to the film publicists in New York, and knew they were syndicated.
But I simply didn’t imagine filmmakers themselves actually taking the time.
Now, however, I knew I had Richard Donner’s attention.
So when Maverick came out in 1994 and I reviewed it, I referred to him on first reference as “Richard Donner, who directed Radio Flyer, a feel-good film about child abuse.”
Nobody cares about In The Heights any more, but if they did there’d be one more thing for wokesters to gripe about.
The last grenade thrown at Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s musical (a mostly faithful adaptation of LMM’s 2005 stage musical) was the colorism thing — the film had ignored the presence of Afro-Latinos in Washington Heights and therefore was, after a fashion, guilty of a form of discrimination — i.e., colorism.
I never saw the stage play but a friend of Jordan Ruimy‘s did, and he reports that the film version “cut the plot line about Kevin Rosario, the Puerto Rican dad” — Jimmy Smits in the film — “not wanting his daughter Nina to date Benny” over an ethnic disparity issue. (In the film Nina and Benny are played by Leslie Grace and Corey Hawkins.)
A blunt way of explaining Kevin’s “ethnic disparity” problem is that he doesn’t want his daughter dating a guy who isn’t from their tribe and who doesn’t speak Spanish. A blunter way of putting it is that Kevin may have a problem with his daughter dating a black dude,.
“Nina and Benny spend the night together in Benny’s apartment as Kevin frantically searches for her all night; Benny worries about what Kevin will say about their relationship but is happy to finally be with her (‘Sunrise’). Nina eventually returns home to find her parents worried sick about her, and Kevin grows furious when he learns she was with Benny, disapproving of their relationship due to Benny not being Latino.”
A 6.10.21 Elle piece by Madison Feller discussed several differences between the stage and film versions. Feller didn’t mention Kevin’s problem with Benny in the stage version.
Earlier today I spent a few hours reading this and that portion of Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” paperback. I have to say that I relished almost all of it.
QT’s prose isn’t quite on the level of the great Elmore Leonard, but it reads straight and clean and without a hint of hesitance or snazziness for its own sake. Page by page it doesn’t fuck around, and delivers all kinds of ripe flavor and embroidery in terms of the various characters and their backstories, and overall you just fly through the chapters.
The book, which I bought last night at the New Beverly for $11 and change, is somewhat “better” than the film, to be honest, and the more I read the more I wished that OUATIH had become a ten-part Netflix series, using each and every line in this 400-page novel. Just go for it…just sprawl it all the fuck out.
I was especially taken with a two-page scene between a red-kimono-wearing, half-bombed Rick Dalton and the real Steve McQueen, the latter sitting behind the wheel of his car outside the gate to the Polanski-Tate home and kind of half-dismissing Dalton but at the same time half-listening to him. Then they reminisce how they once played three pool games (okay, two and a half) at Barney’sBeanery back in ’62.
Not in the movie, of course…
I also love a chapter called “The Twinkie Truck” (pgs. 156 to 175). It’s mostly about the adventures, ambitions and psychology of one Charles Manson, who really wanted to be a rich and famous rock star and knew deep down that all of his spiritual guru sermons and posturings were more or less a bullshit side activity.
This is real-deal history according to QT and common knowledge, and it’s fascinating to consider some of the particulars about Manson’s interactions with Dennis Wilson, Terry Melcher, Candice Bergen and Mark Lindsay, and how one night Manson even jammed with Neil Young.
There’s another chapter called “Misadventure”, and it basically focuses on Cliff Booth‘s half-accidental murder of his needling, boozy wife, Billie, with a “shark” gun (whatever the hell that is) and the ins and outs of that episode. Again, you’re asking yourself “why wasn’t some of this material used in the film, and if it couldn’t fit why didn’t Tarantino shoot it anyway and create a 10-hour version down the road?”
Excerpt: “No one really knew for sure if Cliff shot her on purpose. It could have been just a tragic mishandling of diving equipment, which is what Cliff always claimed. But anyone who had ever seen a drunken Billie Booth berate Cliff in public in front of his colleagues didn’t buy that.
