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All hail director Richard Rush, who passed on 4.8.21 at age 91.

I met, interviewed and even hung out with Rush a bit during the 1980 promotion (spring and summer) of The Stunt Man — an audacious, whimsical turn-on that’s partly a sardonic comedy and partly a surreal meditation on the nature of “reality” and filmmaking. It was Rush’s one big triumph, or more precisely as a success d’estime within the community of hip know-it-all critics.

I was flattered to be invited to a special Manhattan Stunt Man gathering that included Rush, costar Steve Railsback and three or four elite journo schmoozer types — a boozy late-night hang that went into the wee hours. Out of this I became friendly (short termish) with Railsback’s wife Jackie (aka Jackie Giroux). Several weeks later I wangled a GQ assignment to interview Peter O’Toole, whose Stunt Man performance as director Eli Cross was one of his best, at his London home**.

Wiki excerpt: “Adapted by Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus from a same-titled 1970 novel by Paul Brodeur, The Stunt Man is about a young fugitive (Railsback) who lucks into a stunt double gig on the set of a World War I movie whose charismatic director (O’Toole) is quite the force of nature. Pic was nominated for three Oscars: O’Toole for Best Actor, Rush for Best Director and also for Best Adapted Screenplay.”

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Nocturnal high-def Los Angeles in the early to mid ’40s…Gilda, The Outlaw, The Letter on theatre marquees. Hat stores, fur stores, Atlantic Richfield gas stations. A large spotlight mounted on a flatbed truck. Hundreds upon hundreds of mid ’40s autos parked curbside — a 2021 film set in this era couldn’t hope to deliver this kind of authentic realism. Downtown Los Angeles plus the mean streets of Hollywood. Video-like clarity plus simulated sound…fairly amazing.

“While it’s somewhat exciting to try to guess the killer, the series wastes potential to dig into its characters and their relationships, and the landscape is the more lasting feeling after finishing the final episode. It just leaves you with a noticeably detached feeling of, ‘Okay, well that’s done.'” — Candice Frederick, TV Guide.

“For all its unevenness, Mare of Easttown‘s strengths carry it through its many muddles.” — THR‘s Inkoo Kang.

“More than halfway through the series, there’s barely any momentum to the mystery, and the relationship drama is sprawling and unfocused.” — CBR.com’s Josh Bell.

“[While] commendably ambitious, the plot elements sometimes work against each other — too baggy to be a compelling crime thriller, too busy to flesh out all the characters — to make it truly satisfying.” — Empire‘s Ian Freer.

“A series that will have you less focused on solving the whodunit and more on experiencing the lives of these characters.” — Alex Maldy, JoBlo.

Does anyone know anything about David O. Russell’s untitled 1930s flick, which has been shooting for several weeks and may have wrapped? I know someone who worked as background actor a few weeks ago, but they didn’t know much. Wiki logline: “A doctor and a lawyer form an unlikely partnership.”

The 20th Century release (slated for ’22) boasts a big-name cast — Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola.

I haven’t re-watched Russell’s I Heart Huckabees since it opened 15 and 1/2 years ago (10.1.04). Now that it’s in my head, I might just do that.

Review excerpt: “Huckabees shot right through my skull on Wednesday night and came out like some cosmic effusion and just sort of hung there above my head like a low-altitude cloud and sprinkling light rain.

“That sounds too tranquil. A movie this funny and frantic and this totally off-the-planet (and yet strangely inside the whole universal anxiety syndrome that we all live with day to day) can’t be that cosmically soothing. That’s not the idea.

“But it is soothing…that’s the weird thing. Huckabees makes you laugh fairly uproariously, but it leaves you in a spiritual place that feels settled and well-nourished. Variety‘s David Rooney said it was ‘largely an intellectual pleasure with a hollow core.’ Rooney has probably never been wronger in his life. Not because he isn’t smart or perceptive, but because he failed to do a very important thing.
He didn’t see Huckabees twice.

