Robert MacNeil, who’s passed at age 93, was the co-host of The MacNeil/Lehrer Report with Jim Lehrer between 1975 and ’95.

He had the most soothing voice…a voice that I absolutely loved the sound of; ditto the professional consistency of McNeil’s cool, relaxed manner and that dry, slightly aloof, faintly sardonic attitude that seemed to be part of who he was deep down.

Robert MacNeil: “I was very close” to JFK on the morning of Friday, 11.22.63, outside that Fort Worth hotel. “Almost at his shoulder as he went around working the crowd, and it was really extraordinary, what that crowd felt for him.

“Then he emerged from it…I walked with him, right beside him, back into the hotel. And his eyes rested upon mine a couple of times. He didn’t know me well but he knew me slightly, and his eyes were absolutely cold, always…really cold gray. The smile was in the crinkles [around his eyes] and in the mouth and the big teeth, but the eyes always remained, I thought, very cold.”

HE’s GoFundMe Cannes reach-out was a nearly-instant success. Sometime around 7:30 pm last night (Thursday, 4.11) I posted the pitch ($2600 needed for my Cannes Film Festival air fare + room & board), and the funds hit $2625 around six hours later.

Heartfelt thanks to all the serious-friends-of-HE who stepped up and lent a helping hand. In HE’s nearly 20-year history (I launched in August 2004), I’ve never felt this kind of readership hug. I don’t mind saying it’s affected my general view of humanity and the HE community in particular.

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Earlier: Okay, I’ve decided to try and raise the $2600 I need for Cannes ’24 through GoFundMe. I’ve never tried to do this before, but given my impoverished circumstances it can’t hurt, right?

GoFundMe message: I’m Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, and I’m too poor to cough up my own 2024 Cannes Film Festival fund. I need around $2600 to fly to Nice/Cannes and pay my room and board, buy occasional cappuccinos and generally keep the engine going, etc.

For thirty odd years I covered my Cannes expenses through HE ad dollars, but the ad situation was on the grim side this year. So I’m begging for assistance. My hat is out and I have no shame.

Thanks for your help if you’re able to part with $25 or $50 or whatever. If not, no sweat. And if I don’t make my goal of $2600, also no sweat. Thanks anyway. There’s always Telluride…

On 6.12.94, or two months shy of 30 years ago, Orenthal James Simpson murdered two people in Brentwood — his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, whom he nearly decapitated, and Ron Goldman, a “friend” of Brown’s who’d been working as a waiter at the long-since-closed Mezzaluna.

And now O.J. has succumbed to prostate cancer at age 76. I don’t know in what cosmic realm, if any, Nicole and Ron are currently dwelling in, but I can say for sure that O.J., who allowed the Othello complex to totally consume him, is now roasting on a spit in a place of fire and brimstone.

Watch Ezra Edelman‘s O.J.: Made in America….just watch it.

The physical evidence showing that Simpson was guilty is flat-out irrefutable. I’ve linked before to a legendary mid ’90s Spy piece called 1001 Reasons why the OJ Trial is the Most Absurd Event in the History of America“, but here are two relevant portions:

The Evidence:

1. Ron Goldman’s boots were covered with blood, which DNA testing revealed to be a mixture of his and OJ’s.
2. OJ’s blood matches five drops on the walkway outside Nicole’s condo leading away from the crime scene.
3. Blood samples found in the Bronco match Ron and Nicole’s and OJ’s.
4. Drops of OJ’s blood were found in a trail leading up his driveway and into his foyer.
5. The blood on a sock in OJ’s bedroom matched both OJ and Nicole
6. Blood was found in shower and sink of OJ’s bathroom.
7. More than a dozen DNA tests link OJ to the crime scene.
8. Fibers found on the knit cap left at the crime scene and the bloody glove behind OJ’s house were unique to the 1993 and 1994 Ford Bronco. OJ’s was a 1994.
9. Hairs in the cap “exhibit the same microscopic characteristics” as those contained in a reference sample taken from OJ’s head.
10. The large number of hairs inside the cap suggest that OJ had worn it.
11. A hair closely resembling OJ’s was found on Goldman’s shirt.
12. A 12-inch hair with the same characteristics as those of Nicole Simpson was found on the bloody glove discovered at OJ’s estate.
13. Similar dark bluish-brown fibers theorized to have come from the killer’s clothing were found on Goldman’s shirt, OJ’s socks, and the bloody glove.
14. Kato testified that OJ was wearing a dark sweatsuit just a few hours before the murders.
15. Prints left at the murder scene were created by someone wearing expensive, size 12 Bruno Magli shoes. OJ wears size 12 shoes.