“How did Cliff get away with it? Easy — his story was plausible and it couldn’t be disproven. Cliff felt real bad about what he did to Billie. But it never occured to him not to try and get away with murder.”
Excerpt #2, pg. 167, focusing on Sharon Tate: “She liked the bubble-gum hits she heard on KHJ. She liked that song ‘Yummy Yummy Yummy’ and the follow-up song by the same group, ‘Chewy Chewy.’ She liked Bobby Sherman and that ‘Julie’ song. She loved that ‘Snoopy vs. The Red Baron’ song.
If you were a Netflix, HBO or Showtime exec in charge of adapting real-life news stories into multi-part melodramas, and you knew that your boss was a fan of Ben Stiller‘s Escape at Dannemora (’18), would you try to make the sordid saga of Tina Gonzalez, the Fresno County Jail prison guard who was recently busted and sentenced for having sex with an inmate, into a two-hour drama or limited miniseries?
Stiller’s seven-part series was an emotional tragedy about a real-life prison employee, Joyce Mitchell (Patricia Arquette), who wound up punished and humiliated for having an intimate affair with a Dannemora prison inmate named Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro). As she was in real life, Mitchell is also punished for helping Matt and a fellow inmate, David Sweat (Paul Dano), pull off a daring escape.
The Gonzalez affair didn’t result in a prison break, but her sexual behavior was a little crazier than Mitchell’s. Plus (and this is a significant factor from a crude audience standpoint) the 26 year-old Gonzalez is seriously attractive, and could realistically be played by Selena Gomez or someone in that realm. Which makes Gonzalez’s wild behind-bars activity seem all the more odd, and yet at the same time more interesting.
From the beginning the general consensus was that Mitchell was on the homely, dumpy, overweight side. Unkind New York Post editors took to calling her “Shawskank”. I for one felt sorry for Arquette’s Mitchell — a lonely and unloved woman in a drab, dead-end marriage. Arquette’s performance was highly praised, and she won Best Actress trophies from the Critics Choice members as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
“Tina Gonzalez, a 26 year-old Fresno County correctional officer, was sentenced Tuesday to two years probation and seven months in the county jail for having sex with an inmate.
“Gonzalez was facing up to three years and eight months in prison, but she avoided prison time despite harsh words from her former boss at the jail, Assistant Sheriff Steve McComas.
“McComas said not only did Gonzalez have sex with the inmate, she also supplied him razors [and] gave him inside information about when officers would be inspecting the inmate’s cell.
“Gonzalez allegedly cut a hole in her uniform to make it easier to have sex with the inmate she was involved with. McComas also accused her of having sex inside the jail in full view of 11 inmates. ‘That is something only a depraved mind can come up with,’ McComas said.”
Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg has never been one to let grass grow under his feet. The 2021 Cannes Film Festival starts the day after tomorrow — Tuesday, July 6 — and Scott is already shufflin’ up and down the Croisette. That’s because he’s fast on his feet and his middle name is Hopper — hip-hop, hip-hop, hippity-hop, hippity-hop, hippity-hoppity, hippity-hoppity, etc.
If it was my show I’d still be in Paris, man…strollin’ around Montparnasse and through the Jardin du Luxembourg and maybe over to Passy (the Last Tango in Paris building!) and the non-touristy parts of Montmartre, etc. And I’d be there tomorrow (7.5) also, and then I’d catch the Paris-to-Cannes train on Tuesday (7.6) at 7:15 am.
Incidentally: Always pan slowly, and sometimes it works better if you don’t pan at all. Go with a series of static tableaus, blending one into the other.
