I wouldn’t call myself a devoted reader of popular fiction, but in the late ’70s I was heavily into all things Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Sliver, A Kiss Before Dying, Deathtrap). Authors of his sort are sometimes under-appreciated, but Levin was a gifted craftsman. He really knew how to shape a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a story.

And then along came Levin’s heyday period — the novel of The Boys From Brazil in ’76, and then his most successful play, Deathtrap, in early ’78.

I loved The Boys From Brazil — so deliciously written, so crafty and hooky. All through ’77 and most of ’78 I was highly cranked about Franklin Schaffner’s film version, which I anticipated would be the equal of Roman Polanski‘s Rosemary’s Baby (’68). How could it not be?

I also felt a certain personal investment due to Jeremy Black, the younger, blue-eyed brother of ex-girlfriend Sophie Black, having been cast as a clone of the young Adolf Hitler.

Then I attended a press screening of The Boys From Brazil in September of ’78, and was startled — the word is actually “stunned” — by how disappointing it seemed.

Gregory Peck was too mannered and actorish as the evil Josef Mengele, but Laurence Olivier‘s performance as Nazi-hunter Ezra Liberman was steady and invested. The film wasn’t inept or clumsy, exactly, but somehow it never took flight. “How could this have happened?” I wondered, shaking my head. But it became a mediocre film for the most part.

And on top of everything else Schaffner hadn’t given poor Jeremy the right kind of direction in a couple of scenes. What a bummer.

It just goes to show that any adaptation of a catchy, fine-tuned novel can be messed up if there’s a will to do so, and especially if the wrong director is in charge.

Can anyone name similar cases? A novel they were in love with, and then the film came along and the reaction was “what happened?”

Sent last night to Albertson’s corporate (which owns and operates Pavilions): “I have been a steady customer of West Hollywood Pavilions (Santa Monica Blvd. at Robertson Blvd.) for well over a dozen years, perhaps closer to 15 years. I can’t remember exactly but it’s been quite a while.

“Five or six weeks ago a major renovation began, and it’s still happening. That’s not the problem, but the sudden plunge in store temperature is.

“Last night and again tonight the temperature dropped to that of a typical refrigerator. Or should I say freezer? For years and years the same cool but tolerable climate has been the norm in this store. Now and all of a sudden, the place has turned into Antarctica. I’m talking fall jacket and scarf weather. Gloves even. I’m not exaggerating.

Last night I complained to a manager at the checkout counter. She said she knew it had turned suddenly cold and that she certainly understood my discomfort, but said she couldn’t do anything about it, blah blah. I complained again tonight to another manager (a heavy-set guy in his 30s with glasses), and he said he had no control over the matter. The colder temperature was “a corporate decision“, he said, and that he had nothing to say about it.

“‘But it’s FREEZING in here,’ I said. ‘And this lower temperature has only just began. I noticed it last night for the first time, and it’s freezing again tonight. I’ve been loyally shopping her for years and it’s really unpleasant, man.’

“The heavy-set manager muttered ‘well’ and shrugged his shoulders. Which was like waving a red cape.

“‘This is your response?’ I replied. ‘You have no say in the matter and it’s a corporate decision blah blah, and so you’ve washed your hands of the matter? Your store is no longer a pleasant environment to shop in. Do you care about this, homey? Is this of any concern at all?'”

The plan, apparently, is to drive people away from Pavilions and into the arms of Gelson’s (Santa Monica and Sweetzer). Except Gelson’s is more costly.

I’m looking forward to catching Pedro Almodovar‘s Pain and Glory for the second time at the Telluride Film Festival. Because Almodovar’s films are always worth a second look. And who knows — maybe I’ll come away with a greater degree of enthusiasm this time. Antonio Banderas won the Cannes Film festival’s Best Actor prize, after all. Respect must be paid.

Posted from Cannes on 5.18.19: “A meditation about decline, disease, looming death, drugs, old lovers, creative blockage and memories of childhood, Pain and Glory left me with feelings of respect and appreciation more than any sense of excitement or bracing discovery. It all unfolds in a settled, confident way but in a distinctly minor key.

“I’ve worshipped Almodovar all my adult moviegoing life. With the exception of I’m So Excited, his films have always made me smile and swoon. This one felt a little more recessive than most. Settled, reflective, gray-haired, a little morose at times. I can’t say I was turned on, but I felt sated and assured as far as it went.

