Another Attempt to Adapt Wolfe Classic

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The Right Stuff, a Disney Plus eight-hour miniseries produced by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way, is based on Tom Wolfe’s best-selling book. Originally intended to be a National Geographic Channel presentation but then Disney+ stepped in, etc. It begins streaming on 10.9 with a two-hour opener, and continues with six one-hour episodes. It costars Patrick J. Adams, Jake McDorman, Colin O’Donoghue, Aaron Staton, James Lafferty, Micah Stock and Michael Trotter.

Given the less-than-stellar reputation of Philip Kaufman‘s The Right Stuff (’83), the Disney+ version has nowhere to go but up esteem-wise.

It’s been three and a half years since I re-posted my pan of the Kaufman film (“Overpraised Right Stuff“). Here it is again:

“The Right Stuff is a diverting film with some above-average passages, agreed, but too much of it feels like commoner soup. I expected some kind of semblance of the Tom Wolfe book, which was eloquent and savvy and well-researched and often funny, at least in a snickering sense.

“Almost every amusing element that landed in the Wolfe book fails to land in the film. Every scene in the Kaufman film feels broad and over-acted in order to appeal to the folks in the cheap seats. Urination jokes (i.e.. Alan Shepard letting go in his space suit), masturbation jokes, seasick-vomiting jokes, rubber-tube-up-the-ass jokes  — everything primitive is used. Very little in the way of low-key, the-way-it-really-was pilot stuff. Almost every scene feels performed by actors.

“Wolfe wrote about Glenn (Ed Harris) telling Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn) that he needs to stop catting around at the local cocktail lounges because it’ll be bad for the Mercury astronaut’s image if it gets out, and how Shepard told Glenn that girls are none of his damn business and to bugger off — great in the book, doesn’t work in the film.

“Wolfe wrote about Gus Grissom‘s ‘death dimes’ — two rolls of dimes that he took with him on his Mercury flight in order to pass them out to friends later on, but which made it difficult for him to tread water in the Atlantic after his capsule sank, because of their weight. (“And now this big junkheap of travel sentiment stuffed in his knee pocket was taking him under… dimes!…silver deadweight!”). Great in the book, ignored by Kaufman.

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Bannon Goes Down

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Many regard political fund-raising as a gravy-train opportunity, if not a racket. In one way or another they’ve all ridden the crest while dipping their hands into the cookie jar. They all presume they’ll get away with it. Is Steve Bannon more avaricious than the others? Maybe. I wouldn’t know.

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Redspread Batman Saturation

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Endless cans of red ink and red paint, poured all over the Batman realm, soaking every square inch and boiling it all down to one “statement,” which is that we’re in a world of red, baby. Not arterial red, fire-engine red or tomato red, but Bob Kane comic-book red. The imaginings of which director Matt Reeves read as a kid.

An Experience (Mostly) For The Young

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“I know, I know you’ll probably scream and cry that your little world won’t let you go…”

Last night Paul Schrader asked his Facebook pallies if he should maybe drop acid. “When I was in college I refused to take LSD because I was so full of suicidal anger, [and] I feared the drug would unleash self destruction,” he wrote. “That of course was media propaganda. But now at 74 with little left to lose I would like to take a trip. Is it safe at my age? Where can I safely access it?”

HE reply, filed this morning at six-something: “I wouldn’t, Paul. Unless you’ve developed a notion that you’re ready to accept the mystical, which means putting aside the rational and in some cases judgmental constructs that you’ve been assembling for so many decades — all of those structural towers of intellectual, influential, scholastic, explorational and experience-based building blocks of your identity.

“LSD is a potential passport to satori and clear light. It’s all there and quite the wonder-realm, but you can’t really enter the kingdom without letting all that other stuff go…all of that material you’ve been accumulating and evaluating and sifting through since your early teens. None of that stuff really matters in the realm of the mystical. If you think you might be down with this or at least open to the possibility, go with God. But it’s a lot easier to allow this kind of ‘letting go’ transformation to happen when you’re 19 or 22 and made of much softer clay.