“This is one of those rare movies in which you have to double-dip it. You obviously don’t have to take my advice. Go ahead and just see it once and then say to yourself, “Well, that happened!” Just understand that Huckabees is, I feel, too dense and arch with too much going on to fully get it in one sitting.

“On one level it’s a kind of psychobabble satire; on another it’s the most profoundly spiritual Hollywood film since Groundhog Day. And the amazing-ness of it may not come together in your head…if at all.

“That’s how the first viewing happened, at least. I was initially into it on a ‘whoa…what was that?’ level and for the antsy, pedal-to-the-metal pacing…but it goes beyond that. The first time is the eye-opener, the water-in-the-face, the violent lapel-grabbing; the second time is da bomb.

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In the early aughts Albert Brooks delivered an entertaining speech to some industry gathering of some kind (I seem to recall it occuring in Santa Monica). I somehow got hold of an audio tape of Brooks’ remarks, and transcribed some of them. And one of the stand-out portions, for me, was when he talked about watching Bob Hope on TV as a kid in the 1950s, and how his father would get really excited when an upcoming Hope appearance loomed, but when Hope did his act “you never laughed,” Brooks recalled.

I can’t say I ever found Hope’s movies (or most of them) all that funny either. I’d occasionally chuckle at one of his stand-up routines on the tube, but I rarely cracked a smile at his films. He wasn’t in the business of selling humor as much as attitude — basically the attitude of a smart, selfish, cowardly opportunist with an eye for the ladies and a perhaps a slight willingness to pocked illicit dough on the side. That was his persona.

And that’s why my favorite Hope film might be Beau James (’57), a more or less straight drama about New York City major Jimmy Walker.

Among the Hope “comedies”, there’s one I saw a long time ago that struck me as moderately funny — a silly WWII-era romcom called Caught in the Draft (’41). Don’t hold me to this as I haven’t seen it in decades, but it might be funny. One of the mildly amusing things is the name of Hope’s character — Don Bolton. (How can a movie about a guy with that name not be good for a chuckle or two? Don Bolton!) Sometimes it’s the inauspicious little sausage comedies that seem best in retrospect.

Directed by David Butler and written by Wilkie C. Mahoney and Harry Tugend, Caught in the Draft costars Dorothy Lamour, Lynne Overman, Eddie Bracken, Clarence Kolb and Paul Hurst. I’ve just discovered that Kino Lorber has a Bluray version for sale.

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29 years after the release of Geoffrey Wright‘s Romper Stomper (’92), one of the most indelible, pared-to-the-bone, punch-kick-and-wallop flicks about hate groups ever made, I happened to re-watch an especially memorable gang-fight scene.

In this unfortunate era of #StopAsianHate, the scene feels cathartic as hell and even joyous in a certain sense. I would love to see such a scene reenacted in any present-day environment in which anti-Asian sentiment is presumed to reside.

It starts with six or seven skinheads (led by an astonishingly young and slender Russell Crowe) beating up on three or four Vietnamese guys in a family-owned pub. But word gets out immediately, and a large mob of furious Vietnamese youths arrive and beat the living crap out of the skinheads. Hate in and hate out. Bad guys pay the price. Glorious! Hashtags are well and good but, as Woody Allen said about Nazis in that MOMA-party scene in Manhattan, baseball bats really bring the point home.

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Wiki excerpt: “Director John Boorman chose locations that were ‘stark’. The LAX walkway down which Marvin strode originally had flower pots lining the walls. Boorman had them taken out.”

…in a present-tense context? I’m not sure but maybe it’ll come to me if I think hard. Perhaps if I ask the HE commentariat? I seem to recall that Arthur Miller’s 1953 play was an allegory about some kind of prosecutorial atmosphere that was going on in the early ’50s. Ahh, forget it. Wasn’t Miller some kind of a leftie crackpot? What did he know anyway? Why didn’t he try harder to just, you know, entertain people and give them a little respite from their troubles?