Back covering Cannes for the 1st time in 8 years! Last time: GATSBY, FRUITVALE & NEBRASKA; Harvey, Toback & Franco; breakouts JLaw & MBJ; legends Redford & Riva. This time: COVID tests/masks; Spike; a lineup with Damon, Cotillard, Baker, Kousmanen & Farhadi; that same great view. pic.twitter.com/Wx0U8sMxam
HE Plus, 6.29.19: There’s a great Charles Bukowski line from one of his short story volumes, a line about how good it feels and how beautiful the world seems when you get out of jail. I can confirm that. Not only does the world look and feel like the friendliest and gentlest place you could possibly experience, but it smells wonderful — food stands, car exhaust, sea air, asphalt, window cleaner, green lawns, garbage dumpsters. Compared to the well-scrubbed but nonetheless stinky aroma of the L.A. County Jail, I mean.
I did three or four days in L.A. County in the ’70s for unpaid parking tickets. Remember that Cary Grant line in North by Northwest about the cops chasing him for “seven parking tickets”? Well, I went to jail for not paying the fines on 27 of the damn things. That’s right — 27. I had a half-arrogant, half-cavalier attitude back then, to put it mildly. I didn’t agree with the idea of forking over hundreds in parking fines. The money they wanted was excessive, I felt, especially after the penalties increased after I didn’t pay in the first place.
One night after 9 pm I was driving west on Wilshire Boulevard, not too far from Bundy. I was pulled over for running a red light. They ran my plates and I was promptly cuffed and taken down to the West Los Angeles police station on Butler Avenue. The desk cops discovered my multiple offenses after doing a search, of course. They printed out copies of each arrest warrant for each “failure to pay fine.” I remember some laughter as the printer kept printing and printing and printing.
I was taken down to L.A. County later that night. It was just like what Dustin Hoffman went through in Straight Time. A shower, orange fatigues, bedding. I was put into a cell with three other guys. Being in close proximity to bald naked winos who smelled horrible…memories!
Over the next three or four days I was driven around to the various municipalities where I’d failed to put quarters into the meter — Santa Monica, Van Nuys, Malibu, Central Los Angeles. In each courtroom I was brought before a judge, listened to my offenses, pled “guilty, your honor” and was given a sentence of “time served.” I was released at the end of the fourth day.
It was an awful thing to go through, but I managed to eliminate a total debt of at least $2K (it might have closer to $2500) so when I got out I didn’t owe a thing to anyone. So in a sense I earned or was “paid” at least $500 a day.
I know enough about mingling with other lawbreakers to recognize the truth of a line that Hoffman’s Max Denbo said in Straight Time: “Outside it’s what you have in your pockets — inside it’s who you are.”
I remember spending several hours in a common-area holding cell with nine or ten guys. One flamboyantly gay guy was jabbering with everyone and discussing his life and values and colorful adventures. He talked a lot about how much he loved hitting his favorite bars in “Glitterwood” (i.e., West Hollywood). At one point he came over to me and flirted a bit…sorry.
There’s nothing like getting out of jail to make you feel like Jesus’ son. It reminds you what a wonderful and blessed place the world outside is, and what a sublime thing it can be to walk around free and do whatever you want within the usual boundaries, and how serene it can be to be smiled at by strangers in stores and restaurants. People you wouldn’t give a second thought to suddenly seem like good samaritans because of some act of casual kindness.
Jail doesn’t just teach you about yourself but about your immediate circle. “If you want to know who your friends are,” Bukowski once wrote, “get yourself a jail sentence.” Or do some time in a hospital bed.
I’ve eaten at Giorgio Baldi twice…no, three times. The first time was 10 or 11 years ago with Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty was years off at the time). Clint Eastwood and Sean Penn were sharing an indoor table. Three or four years later I ate there on my own dime, and then returned again in ’16 or thereabouts. It’s pricey but excellent. The Dover Sole is heavenly — moist and light, bursting with flavor, sprinkled with lime.
But I’ll tell you one thing. If I was rich or famous enough to have a security guy with me, and if he were to gently place his hand on my back as I stepped into the waiting SUV, I would probably stop and turn around and ask, “Why are you putting your hand on my back?”
