The initial idea for this morning’s Oscar Poker chat with Jordan Ruimy was to focus only on The Irishman. But I insisted on first discussing the Joker situation. There’s a shot near the very end of Todd Phillips‘ film, a street-riot sequence, an atmosphere of complete social breakdown and chaos and rage…if the film had ended with this shot Joker wouldn’t that much more startling. It’s nonetheless a totally nutso thing, and all but completely unmitigated. The nihilist energy is so pure, so raw. I’m honestly wondering how the Academy fuddy-duds will process this film. When last weekend’s screening ended there were a couple of people saying, “This is not going to sit well with some people.” Again, the mp3

Two weeks ago I ran a recollection from a producer friend about a young Australian guy who met a few Los Angeles agents on the strength of his having allegedly shot the plastic bag sequence in American Beauty. The contention or belief was that director Sam Mendes hadn’t shot the plastic-bag sequence — this young guy had.

Producer friend clarifies: “I just saw [an] interview with Mendes about the plastic bag film, and it seems pretty clear Mendes directed it. So what was that other guy doing meeting people and saying he directed it? I recall that the Australian guy sent his short film to the production looking for a job. All I can imagine is that he sent a primitive student film and Mendes saw it (or was told about it) and decided to do his own inspired professional version.

“A pretty prominent Australian agent set up the student director’s meeting, and it was a senior manager from Anonymous Content that called me about his own scheduled meeting. The student director obviously had some credibility behind him. But it’s clear the footage in the feature is Mendes, very clear, even if the concept was the student’s. I also heard that the student director signed with an agent!”

This may be the greatest scene involving an angry boss and a dishonest, larcenous employee ever filmed, and arguably the greatest piece of acting that Warren Beatty ever delivered…”like the dog you wish you were decent enough to be.”

I was called “nuts” for thinking about driving to Tijuana later this month to see Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York. Well, how about Tatyana and I motoring down to Mexico to see Roman Polanski‘s An Officer and a Spy?

The IMDB reports that Polanski’s alleged masterwork, which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival but has no U.S. distributor because the well-meaning #MeToo zealots won’t allow it because of Polanski’s criminal history, is opening today in Mexico (9.30).

My plan was to do that awful four-hour drive (405 and 5 south and across the backed-up border) and catch it at a theatre this weekend. But I can find no trace of any theatre booking. I’ve done searches with different search terms…nothing. Could it be that Polanski’s film is only playing in Mexico’s more cultured cities — Mexico City, Guadalajara, etc.? Maybe, but I still can’t find it.

So either the IMDB is completely mistaken (which is possible) or…

I asked some friends (journalists, filmmakers, an exhibitor)…zip. I’ve written a guy with Playtime, which is handling worldwide sales in all media. If I could just find the name of the Mexican distributor of An Officer and a Spy, I could call and ask what’s up.

Wayne Fitzgerald, the highly regarded main-title designer who peaked between the ’50s and ’90s, has passed at age 89. A moment of silence is warranted. In HE’s estimation Fitzgerald’s best work, hands down, was the title sequence for Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn‘s Bonnie and Clyde (’67) — initially no music, quick slide-projector cuts of 1930s Brownie shapshots, and then period music gradually being heard. The second best was the title sequence for Roman Polanski‘s Chinatown (’74).

When I first saw it 39 years ago, I immediately decided that John Irvin‘s The Dogs of War was a great (if not the greatest) mercenary war flick, and my opinion hasn’t changed since.

But until today, I hadn’t realized (or paid sufficient attention to the fact) that there’s a 118-minute international cut along with the 104-minute version that I saw way back when. This is why I’ve bought the Eureka Entertainment Bluray (streeting on 10.14), which has both versions.

Tough, minimalist performances by Christopher Walken (whose facial features were quite lean and beautiful back then), Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais and Paul Freeman.

Based on the same-titled Frederick Forsyth novel; script by Gary DeVore, George Malko and uncredited Michael Cimino. Cinematography by the great Jack Cardiff.

The Dogs of War is streamable via Amazon Prime, but who wants the shorter version?

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman is basically saying that given the drop-dead awesomeness of The Irishman, Netflix is underserving its culture-gripping potential by giving it a lousy three weeks in theatres before streaming begins.

He’s probably right. Would it have been better if Netflix had worked out a 42-day theatrical arrangement? Yeah, but that’s water under the bridge.

All I can say now is that you cannot fart around when it comes to seeing Martin Scorserse‘s masterpiece at a private screening in October or in a commercial cinema between 11.1 and 11.27. Because you need to see it the right way. No couches, no texting, no kitchen breaks, no feeding the pets, no taking out the garbage. You need to watch it like a monk.

Gleiberman: “Netflix has, in fact, made such a good movie that a vast audience of people — a world of people — are going to want to see it in movie theaters. And if the film’s relatively limited theatrical release starts to feel like a compromise with that desire, it could give a great many people pause: members of the Academy, and filmmakers who are promised the moon if they make their next movie with Netflix. Sure, they’ll get to make the film they want, and that isn’t nothing. But the release of The Irishman is destined to shine a light on the underlying metaphysical question: Is home viewing really the moon?

“The 20th century is officially behind us, but it may not be going out of style nearly as quickly as the executives at Netflix would like it to.”

Every now and then, conventional wisdom comes up short. All along and despite obvious warnings, I’ve been telling myself that Noah Hawley‘s Lucy in the Sky might turn out to be better than the buzz. So post-Toronto, I’ve been waiting to see it. Alas, no invites, presumably because Fox Searchlight is looking to minimize negative reactions. I’ve asked if I could please be allowed to see it sometime between now and opening day (10.4), but let’s not kid ourselves. With pathetic Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings of 20% and 35%, respectively, and with poor Natalie Portman wearing that awful Dorothy Hamill haircut, Lucy in the Sky is all but DOA. I’m sorry.