The decision by Netflix to cough up $400 million to make two streaming sequels to Knives Out means…well, it’s kind of a major blow to theatrical exhibition as well as Lionsgate. But Rian Johnson is now (and very suddenly) an “in the chips” filmmaker.

Johnson has written the two Knives Out sequels and will now direct them with Daniel Craig reprising his role as the Hercule Poirot-like Benoit Blanc.

The big HE question is whether or not Ana de Armas‘ “Marta”, the central character in Johnson‘s original Knives Out, will return in the sequels. If so, Johnson will have to decide if she’ll continue to wear those annoying Saks Fifth Off hipster pants (cuffs three or inches above the shoe line) that only upmarket, cutting-edge Millennial women and style-enslaved actresses wear.

If Johnson is smart he’ll steer clear of this questionable wardrobe choice and start fresh. If, that is, de Armas will be returning in the first place.

Eight years ago Johnson and I shared a nice Indian dinner in Paris. We met at the now-shuttered Angeethi (36 rue de la Roquette) as Johnson had just been to a Wagner opera at the Bastille Opera. Johnson was the first Hollywood hotshot to urge me to try Uber, which I had never ridden at that point. He also told me about Tunnel Bear, a VPN service that was created in 2011.

The more I hated the hyper jackhammer insanity of Uncut Gems (’19), which wasn’t so much “directed” as mainlined by the crazy hypodermic Safdies, the more I fell in love with the memory of Karel Reisz and James Toback‘s The Gambler (’74) — a film that considers the gambling-junkie pathology in tragic-poetic terms.

I can rent a high-def streaming copy any day of the week, but I’d love to own a first-rate Bluray as a keepsake. An Imprint Bluray is out on 5.26.21, at a cost of $34.95, Isn’t that a bit much? And isn’t the orange packaging a stopper? It sure is on this end.

Seasoned Filmmaker to HE: “I’ve come to strongly believe that Promising Young Woman is hitting the 60-plus White Male Academy voters (which still constitute the majority) in a sweet spot, and that for this reason Emerald Fennell‘s film is bound to be the upset Best Picture winner that Parasite was last year. Trust me — Promising Young Woman is the film that ALL my voter colleagues in LA and overseas are raving about.”‘

HE to Seasoned Filmmaker: “Really? Huh. And what do your friends think of Nomadland?”

Seasoned Filmmaker to HE: “Non-urgent admiration for Nomadland.”

HE to Seasoned Filmmaker: “I feel the same way about Nomadland but at least it doesn’t have a glaring error like Promising Young Woman — it has more overall integrity and a unity of purpose.

“But can you tell me why older white guys are so taken with Promising Young Woman?

“It’s a dry, arch & acrid indictment film of not most but ALL young males on the prowl. It doesn’t say most of them are indecent predators (a harsh but arguably valid point of view) but ALL of them are, as even Bo Burnham’s nice guy pediatrician boyfriend is revealed at the end to be a friend and apologist of a rapist.

“On a certain level I admire Fennell’s boldness of vision (however extreme) because this is how strong social-vision directors have tended to operate from Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel onward. But pulling the rug out on audiences during the last 15 minutes by suddenly identifying Burnham as just another bad guy is a mark of mediocre writing — a capitulation to an industry-wide rule that a last-minute twist is required of all scripts.”

Seasoned Filmmaker to HE: “So many Older White Male Academy members have a skeleton in their closet. Younger Academy men do as well. Moonlight and Parasite allowed the Academy to atone for #OscarsSoWhite. Right now Academy members want more than anything to not be caught on the wrong side of Cancel Culture. Promising Young Woman is this year’s Parasite.”

HE to Seasoned Filmmaker: “Okay, got it — Promising Young Woman has a possible edge on the Best Picture Oscar because of the Woke Terror factor. It’s the culturally safe choice — a kind of ‘get out of jail’ card to be used in case of an emergency.”

Seasoned Filmmaker to HE: “It’s all in the mind…but yes.”