Speaking as one who embraced sobriety seven and a half years ago (on 3.20.12) and have never attended more than two or three AA meetings, I’ve never felt the slightest urge to re-watch Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses (’62). Not once. I respect it but that’s all.

It’s a reasonably effective portrayal of the horrors of alcoholic enslavement and how difficult it can be for some people to unshackle themselves for good. The script by JP Miller is a little too on-the-nose, but it doesn’t exactly get in the way. And it’s certainly well acted by Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman, Charles Bickford, etc. But it also manages to make inebriation and sobriety seem equally miserable.

Lemmon and Remick’s sloppy alcoholic shenanigans during the first third seem empty, juvenile and demeaning — they’re acting like giddy idiots. And when they turn sober it’s like they’re both covered with some kind of awful gloom sauce — like they’re taking two misery pills with breakfast and two at dinner. You’re watching it and going, “Jesus, I wouldn’t want to hang with these dullards drunk or sober.”

Sobriety isn’t easy at first, granted, but the morning wake-ups are wonderful, and you gradually learn how to smile and even laugh again. And that feeling of a terrible 700-pound wet gorilla no longer clinging to your back is heavenly.

Drinking, for me, was a lot more fun that what Lemmon and Remick were up to. I was never a pathetic, falling-down drunk, and I recall experiencing some truly insane and hilarious episodes when I was buzzed. Especially in my 20s and early 30s. I was almost never shit-faced (or at least not after high school), but at the same time my motto was “life would be unbearable without alcohol.” I was just having a good time. Thank God I got to carouse around Italy two or three times before I renounced. Drinking good wine in a sensible way can be wonderful.

My first cold-turkey renunciation happened in ’96 (I was mainly determined to quit vodka), but after two or three years I gradually started to sip wine from time to time, and it felt pretty cool for the most part. My last and final quit (no wine, no beer, no nothing) happened because nightly Pinot Grigio sippings had began to play hell with my looks, and because it gradually over-heated my personality and made me behave in an intemperate manner from time to time.

Sobriety has been the best thing to happen to me this century, no question. But if I ever want to feel badly about what I didn’t go through with alcohol, I’ll watch Days of Wine and Roses.

“I know why…it’s because I’m an animal. And arrogant. And because I’m stupid, so stupid…stupid.”

Read the 10.3 N.Y. Times story, written by Julia Jacobs, about Robert De Niro and his ex-Canal Productions employee Chase Robinson suing each other over mutual dissatisfaction with work behaviors, and then consider the following HE assessments:

(1) Let me explain something. When you work for someone directly or personally, you’ll find out soon enough who they really are. And they’ll find out soon enough who you really are. And this familiarity will breed contempt. And then you’re stuck with each other until (a) you mutually build or create your way past this state of mutual loathing and/or disrespect, or (b) until someone quits or is fired. That’s life.

(2) Naturally Chase has accused De Niro of belittling behavior on his part — asking her to “button his shirts, prod him awake in his hotel room, doing his laundry and vacuuming — making her effectively an ‘office wife’ even as she was promoted…not to mention berating her, often while intoxicated, calling her names including ‘bitch’ and ‘brat’”…not to mention “gratuitous unwanted physical contact” (i.e., playing the #MeToo card).

(3) DeNiro seemingly resented what he regarded as Chase’s casual, profligate, laissez-faire attitude about her job. DeNiro seems to feel that she basically didn’t work hard enough. Too extravagant, too entitled, too many perks, too many extras. She loafed around, slacked off. Business-expense-wise, she spent waaaay too much money on pricey Italian restaurants, handbags, Ubers and whatnot.

(4) Chase was probably bored by her tasks. She felt resentful about an equal-status male employee being paid more. She undoubtedly resented the requests for back-scratchings and listening to DeNiro pee while talking to her. Too much information but here goes anyway (and De Niro should take note): If nature calls while I’m speaking to someone on the phone, I always sit down.

(5) Chase basically overplayed her profligate hand, her entitled approach to the job, and De Niro eventually asked himself, “Why am I paying her all this money and giving her this extravagant lifestyle? For what?”

(6) And what about that special N.Y. Times photo portrait of Chase that accompanies the article [after the jump]? Nice tasteful lighting. Nice green background. Nice antique-looking chair. Nice tasteful dress.

(7) And what about this recording, which happened in 2012? DeNiro was hugely pissed off, obviously — didn’t like her haughty attitude, declining to return his calls, etc. He was apparently on the verge of firing her, and yet their relationship recovered and she continued to work for him for another five years…odd.