“LSD is a key, a door ajar, a gateway into a whole ‘nother territory. It isn’t really about therapy or psychology (sorry, Cary) or this or that terra firma, furrowed-brow examination or rumination. It’s about stepping off a kind of misty, moss-covered cliff or, if you will, deciding that the rules, restrictions and governances that you’ve been living by are just obstructions, and that a blue-sky realm awaits.

“I’m just saying that most (i.e., obviously not all) older people have invested too many decades and sorted through too much stuff to accept this kind of clarity, this kind of spiritual cleansing and refreshment. Some people are better off living in safe, sensible worlds that have worked for them…familiarity, recognizable borders, trial and error.

“A good satori book by Alan Watts (such as “This Is It“) would be good to have around. The lyrics of ‘Are You Experienced?’ [see above] are proof that Jimi Hendrix really knew whereof he spoke…“not necessarily stoned but beautiful.”

“All due respect and serious admiration, Paul, but I suspect that you’ll find this kind of newspaper-taxi adventure and temptation more unsettling than transformative.

“If you intend to do this, fine, but at least do so with a good supply of come-down medicinals at the ready (Ocxycontin, Tapendatol, Dilaudid).”


A Question Arises

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TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman is reporting that film directors Neil Marshall (The Reckoning) and Joshua Newton (Nicole and O.J.) were the guys who “attempted to extort veteran Hollywood executive Ron Meyer,” and whose efforts led to Meyer’s being dismissed from his vice-chairman job with Universal.

This, wrote Waxman, is “according to two individuals with knowledge of the drama that led to the mogul’s abrupt ouster on Tuesday.”

Waxman reports that both Marshall and Newton have “dated” actress Charlotte Kirk, the 28 year-old actress whose brief affair with Meyer in 2012 was the source of all the trouble.

Kirk also got down with Warner Bros. honcho Kevin Tsujihara in 2013 and ’14, an affair which led to his ouster a year ago last March. Prior to that she may have also have “dated” producer Brett Ratner and allegedly did date Australian billionaire James Packer.

I’m wondering if Kirk has ever “been” with someone who’s roughly her age and wasn’t an older dude of wealth and power who might have helped her career. If I were writing Kirk’s story for a screenplay, I would invent a young, witty, good-looking boyfriend who has no power but makes her laugh and is good in the sack. The tragedy would be that although Kirk has found a guy who really loves her, she can’t reciprocate because he’s not an industry heavy-hitter or at least a director with the option of casting her in something.

Which Do You Prefer?

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I prefer the NMDLND version because it’s more succinct, less colorful, a little sadder and scruffier.

The more colorful version with portions of five license plates (Alaska, California, Arizona, South Dakota and one other) is more eye-poppy. It suggests that the film may be about a vibrant and colorful journey of some kind — different regions, vistas, aromas, flavors. It suggests some kind of eye-opener or pick-me-up experience, and that Frances McDormand‘s “Fern” may be in for a bracing adventure.

The NMDLND version conveys less in the way of optimism, and more in the way of “art.” I’m always more in favor of an implication rather than a statement of plain fact.

The first Nomadland reviews will happen at the Venice Film Festival on 9.11 — a little more than three weeks hence. The commercial opening is on 12.4.20.

First Communal Press Screening In A Long Time

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I’m trying to remember when the last Los Angeles press screening I attended might have been. The first week in March, something like that. This morning the word went around that a major award-season contender will have a special drive-in screening — non-virtual, an actual projected image, people in cars — on a somewhat early September date (i.e., before the middle). Not at one of the regular drive-ins and not on the West Side or in Hollywood or downtown Los Angeles, but at a reachable, not-too-far-away location. I’m being cagey about this because no one has mentioned it on social media and I don’t want to be the first. But the mere idea of attending an actual live, big-screen showing of a presumably first-rate film after more than six months of streaming everything on my 4K 65-incher…it was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

What Cities?

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Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro reported this morning that serious Chris Nolan fans “in select cities” will be able to see Tenet before the official 9.3 opening.

No specifics on the cities but they presumably won’t include Los Angeles, New York City or burghs in New Jersey. A statement from Warner Bros. domestic distribution honcho Jeff Goldstein says Tenet will screen in the yet-to-be-named cities on Monday, 8.31, Tuesday, 9.1 and Wednesday, 9.2.