This just happened this afternoon…

Friendo: Just saw Jeff Nichols‘ The Bikeriders and loved it. Why the mixed reviews? Jody Comer and Tom Hardy are terrific. Oscar nom potential for Jody.
HE: It’s gotten mnixed reviews because it’s, like, terrible.
Friendo: The audience here loved it. Gave it a standing ovation.
HE: Jody Comer is very conspicuously doing a working-class accent on Saturday Njght Live. It’s awful.
Friendo: She’s from working class Liverpool. Has had a lot of trouble in the snobby London theatre scene so it’s a nice comeuppance. She’s a future huge star. Watch.
HE: Comer is a good actress but she needs to steer clear of trashy biker flicks.
Friendo: That shouldn’t be too difficult. And even though you may think it’s trashy, Austin Butler is the next Brad Pitt.
HE: Maybe but he needs to be in something solid and gritty. He’s a posturing pretty boy. He was kind of a drag in Tarantino’s OUATIH (“I’m here to do the devil’s bidness”), a vigorous and acceptable but not very Elvis-y Elvis, and now this. All hat, no cattle.
Friendo: The women in the audience beg to disagree and they’re the ones who count.
HE: Stanislavsky says avoid chain-smoking cigarettes — they’re a cheap device.
Friendo: That goes for Hardy also, you’re saying.
HE: Correct.
Friendo: And Bette Davis.
HE: I felt I was getting cancer just watching them inhale those fucking things.
Friendo: We weren’t looking at the cigarettes when it come to Butler.
HE: Actors use them to hide behind. If Marlon Brando had smoked like a chimney in The Wild One, no one would have called his performance iconic.
Friendo: Cigarettes would have been an awkward addition in The Wild One performance. Yes, he was iconic. But I still loved Bikeriders.