Security: Sir? HE: Why did you place your hand on my back as I was stepping into the car? Security: We’re just here for you, sir. No issues. HE: What are you trying to do, guide me into the car? Security: Just an instinct, sir. We’re right behind you. HE: I know you’re right behind me, but don’t touch me. Security: Sorry. HE: It’s okay. Just don’t do it. Security: Okay. Understood. HE: I’ve been stepping into SUVs all my life. Security: Of course. HE: I’m sure you’re a good man. Security: I try to be. HE: And you are. Security: Yes sir. HE: Okay, good.
Exactly what, I’m asking myself, will the great Jonah Hill have to say about the great Albert Brooks and his 1991 classic, Defending Your Life? Other than the usual hosannahs and platitudes, I mean — “This film means so much to me personally,” “Brooks is a genius” (which he is), “It’s so rare for a film to be funny and make you think and touch your heart at the same time,” etc. All of which are valid sentiments.
Defending Your Life basically asks viewers “how much of your life has been driven by fear and anxiety and cowardice, and how much of your life has been about truth and bravery and taking stabs at creativity and applying kindness rather than judgment…? We all conform as best we can because we want safety and security in our lives, but conforming too much will suffocate your soul…so where have you been putting most of your emphasis and energy?”
The one thing I didn’t like about Defending Your Life was its portrayal of Meryl Streep‘s “Julia” character –it seemed dishonest, or at the very least incomplete.
Brooks’ recently deceased “Daniel Miller” falls in love with Julia during his stay in Judgment City, which is a kind of purgatory for souls to be judged on their past lives, as they wait to see if their next phase of mortal incarnation will be a re-run or a step up the spiritual ladder. Daniel, we gradually learn, lived too much of his life in fear of this or that, and Julia, it seems, never had a fearful day in her life. She’s so perfect and gracious she’s almost suffocating. Nobody is that good.
11 years ago I riffed about films that have dealt with death in a “good” way: “The best death-meditation films impart a sense of tranquility or acceptance about what’s to come, which is what most of us go to films about death to receive, and what the best of these always seem to convey in some way.
“They usually do this by selling the idea of structure and continuity. They persuade that despite the universe being run on cold chance and mathematical indifference, each life has a particular task or fulfillment that needs to happen, and that by satisfying this requirement some connection to a grand scheme is revealed.
“You can call this a delusional wish-fulfillment scenario (and I won’t argue about that), but certain films have sold this idea in a way that simultaneously gives you the chills but also settles you down and makes you feel okay.
“Here’s a list of some top achievers in this realm. I’m not going to explain why they’re successful in conveying the above except to underline that it’s not just me talking here — these movies definitely impart a sense of benevolent order and a belief that the end of a life on the planet earth is but a passage into something else. I’ve listed them in order of preference, or by the standard of emotional persuasion.
“1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ. 2. Stephen Frears‘ The Hit. 3. Brian Desmond Hurst‘s A Christmas Carol. 4. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait. 5. Henry King‘s Carousel (based on Ferenc Molnar‘s Lilliom). 6. Tim Burton‘s Beetlejuice. 6. Michael Powell‘s A Matter Of Life And Death, a.k.a. Stairway To Heaven. 7. Albert Brooks‘ Defending Your Life.
Yesterday I found this photo of the cast and crew of The Night of the Hunter. Principal photography began on 8.15.54 and ended on 10.7.54 — 36 days total. The photo was probably taken on the final day. (Where was Shelley Winters?) I had two reactions. One, I loved the tickled smiles worn by director Charles Laughton and lead actor Robert Mitchum. And two, I was taken aback by the white socks worn by the two kneeling crew guys. In an April 2020 piece called “Sound-Stage Fashion,” I noted the dress code of the average below-the-line Hollywood sound-stage grunt in the mid ’50s. The outfit consisted of (a) a checked short-sleeve sports shirt or long-sleeve business shirt, (b) a pair of baggy, pleated, hand-me-down business pants, and (c) brown or black lace-up shoes with white socks.