Why the Blood Evidence Was Not Tampered With:

1. Splatter on OJ’s socks showed more than two dozen blood drops.
2. None of the splatters soaked through from one side of the socks to the other, suggesting that they were being worn when the blood hit them.
3. The drops containing Nicole’s blood were found around the ankle areas, suggesting it was splashed on the socks at the crime scene.
4. The stains containing OJ’s blood were found higher on the leg and on the toe of one sock, suggesting he stained one sock when he returned home and pulled them off.
5. The stains also included a number of microscopically small flakes and spots too tiny to have been produced by tampering.
6. Witnesses testified they had not originally noticed the stains – not because they weren’t there until the LAPD planted them – but more likely because the socks are black and it is nearly impossible to see the stains with the naked eye.
7. Some DNA samples from the crime scene, glove, socks, and OJ’s estate were degraded while others were easily typed, suggesting they had been subjected to different degrees of exposure to the elements.
8. If the drops had been tampered with in the lab, they would have degraded at the same rate.
9. The blood was not just examined by the LAPD, but also by the Cellmark Diagnostics laboratory in Maryland and the California Department of Justice. They all came to the same conclusions.
10. Criminalist Henry Lee stated that investigators erred by putting Goldman’s boot into a bag while it was still wet, allowing the blood to smear.
11. He did not explain how OJ’s blood landed on Goldman’s boot.
12. An Aris Isotoner exec testified that the gloves at the crime scene are identical to those OJ is wearing in a 1991 photo.
There were only 200-240 of the gloves sold — all of them at a Bloomingdale’s in New York City.
13. Bloomingdale’s records show that Nicole purchased two pairs of gloves in December 1990 as a Christmas present for OJ.
14. A DNA test confirmed that blood found in OJ’s Bronco came from Goldman, whom OJ said he never met.
15. Kato testified that he saw blood in the foyer and driveway of OJ’s house the morning after the murders.
16. Even if blood samples degenerate, they do not change DNA characteristics.

I’ve spoken with four Civil War viewers, and the general consensus is that director Alex Garland has over-muddied the narrative of this armed domestic conflict flick, or has otherwise bent over backwards in order to discourage audiences from perceiving too many real-life parallels or culture-war animosities.

Garland’s original idea had been “what if the George Floyd rioters and the January 6th insurrectionists grew into hardcore military armies and engaged in a serious shooting war?”

But then he and A24 apparently got cold feet and decided to muddy the waters in order to avoid lighting incendiary fuses in an election year.

But if you put aside Garland’s incongruous or vaguely described red herrings (the anti-government rebels defined as a Texas-California alliance, an “Antifa massacre”, a suppressed Florida rebellion) and boil out the snow, Civil War seems clear enough to me. You’d have to be in a deep denial pit not to grasp the basics.

The war is basically between (a) rural-minded, diversity-resistant whites…fatigue-wearing MAGA forces loyal to a journalist-despising, Steve Bannon-resembling, martial-law embracing authoritarian President vs. (b) a diversity army (POCs of varying shades with sprinklings of white progressives) that initially seems less heavily-armed and more guerilla-style until the last half-hour when it suddenly transforms into a major, fatigue-and-helmet-wearing military force that storms the White House.

I’ve actually spoken to two viewers who aren’t entirely persuaded that Nick Offerman‘s U.S. President, a blustery, God-invoking bullshitter who has thrown out the Constitution by granting himself a third term, is a Trumpian figure…they’re not? Nor are they entirely certain that the White House assaulters are the diverse anti-fascist “good guys”.

Trust me, Garland makes it quite clear who is who in this thing and yet these fellows are saying “wait, who do they represent again?”