“It’s a film about getting older and dealing with physical maladies and to a lesser extent creative blockage. An old boyfriend, copping street heroin, a third-act discussions with his late mom (Penelope Cruz), memories of her washing clothes in the river…all of it swirling around in Banderas’s mind. I liked Pain and Glory well enough. It was certainly time well spent. I just wasn’t knocked out.”

From CNN’s Jake Tapper, posted yesterday: “For more than a year White House officials rebuffed efforts by Department of Homeland Security colleagues to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy.

“‘Homeland Security officials battled the White House [staffers] to get them to focus more on domestic terrorism,’ a senior source close to the Trump administration tells CNN. ‘The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on.'”

The most visually arresting film that Sharon Tate ever starred in was J Lee. Thompson‘s Eye of the Devil (’66). It was poorly reviewed and lost money, but the black-and-white lensing by the exacting Erin Hillier was quite handsome. The outdoor lighting is just right. And look at the cloud formations behind Tate, Deborah Kerr and David Hemmings, and consider a mention of Hillier’s “obsession with clouds…he would often beg for filming to be delayed until a cloud had appeared to break up a clear sky.”

Tate was a limited actress, of course, but there’s something mesmerizing about her glazed-over, steely=eyed performance as a witch named “Odile de Caray”. It strikes me as a semi-respectable effort because at the very least she was part of a prestige-level horror film with grade-A costars.

And it hit me this morning that if Once Upon A Time in Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino had decided to depict Margot Robbie‘s Tate catching an Eye of the Devil screening at, say, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or at Arthur Knight‘s USC’s film school class instead of showing her traipsing over to Westwood to catch an afternoon showing of the reprehensible The Wrecking Crew…well, I for one would have been happier because it would have presented Tate in a more respectable light.

Speaking as an X-factor white guy from a middle-class New Jersey and Connecticut upbringing, I don’t feel repelled or disgusted by my Anglo-Saxon heritage and family history. I deeply regret the cruelty visited upon immigrants and various cultures of color by whites, but the fact that racist attitudes were common throughout most of the 20th Century and certainly the 19th Century doesn’t mean that white people (more particularly my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, reaching back to the mid 1800s) were inherently evil.

By current standards they seem insufficiently evolved, of course, but they were born into a certain culture and were dealt certain cards, and most carried the weight as best they could. They weren’t born with horns on their heads.

Nor do I feel that elemental decency is absent in the majority of white people today. I feel profoundly repelled by the attitudes of your backwater Trump supporters, of course, but they are not me. I come from a family of “good”, well-educated, imperfect people who believed in hard work, discipline and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoons, and who exuded decency and compassion for the most part. I am not the devil’s spawn, and neither is my Russian-born wife or my two sons. I’ve witnessed and dealt with ignorant behavior all my life, but I’ve never bought into the idea of Anglo-Saxon culture being inherently evil. Please.

Bottom line: Rosanna Arquette‘s feelings of tribal self-loathing is what many Americans can’t stand about progressive lefties.

Pontius Pilate by way of Gore Vidal: “Where there is great striving, great government or power, even great feeling or compassion, error also is great. We progress and mature by fault.”

The horrific truth is that a significant percentage of Trump’s base is quietly (and in some cases not so quietly) behind what they see as a necessary historical standoff of whites against cultures of color — a kind of civil guerilla war that may lead to God knows what, and God help the victims when the next mass murder occurs. This is real. This is not just rhetoric. This is a real-life nightmare. A tinderbox. Trump has clearly fanned the flames of white supremacy, and will continue to do so. Biden: “[He has] more in common with George Wallace than George Washington.”

“Believe in the possibilities and not the obstacles. Do not believe the lies they tell about us. Believe in the stories you have inside and believe that we all can make a difference.“ — the great Guillermo del Toro upon receiving a Hollywood Walk of Fame sidewalk star.

I’ve mentioned two or three times that HE’s gold-toe sock problem stretches back 25 years to Pulp Fiction. I had come to despise gold-toe socks based on my own experience and certain aesthetic standards that I began to develop and refine during the late ’70s and ’80s, but when I saw that John Travolta was wearing a pair during the famous “twist dance contest” sequence with Uma Thurman, that’s when I said to myself, “Jesus H. Christ, something has to be done…I mean, somebody has to stand up.”

