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In a 7.15 New Yorker article titled “A Haunting New Documentary About Anthony Bourdain,” Helen Rosner has revealed that director Morgan Neville resorted to a sophisticated voice-editing or voice-replicating process that some on Twitter are tut-tutting about.

It involved the audible creation of passages not actually spoken by Bourdain but written by him. Neville created a deepfake or A.I. replication of Bourdain’s voice, assembled from vowel and consonant splices and fragments of legit Bourdain recordings. And so we hear Bourdain “reading” the passages even though he didn’t actually say them.

Get it? The passages that we hear Bourdain reading were definitely 100% written by him, and the voice we hear reading them is definitely Bourdain’s. But he didn’t actually speak these passages and wasn’t actually recorded saying them. Neville created a highly convincing simulation.

Does someone have a problem with this? Not I because nothing substantive was fabricated. Bourdain wrote the words and passages in question, and Neville’s simulation of Bourdain’s voice reading them is “real” as far as it goes and it’s all straight from the horse’s mouth. So what’s the problem?

If Neville had faked or invented passages that Bourdain hadn’t written, a fully justified ethical scandal would’ve erupted…but he didn’t. The words and thoughts are Bourdain’s.

If Neville had hired a Bourdain-sounding actor to read the passages and then revealed this ruse in the closing credits, nobody would’ve said boo.

But because Neville used Bourdain’s own voice instead of an actor’s, some are calling this an ethical foul. Except there was nothing wrong or even shady about what Neville did. Sophisticated, obviously, but so what? Should Neville have admitted to this in the closing credits of the film? Yes, he should have. But it’s not that big of a deal.

Canadian entertainment reporter David Friend: “The new Anthony Bourdain documentary didn’t have audio of him reading emails, so they created a fake A.I. model of his voice…and didn’t bother disclosing that in the film. We need a serious check on ethics in documentary filmmaking.”

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In his 7.15 review of Morgan Neville‘s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (opening Friday), Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern notes that the film “has been criticized for what some see as a sexist and reductionist implication that Bourdain’s failed relationship with his last girlfriend, the Italian actress and filmmaker Asia Argento, was the cause of his suicide.

“Argento figures significantly toward the end of the film, as she did in its subject’s life,” Morgenstern writes. “But she’s a latecomer in a documentary that evokes, and makes sense of, the full sweep of Anthony Bourdain’s gifts, charms, successive careers, sustaining passions and bedeviling obsessions. A film of fitting energy and complexity, it’s a stirring account of an astonishing life.”

I’m sorry but that’s just not honest or true. After seeing Neville’s film a month ago I tried to explain the Bourdain suicide thing as plainly as possible (6.16). Here it is again for good measure:

“The first 80 to 90 minutes of Roadrunner are just okay. At times they almost feel a bit boring. But during the final 30 or 40 minutes the film dives into the ‘what happened during the final few weeks of Bourdain’s life, and why did he fucking hang himself?’ section.

“By the end the viewer has been left with a clear impression that Bourdain’s relationship with the notoriously edgy and prickly Asia Argento was a giddy, obsessive thing that intensified Bourdain’s hot plate and probably jarred his sense of emotional equilibrium.

“I’m not saying that Argento ‘killed’ him in some way — Bourdain sadly did that all to himself — but she definitely shook him up and rattled his composure and apparently brought him to the edge of something or other.

“Bourdain was a moody, free-associating, nakedly honest fellow with a tendency to occasionally fall into caves of depression, and it appears that he swan-dove into the Argento relationship without the slightest sense of measured, step-by-step gradualism. Frank Sinatra once sang “let’s take it nice and easy…it’s gonna be so easy.” Bourdain definitely didn’t do that with Argento.

“There’s a stocky guy from Bourdain’s camera crew who tells Neville that Anthony was ‘a lifelong addictive personality, [and at the end he was] addicted to another person [i.e., Argento]. He didn’t understand he would drive her away if he didn’t stop talking about [how great she was]…you could see her pulling back and he just wouldn’t stop.’

“So in a way Bourdain was apparently smothering Argento to some extent, and so just before his death she performed that public affair in Rome with Hugo Clement. Her apparent intention was to say to Bourdain ‘back off, don’t smother me, let me be free.’ She and Bourdain had an open relationship, but if Argento had been a tad more considerate she would have indulged herself with Clement more discreetly.