HE is telling you straight and true to dismiss the comment thread smoke-blowers who are arguing that the real-world parallels are too vaguely contoured to mean much. But they do amount to what I’ve stated here…really. Sasha Stone shares this perception.

Yes, Garland has certainly over-muddied the narrative, but at least he’s reversed the ambiguity in one instance — the instantly iconic Jesse Plemons interrogation scene.

Please understand that Civil War doesn’t really kick in until Plemons arrives, but after that point it’s a much more vigorous and accelerated deal with an ending that, as I mentioned Tuesday morning, made me feel so ecstatic I almost experienced a Zero Dark Thirty-ish boner.

I need to see this again ASAP. I’ll probably catch a commercial screening tonight.

An actor of any non-Anglo ethnicity (an Egyptian, say) may be cast as an historical paleface character of English or European descent, but a white actor may never play a character of color under any narrative circumstance.

A slew of negative responses to Steven Zallian‘s brilliant Ripley are highlighted in a recently posted Independent article by Maria Butt.

A fair number of people are experiencing problems, you see, with Robert Elswit‘s exquisite black-and-white cinematography

Gripe #1: “What a crime to make a sexy crime show set in 1960s Italy and not do it in color.” Gripe #2: “I didn’t last the first episode…the cinematography is so annoying.” Gripe #3: “Why on earth is Ripley filmed in black and white? Totally killed it for me, although the dog seems okay with it.” Gripe #4: “Black and white is a good way to keep the budget down but adds nothing.”

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone says the monochrome aversion “might be a generational thing…we olds remember a different kind of filmmaking than what the youngs are used to.”

I also think it’s due to a simple lack of cinema literacy, but you do have to wonder how these morons can look at Elswit’s exquisite cinematography and not realize what a high-end thing it is…what a sublime treasure each and every shot is?

Just as there is a long list of films that I can watch over and over again, there are also those that I will never again submit to. Near the top of this list is Michael Cimino‘s The Deer Hunter.

I’m not talking about a film I don’t care for. I’m talking about a film that I wouldn’t watch again if someone shoved a snub-nosed .38 into my ribs, or offered me a sizable cash bribe. Would you sit through Star Wars: The Phantom Menace for $20 bills? Would you watch A.I. or Always again? The Cannonball Run II? Sylvester Stallone‘s Cobra?

I’ve stayed away from this simultaneously audacious and godawful film for the last 45 years, and I’m not about to break my streak.

Memories of my first and only viewing in a Manhattan screening room (late November ’78) are branded on my brain tissue. That idiotic Russian Roulette device. Those working-class townspeople singing a wedding song like practiced professionals in a Russian opera. The relentlessly cloying and obnoxious (i.e., overly performed) working-class camaraderie. Those absurdly majestic Northwestern mountain peaks that happen to be in rural Pennsylvania.

And especially Christopher Walken‘s idiotic Russian roulette death…no lead character in a serious film has ever died for a dumber reason than Walken did in The Deer Hunter.

Politically and culturally The Deer Hunter is one of the most full-of-shit films about the American proletariat ever made. The way it simultaneously used and ignored the Vietnam War was sickening.

Posted by Peter Biskind soon after Cimino’s 7.2.16 death: “The politics are execrable, and were widely denounced at the time for turning the war inside out. Clearly, filmmakers who make features ‘based on’ reality take liberties with their material, and the truth vs. art debate is one that will probably go on forever, encompassing films like Triumph of the Will, On the Waterfront, Birth of a Nation, etc., etc. But I think we can make some distinctions.

“First, ironically, although The Deer Hunter is certainly not a documentary, Cimino took great pains to replicate documentary footage his researchers had uncovered. Even the Russian roulette sequences were mean to evoke the famous still photograph of the Saigon police chief shooting a prisoner at point blank range with a pistol to his head.

“But more to the point, there are so many perversions of the truth in The Deer Hunter, all seemingly intended to make the same ideological point — i.e., the Vietcong were evil Orientals — while the Americans were no more than naive victims. There’s a lot more going on here than mere creative license.

“And finally, if I may be indulged, the film is centrally about male bonding and friendship among Americans, with the war as a backdrop and the Vietnamese reduced to stick figures with guns. In my opinion it’s really disgraceful!”