I don’t know how or why Warner Bros. got behind a film as nutso radical as Todd Phillips, Scott Silver and Joaquin Phoenix‘s Joker (10.4), but this is not corporate product. Make no mistake about the fact that this 122-minute film is propelled by misery, loneliness, alienation, despair, ennui, delusion and general social malevolence and madness. And it doesn’t back off from that.

I’m telling you right now that at least a portion of the Joe and Jane Popcorn crowd might have a problem with Joker. Because it’s not serving up the usual DC Comics oatmeal. At all. And to its credit. It’s an unsettling, challenging thing to sit through, but in a good way. This was my judgment, at least, and that of some guys I was speaking to at the after-party.

But I heard some other reactions on the way out of last night’s Chinese screening. “Some are going to like it, and some are not going to like it,” a woman journalist said. Another guy said negative reactions are going to dominate. (Which I doubt.) It was my post-screening judgment, if you wanna know, that many people didn’t even know what they’d just seen. Or didn’t care to know. Some were just saying “it’s fine…it’s going to make a lot of money,” blah blah. Well, yeah, but Joker is about a lot more than just that…c’mon.

Joker is entirely about the sad, imaginary and not-so-imaginary saga of Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), a mentally ill guy who’s been abused and kicked around, who lives in a ratty urban hell hole circa 1981, who works as a street clown, who imagines that he has a nice girlfriend (Zazie Beetz) who lives in the building but on some level not really, who goes from bad to worse and then much worse, from meds to no meds, and who finally cracks, and then really cracks by killing some people and then (in his head but to some extent actually) ignites anarchy and revolution.

This is a startling serving of truly inflammatory nihilist cinema. It’s way out there. Brand-wise, Joker represents the launch of DC Black, a series of DC-based standalone films. Uh-huh, whatever. “A film for our times!” a journalist pally said last night.

How crazy-good is Phoenix? As good as this sort of thing gets. An obvious Best Actor nomination, and perhaps even a win. Maybe.

Honestly? I think Phoenix is half playing Arthur and half just wigging out on his own wavelength. I think he’s portraying Arthur in the same way that Max Schreck “played” the vampire Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu. Or more precisely the way Willem Dafoe portrayed Schreck portraying Orlok in Shadow of the Vampire.

Last night I called Joker a deranged art film in the tradition of Un Chien Andalou or L’Age d’Or — like some perverse creation from a latter-day Bunuel-Dali, except with stronger doses of hate and rage and all-around dystopian chaos. The world minus any semblance of civility or love or order…it’s about despising and hating the odious one-percenters…the rank and odious social order of the snooty swells. Fuck ’em!

Joker is a literal manifestation of insanity. Which is to say it delivers a searing portrait of a loose-screw type without judging or pulling back into some conventional corner in Act Three. Joker commits to Arthur — he’s the only guy you have to relate to, and I have to admit that when Arthur snaps on the subway after being taunted and beaten I wasn’t feeling all that horrified. On a certain level I was feeling a Death Wish-like surge of excitement and approval. But Joker doesn’t end there. Once the downward spiral begins, there’s no stopping it.

I don’t know where Arthur Fleck’s deranged fantasies begin or end, but this is a film about the demon seed…a film not just about crazy Arthur but about mass rage, mass madness. At the end of the day it’s not so much about Arthur going mad but the whole city, the whole world on a rampage. A good portion of which, I realize and accept, is happening inside Arthur’s grieving and miserable head. But not completely.

Please understand that Arthur’s revolution isn’t all imaginary, and that after a while it’s as real as anything else. Damn the odious social order! Everyone in authority is hateful and vile and deserving of death and destruction or a beat-down…at some point Arthur’s fantasy aspect goes out the window along with his meds. Pure anarchy.

“Tedious virtue signalling,” “Twitter jail,” “Many of you were born with a terrible personality,” etc.

45 minutes hence Hollywood Elsewhere will head east to the Chinese for the big Joker premiere. Given the heavy security I’m feeling relatively safe about catching Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix‘s film this evening, but I’m not sure I’ll feel the same about a public screening. A publicist recently told a journalist pal that he doesn’t plan on seeing Joker in a theatre for this reason. Remember that 2014 Chris Rock joke about the Freedom Tower (“I ain’t never goin’ in there”)? Same difference.

I’m referring, of course, to Joker‘s incel wacko factor. Just as James Holmes slaughtered 12 and wounded 58 during the 7.20.12 massacre during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, there is suppressed but genuine concern out there that something similar could happen after Joker opens on 10.4. Because Joker has been described in some quarters as a kind of incel anthem flick.

Yes, I used these same photos to illustrate a 9.20 HE piece about the same general topic.

You may have read that Warner Bros. publicity has prohibited red-carpet journalists from attending tonight’s Joker premiere, obviously because they don’t want the talent to be asked the same question that the Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin asked Joaquin Pheonix a few days ago: ‘Aren’t you worried that this film might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results?’

Variety reported yesterday that the Landmark theatre chain is prohibiting costume play based on Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, and that the Los Angeles Police Department “would increase its visibility at area theaters…the department said it has not received any specific threats about the movie, but encouraged moviegoers to be vigilant.”

If something happens, God forbid…I hate to even speculate so I won’t. But it’s on everyone’s mind. The incel subculture is real. The rage is real. The incel echoes in Joker are allegedly real.