Poor Richard Jewell…falsely harassed by the news media and hounded by the FBI in ’96 over suspicions that he was the Centennial Olympic Park bomber, derided for his corpulent weirdo appearance (Jay Leno called him the “Una-doofus” and a federal agent called him “Unabubba“), and finally dead at age 44 from heart failure and diabetes, which was partially due to genes (bad luck) but almost certainly exacerbated by too many cupcakes. Poor guy, hard knocks, tough life.

No one is allowed to mention the unmentionable element in this sad saga (you will certainly never hear a word about this from the fine folks at Indiewire), but I’m going to mention it anyway. Does anyone believe that Jewell would have been zeroed in on and accused as much as he was if he’d looked like Jon Hamm instead of Paul Walter Hauser? People saw a moustachioed beach ball and figured, “He looks like a dweeby basement dweller…he has an aura of otherness about him…has this guy ever worked out?…he probably wakes up for snacks at 3 am.”

Jewell was unfortunately guilty of not looking like Cary Grant, but otherwise everyone was wrong — Jewell was innocent of wrongdoing. The authorities ultimately nabbed, convicted and imprisoned another guy for the bombing.

Clint Eastwood’s film (Warner Bros., 12.13) will be all about Jewell’s raw deal, and how the news media machine (especially Atlanta Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, with a special boost from NBC’s Tom Brokaw) turned his life upside down and sent poor Richard into the darkest corners of hell.

Sam Rockwell has the good-guy role, portraying Jewell’s real-life attorney L. Lin Wood but under another name, “Watson Bryant.”

There’s nothing catastrophic or even dramatic about a guy in his late ’70s having a stent put into a heart valve after experiencing chest pains. But it’s obviously a bad thing for a 78 year-old Presidential candidate. It just reminds everyone what naturally happens among people of Sanders’ age. Nobody will ever call him “drooling” Bernie — he’s a sharp, tough, tenacious bulldog, and a much more vigorous candidate than “Typewriter” Joe Biden. I’m just saying that people don’t want to know from heart conditions when it comes to would-be Presidents. Sanders has been sinking in the polls; cruel as it may sound, this episode will probably cause him to sink further.

Guillermo del Toro‘s 13-part tweet stream on The Irishman is pretty damn good. I’ve pasted six of the tweets in an order that I prefer, as opposed to the order in which GGT posted them. Sorry but I’m allowed to do this. Here’s the whole thing.

Boiled down, GDT is acknowledging or reminding that everybody fucking dies sooner or later, and the “withering on the vine” and assisted living part is no joke, and boy, does this film remind us of where we’ll all headed sooner or later, and that arriving at this point without a George Harrison-like mystical current inside you or, failing that, at least a good spiritual hand-holding current by way of family and friends…approaching the Big Sleep without these things is not advisable. Not having them, in fact, is horrible. Because one way or the other we’re all approaching a Barry Lyndon state of total and absolute equality.

Last night Joaquin Phoenix offered a Hollywood Elsewhere-style apology to Joker cinematographer Lawrence (“Larry”) Sher for having bitched about Sher’s constant whispering during shooting and giving Phoenix the nickname “Cher.” It happened on the Jimmy Kimmel Show after Kimmel played some video footage (supplied by Joker director Todd Phillips) of Phoenix carping on the Joker set.

Phoenix’s apology begins around the 10:15 mark…love it!

Phoenix to Larry: “The constant whispering…just shut the fuck up, dude. I’m trying to find something real. Sorry. It’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal. Yeah, it kind of is. I know you started the Cher thing, Larry. It’s not even an insult. ‘Cher’, really? She’s a singer, actor, dancer, fashion icon. How is that a fucking insult? I’m fucking out of here with this guy.”

By “Hollywood Elsewhere-styled” I mean the kind of apology in which you say “look, I wasn’t actually wrong for calling you a rancid dick because that’s who and what you are and probably always will be if you don’t get some therapy, but I’m sorry, you know, for the bad vibes…even though it was mostly your fault.”

Don’t get me wrong — I’ll never hesitate to offer a sincere apology when warranted (it’s a mark of true character to be able to express humility and honest regret), but I also love offering the half-assed kind in which you say “sorry but blow me.” When the shoe fits, I mean.