Did I say something right away? No, I waited until 2012, but at least I made it a thing, and I kept at it.

Everyone out there who believes mega-billionaire Larry Ellison is going to allow Annapurna Pictures, the production and distribution company headed by Megan Ellison, to fall into bankruptcy and general disrepute, please raise their hands.

“Multiple sources” have told Deadline‘s Mike Fleming and Dominic Patten that Annapurna “has burned through much of the $350 million credit facility the company secured in fall 2017,” and that “those sources said Annapurna has either defaulted or is about to default on that debt” and that “a deadline has been set by lenders for this week to come to a solution.”

The solution is that Larry, the fourth-richest human in America and seventh-richest in the world with a fortune estimated at $65 billion, will step in and reinvest in Megan’s company. He’s not going to just sit there and watch the ship sink. Then again something fundamental about the company’s progressive-vision-in-the-sky investment aesthetic will presumably have to change.

Fleming/Patten: “Bankruptcy would be a major embarrassment for Megan Ellison, and several sources familiar with the issues felt her father wouldn’t allow that.”

Megan Ellison memo to staff, circulated earlier today: “Restructuring deals with financial institutions is not uncommon, yet the process is usually handled without a spotlight on it. Fortunately/ unfortunately, people like to write about me and my family. That said, it is of tremendous importance to me that you all know we are as committed as ever to this company and are in full support of our future.”

Things have been downswirling for Annapurna since the crash and burn of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Detroit two summers ago ($34 million cost, $24 million worldwide earnings). Adam McKay‘s Vice (which I loved) didn’t pan out financially ($60 million cost, $78 million worldwide haul). Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk brought in $20 million worldwide on an investment of $15 million. I thought the popular-with-cool-critics Booksmart, which cost $6 million, might become some kind of Superbad-level hit but nope. Karyn Kusama‘s Destroyer cost $9 million but only brought in $5.5. million worldwide. Everyone seems to share concern that Annapurna’s next release, Richard Linklater‘s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, will probably underperform if not tank.

“Plant your feet, look the other guy in the eye and tell the truth” solution: Larry and Megan agree to bring in Hollywood Elsewhere as a senior consultant with veto power over all projects. If I don’t like a script or where the development is going, it’s history. I guarantee you things would change under this arrangement, and that super-toney, progressive-minded, representation-driven prestige projects would have a much harder time of it, you bet. For I can smell trouble a mile away. I’ve always had this knack. Plus I know everyone and everything, and I’m a “man of the people” — the culture flows and churns within my system on a daily basis. Plus I occasionally eat hot dogs.

“Make no mistake, my friend — we’re in the midst of a full-scale invasion here.”

So says rightwing radio host Lionel Macomb (Steve Coogan) at some point in Hot Air (Lionsgate, 8.23). The basic premise feels like a Trumpian pancake-flip of Oliver Stone‘s Talk Radio with Macomb dealing with family issues, particularly his 16-year-old niece, Tess (Taylor Russell). Frank Coraci is a longtime Adam Sandler collaborator who’s directed The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, Around the World in 80 Days, Click, Zookeeper and The Ridiculous 6. The screenplay is by Will Reichel.

Just when I was wondering why I hadn’t heard about Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life appearing at any of the early-fall festivals, I was told it will in fact screen at Telluride. Which makes sense as a fair number of critics praised it in Cannes, not to mention Fox Searchlight having paid at least $12 million to acquire it.

HE’s new Telluride rundown is as follows:

Marriage Story, d: Noah Baumbach
Ford v Ferrari, d: James Mangold
Judy, d: Rupert Goold
Uncut Gems, d: The Safdies
Motherless Brooklyn, d: Edward Norton
A Hidden Life, d: Terrence Malick
The Truth, d: Kore-eda
The Aeronauts, d: Tom Harper
Wasp Network, d: Olivier Assayas
The Two Popes, d: Fernando Mereilles
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, d: Celine Sciamma
Pain and Glory, d: Pedro Almodovar
Parasite, d: Bong Joon-ho
Beanpole, d: Kantemir Balagov
The Whistlers, d: Corneliu Porumboiu
First Cow, d: Kelly Reichart
Varda by Agnes, d: Agnes Varda

Possibly Scott Burns‘ The Report. Possibly Werner Herzog‘s Family Romance LLC. And possibly the new Todd Haynes. And possibly Michael Covino‘s The Climb.