In the doc, Parts Unknown director Michael Steed says he checked on Bourdain after the Argento-Clement photos appeared online, and that Bourdain was not cool about it, mentioning that “a little fucking discretion” would have been nice on Argento’s part.

He meant that if you have an open relationship you fuck around in the shadows — you don’t push it in your partner’s face.

Argento didn’t push Bourdain off the cliff — he jumped of his own accord. But had it not been for their relationship and his extreme immersion in that bond, Bourdain might be alive today. Maybe. Who knows? Possibly. This is definitely what the film leaves you with.

This will be of little interest, I realize, to anyone except for aspect-ratio fanatics like myself. But within the past month I’ve watched Amazon rentals of Billy Wilder‘s The Spirit of St. Louis (’57) and John Guillermin and Irwin Allen‘s The Towering Inferno (’74). And neither made me happy.

Both films were shot within a standard widescreen a.r. (2.39:1), but for reasons of pure laziness and indifference are being presented to Amazon renters with flat aspect ratios of roughly 1.78:1 or 16 x 9, which is the dimension of a standard widescreen HD TV.

The difference between the two screen shapes (comparison below) is obvious — the 1.78 version chops the sides off. It’s just as obvious that certain parties (most likely on the Amazon end) involved in the presentation of these films couldn’t care less about showing them correctly.

I’ve been watching The Spirit of St. Louis for years so why did I pay to rent it on Amazon? Because the 1.78 version is presented in HD, and the 2006 DVD is obviously available only in 480p.

All of a sudden there’s a surge of Cannes oogah-boogah, generated by three recently-screened titles. Things are happening, the communal blood is up, buzz is buzzin’, etc.

The craziest of the three is Julia Ducournau‘s Titane, an extreme wackazoid auto-erotic midnight movie (“very violent”) made for critics who love embracing the outer behavioral limits as a way of asserting their anti-bourgeois credentials.

The most quietly absorbing and perhaps the saddest and most compelling is Asghar Farhadi‘s A Hero, a reportedly subtle, solemn and very well made Iran-based drama about an indebted man, on a brief furlough from prison, trying to do the right thing only to suffer the ravages of social media.

And an impressive blend of scurviness, small-town desperation and humanist compassion is reportedly delivered by Sean Baker‘s Red Rocket, a small-time loser drama about an aged-out porn star (Simon Rex) flopping on his mother’s couch in Texas City, Texas (an oil-refinery suburb of Galveston) as he tries to somehow regenerate his life by finding a hot young lassie who might be interested in a porn career and may have the stuff that will strike sparks with the Los Angeles porn industry

Which of these films will most likely penetrate the thick gelatinous membrane of the American moviegoing consciousness (or at least movie-watching distraction)…which show will animate the attention span or activate the den of drooping cultural depression?

Obviously Baker’s Red Rocket (the term, by the way, is slang for a dog’s erection) because it’s American and involves banal oozy sex and general small-town, what-the-fuck depravity — familiar topics for many younger Americans these days.

Farhadi’s A Hero will travel with Farhadi fans (and that would include yours truly) and that in itself should suffice.

And Ducournau’s Titane is obviously made for the wackos and weirdos…have at it!

…but it wasn’t. Because Amazon decided early on to campaign Small Axe, the Steve McQueen anthology series that began on British TV and which included Mangrove, a brilliant Chicago 7-like courtroom drama, for Emmy awards. This decision was greeted with shock and surprise by award-season handicappers because of the high regard in which Mangrove and Lover’s Rock, another portion of Small Axe, were held.

This 12.22.20 HE piece explains the reasoning behind Amazon’s decision fairly thoroughly.

And today the whole Amazon strategy collapsed like a house of cards with the Emmy nominations almost totally snubbing Small Axe, except for a single nomination — best cinematography in a limited/anthology series.

This is a major forehead-slapper. Had McQueen’s film been theatrically released and somehow qualified for a Best Picture nomination, it might well have beaten Nomadland. Or at least, it should have in the eyes of the Movie Godz, being a significantly better film and all.

Repeating for extra emphasis: The entire Small Axe anthology was entirely shut out by the Emmys. Why? What the hell happened? What do Amazon execs have to say about all this? Talk about a nonsensical wipe-out.

“Late To Brilliant Mangrove“, posted on 12.7.20:

Yesterday I finally saw a good portion of Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe quintet — specifically Mangrove, Red White and Blue and Lover’s Rock. (I’ve yet to watch Alex Wheatle, which I’m been told is the least of the five, and Education.) I was delighted to be finally sinking into the Big Three. McQueen is such a masterful filmmaker. He elevates material simply by focusing, framing and sharpening. His eye (visual choices) and sense of rhythm are impeccable. This, I was muttering to myself, is ace-level filmmaking…this is what it’s all about.

I was hugely impressed by all three, but especially by Mangrove, a gripping, well-throttled political drama which echoes and parallels Aaron Sorkin‘s Trial of the Chicago 7.

Both are about (a) landmark trials involving police brutality in the general time frame of the late ’60s and early ’70s, (b) activist defendants and flame-fanning media coverage, (c) an imperious, disapproving judge (Alex Jennings is McQueen’s Frank Langella), (d) a passionate barrister for the defense (Jack Lowden as a kind of British Bill Kuntsler), and (e) a decisive verdict or narrative aftermath that exposed institutional bias.

Mangrove (Amazon, currently streaming) is primarily about the late Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), the owner-operator of a neighborhood-friendly Notting Hill restaurant that served spicy food, attracted a cutting-edge clientele (locals, journalists, activists, Jimi Hendrix) and became a kind of community nerve center for political hey-hey.

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Earlier today on Twitter PopCulture.com staff writer Daniel S. Levine (@dsl899) enthused about Criterion’s recently released Bluray of Frank Borzage‘s History Is Made At Night (’37). The film is proudly bannered as a restored 4K digital transfer. Levine called it “great.”

What this Bluray seems to provide, based on frame captures, is another lovingly restored grainstorm experience — a hazy, soft-focused relation of Criterion’s Bluray of The Awful Truth (released on 4.7.18). Borzage’s 1937 film probably looks as good as it ever will on Bluray, agreed, but it’s certainly not the stuff of profound visual transportation. Not in my book, it isn’t.

So I asked Levine what exactly is so “great” about the Criterion Bluray in question. Not only did he decline to reply, but he blocked me.

If I was Levine I would’ve manned up and said something like “this is the most lusciously rendered version of this classic Borzage film ever savored in HD…the heavy-mosquito-swamp atmosphere is not a problem but a beautifully detailed, other-worldly immersion…Jean Arthur, Charles Boyer and Colin Clive covered in hundreds of trillions of micro-mosquitoes…it’s glorious!”

Five days ago HE commenter “hupto” posted an anecdote about the aesthetic preferences of younger action audiences (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) and an overheard response to a 6.9.12 double-bill showing of Goldfinger and Thunderball at the Aero in Santa Monica.

Goldfinger had just ended and the author was on his way up the lobby stairs to the men’s room when he heard a young guy complaining to his girlfriend about how slow and boring Goldfinger was. The submissive girlfriend asked if they’d be staying for Thunderball and the guy replied “hell no!”

This young sophisticate had apparently been persuaded that the ’60s James Bond / Sean Connery films delivered action highs along 21st Century lines (the idiotic Kingsman flicks, the Fast and Furious franchise, etc.). I recognize how the pacing of Goldfinger could seem, to a cinematic knuckle-dragger, a bit slow and steady, and that this 1964 Guy Hamilton film (my third favorite Connery after From Russia With Love and Dr. No) is more invested in character and dialogue than your average teenager or 20something of today is used to.

Nonetheless I found this anecdote hugely depressing.

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There are tens of millions of sensible left-center moderates like myself who despise cancel culture, and certainly no one who loathes it more than myself. I am nonetheless sickened and disgusted by Mel Gibson having apparently saluted Donald Trump as he arrived at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC 264) event two nights ago.

I’m not saying Gibson should be confined to the same doghouse that became his principal dwelling after his racist remarks were reported following a 2006 DUI bust, but saluting that rancid, bloated sociopath and would-be destroyer of democracy is intolerable.

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.”

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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.

What act of future public bravery, I wonder, will end the scourge of wokester terror that we’re all living under today?

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.”

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