Dry wit and deft allusion are the chief signatures of New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, whom I’ve been reading for a quarter-century. No fastballs or croquet mallets, but curves, knuckleballs, sliders. His pans suggest that disdain, anger and even disgust reside within, but Lane is hardly an emotionally open book. He always holds himself in check.

It’s therefore interesting and significant that you can detect serious, unmitigated loathing in his 9.27 review of Joker (“Todd Phillips’ Joker Is No Laughing Matter“). Not just about the film but the hype. Joker, in short, has gotten under his skin. He’s fuming and ready to take a swing. This means something.

“Here’s the deal,” Lane explains. “Joker is not a great leap forward, or a deep dive into our collective unconscious, let alone a work of art. It’s a product. All the pre-launch rumblings, the rants and the raves, testify to a cunning provocation, and, if we yield to it, we’re not joining a debate; we’re offering our services, unpaid, to the marketing department at Warner Bros.

New Yorker illustration by Zohar Lazar.

“When Dalí and Buñuel made L’Âge d’Or (1930), they wanted to start a riot, and they succeeded, but Joker yearns for little more than a hundred op-ed pieces and a firestorm of tweets. With ticket sales, naturally, to match.

“The evidence for this daring scheme is everywhere you look, in Phillips’s film, and everywhere you listen. Nicholson’s Joker may have danced and pranced to the sound of Prince’s ‘Partyman’, but Phoenix gyrates, on a steep flight of steps, to ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Part 2’, a 1972 hit by Gary Glitter. It used to be popular with sports teams, rousing the crowds at N.F.L. and N.H.L. games, before Glitter was convicted, in 1999, of possessing child pornography, and, seven years later, of sexually abusing minors, in Vietnam. Since then, understandably, the song has tumbled out of favor.

“Do you believe that the decision to revive it, for Joker, is anything but a studied choice, nicely crafted to offend? Please. I happen to dislike the film as heartily as anything I’ve seen in the past decade, but I realize, equally, that to vent any inordinate wrath toward it is to fall straight into its trap, for outrage merely proves that our attention has been snagged. Just ask the President of the United States.”

One dispute: In today’s realm, “a firestorm of tweets” is a riot.

HE-posted on 9.29.19:

I don’t eat candy in movie theatres as a rule. I’m strictly a warm-buttered-popcorn-and-coke kind of guy. But if I was forced to eat some kind of candy or else, I would choose Jujyfruits, which is the hottest candy in Pennsylvania right now. Followed by Hot Tamales, Good & Plenty, orange slices and thick red licorice. But I really try and stay away from that shit. Anyone who likes Tootsie Rolls in this day and age has something wrong with them. Ditto Necco Wafers. And to hell with Slurpies — they give me a headache.

There’s no question that Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy, a drama about the infamous Dreyfus case, is a strong, worthwhile film. It won the Silver Lion at last month’s Venice Film Festival. But of course it can’t be theatrically distributed or streamed in the U.S because of Polanski has been cancelled over his late ’70s statutory rape case, as well as a couple of other unsavory allegations left over from the ’70s and ’80s.

HE to distribution pally: How might I some day see An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse) in this country? I realize that the odds are against theatrical distribution because of the wokester #MeToo political climate, but surely someone has the bravery to distribute this film, at the very least on a streaming basis.

A distributor pally suggested that I reach out to the worldwide sales agent, Playtime, and in particular Francois Yon, a Playtime Group partner who presides over Sales & Business Development.

I did so right away, and an hour or two later Francois responded as follows: “Thank you Jeffrey. Maybe you should write about this situation and how the American audiences are being culturally cut out from the rest of the world. It did happen a few times in past American history, so I remain hopeful that [things] will change once the Trump years are behind us.”

HE to Francois: “You’re saying I might have to wait until Trump is out of office before seeing An Officer and a Spy? Seriously? Will there be some way for me to at least stream it from a European company? Can you offer me a private link? I’d really like to see this as I went to Telluride instead of Venice.”

Dear Boys and Girls: Woke Twitter is apparently committed to smearing, belittling and otherwise taking down Todd Phillips‘ Joker (Warner Bros., 10.4). The reaction to Phillips’ quotes in a new Vanity Fair interview, in which he said that SJW Twitter jackals are killing (or have killed) irreverent humor, made that clear. It is axiomatic that if Woke Twitter is trying to denigrate something or someone, the victim of this attack almost certainly has something worth pondering and considering. So this is one more reason to flock to Joker this weekend.

From “Shoot Them in the Legs, Trump Suggested: Inside His Border War,” a 10.1 N.Y. Times story by Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis: