INT. SILVER PICTURES, Warner Bros., early October 1986. Joel Silver, a senior SP exec (“SSPE”) and a Warner Bros. distribution guy (“WBDG”) are discussing the previous night’s premiere of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, a Penny Marshall/Whoopi Goldberg film. The critics are probably going to hate it, or so they suspect.

Silver: The critics don’t matter. This is a popcorn flick. Whoopi is cool and funny. People know that.
WBDG: Is Lethal Weapon popcorn?
Silver: Of course it is.
WBDG: What I mean is, will it reach people where they live? Or is it too flipped out?
SSPE: Are you serious? Lethal Weapon is simultaneously popcorn and a groundbreaker. The first cop flick in which the cop…well, one of the cops is crazier than the bad guys.
Silver: You know about Angel Heart, right? Opening the same day, March 6th, five months from now, and almost the exact same idea except it’s a crazy private eye in the ’50s. A few things are different, we’re looser and funnier but Mickey Rourke is playing an investigator who needs to be investigated.
WBDG: I don’t know. Maybe. But we have to make double-sure Lethal Weapon is a soother. So the dumb people feel cool about it.
Silver: It’s not that kind of film. It’s about thrills, adrenaline and loose screws.
WBDG: Okay, but what about a nice soulful pop song over the end credits?
Silver: It’s not that kind of film!
SSPE: We have a song — “Jingle Bell Rock.” A ’50s song, but family-friendly and unknown to younger audiences.
WBDG: An end credit song, I mean. You know Honeymoon Suite?
Silver: No.
SSPE: No.
WBDG: Canadian band. They’ve written a song that might fit. Could you just listen to it? If you don’t like it, forget it.
Silver: You’re scaring me. A Lethal Weapon love song?
WBDG: A hurtin’ love song. A “Martin Riggs in pain” love song.
Silver: You’re serious.
SSPE: How do the lyrics go? “I put a gun in my mouth today, but I couldn’t pull the trigger”?

He was one deeply perverted creep and there were several others (including Donald Trump) who drank at the trough. Obviously icky and cruel but there aren’t thousands or hundreds or even dozens of Jeffrey Epsteins out there. Not to my knowledge, at least.

I suddenly want to see this again. I haven’t since early ’98. During filming Matt Damon was 26, and Ben Affleck was 24. After a strong 17-year run, Robin Williams was nailing his last high-quality, emotional bull’s-eye film role — roughly on par with Dead Poet’s Society. Five years after Good Will Hunting he played a pair of psychos in Chris Nolan‘s Insomnia — his last grade-A film — and One-Hour Photo. He hung in there for the next 12-plus years but the glory days had ended.

Anya, our three-year-old Siamese, was actually watching Luis Bunuel‘s Los Olvidados (’50) this morning. Her eyes were glued to the screen, following the action, staying with it, etc.

90 year-old movie poster of young Luis Bunuel inside Ristorante Gallo Romano, 44 Rue Galande, 75005 Paris.

A couple of weeks ago “Shamook” posted this deepfake montage of Chris “cheeseburger with fries” Pratt as Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

It’ll probably never happen, but this at least suggests that Pratt could physically step into those Indy boots at a moment’s notice. The problem is that Pratt’s screen persona is too lightweight, too “just kidding.” Unlike Ford, he’s refused to establish gravitas cred by making middle-class, real-world movies — he insists on making only high-paying fantasy or franchise crap. He’s never even delivered the kind of solemn emotion that Ford managed in that carbon deep-freeze scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Plus he doesn’t have that Ford’s grumbly deep register voice. He just doesn’t have it. A poor man’s Ford at best.

Not too many months ago Ford allegedly told a Today interviewer that “nobody is gonna be Indiana Jones! Don’t you get it? I’m Indiana Jones. When I’m gone, he’s gone. It’s easy.”

Read more

An undated piece on BuzzBingo announces that Jonah Hill has surpassed Samuel L. Jackson as the all-time movie profanity king, largely due to Hill’s performance in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Terrific — congrats to Jonah and to Wolf director Martin Scorsese, who egged Jonah on in this regard. But why now? Did the profanity counters of the world (and surely there are others besides the BuzzBingo guys) fail to tabulate Hill’s eff-bombs in the immediate wake of Scorsese’s film, which opened six and a half years ago? They took note of all the Uncut Gems eff-bombs so they’re charting things as they go along, but why…? Forget it.

Read more

Never allow a road-rage incident to ignite. Always apologize, turn the other cheek, accept blame, let it go.

There are three reasons why Derrick Borte, Carl Ellsworth and Russell Crowe‘s Unhinged (Solstice Studios, 7.1) is suddenly a major wanna-see. One, it’s Steven Spielberg‘s Duel meets Joel Schumacher‘s Falling Down, and we all know the name of that tune. Two, it’s about a hair-trigger situation that we’ve all experienced at one time or another, and in a broader sense about the general bottled-up rage that lies just beneath the surface of American life these days. And three, some of us have felt like Crowe’s character at one time or another (to our shame), but more of us have unwisely behaved like Caren Pistorious‘s enraged mom.

Crowe is the classic madman, but Pistorious is more of a villain because she won’t won’t dial it down when he apologizes. She drew first blood, not him.

Wiki note: “Originally scheduled to be released on September 4, 2020, Unhinged was moved up to July 1, 2020, in order to ‘likely be the first to test the waters as theaters try to rebound‘ from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Read more

A nearly week-old report from the White House’s pandemic task force reportedly suggests that the behavior of “open up” bumblefucks in Middle America has resulted in a surge of Covid-19 infections.

It sounds cold to say this, but it’ll be better for all of us once this information gets around. You can’t talk to these “open up” idiots but once their friends and family members start dying they might have second thoughts.

A 5.11 NBC News report says that coronavirus infection rates “are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country, according to undisclosed data the White House’s pandemic task force is using to track rates of infection, which was obtained by NBC News.

“The data in a May 7 coronavirus task force report are at odds with President Donald Trump‘s declaration Monday that ‘all throughout the country, the numbers are coming down rapidly.’

“The 10 top areas recorded surges of 72.4 percent or greater over a seven-day period compared to the previous week, according to a set of tables produced for the task force by its data and analytics unit. They include Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; and — atop the list, with a 650 percent increase — Central City, Kentucky.

“On a separate list of ‘locations to watch,’ which didn’t meet the precise criteria for the first set: Charlotte, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; Minneapolis; Montgomery, Alabama; Columbus, Ohio; and Phoenix.

“The rates of new cases in Charlotte and Kansas City represented increases of more than 200 percent over the previous week, and other tables included in the data show clusters in neighboring counties that don’t form geographic areas on their own, such as Wisconsin’s Kenosha and Racine counties, which neighbor each other between Chicago and Milwaukee.”

A 2K Criterion Bluray of Paul Dano‘s Wildlife pops on 5.26. An impressively composed debut effort and certainly well acted, Wildlife is arguably the most grotesque infidelity drama of the 21st Century, not to mention the most cruel of heart.

The Criterion web page calls this early ’60s small-town drama, based on a Richard Ford novel, “a deeply human look at a woman’s wayward journey toward self-fulfillment in the pre-women’s-liberation era.” The use of “wayward” alludes to a mother (Carey Mulligan) cheating on her absent firefighter husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) with a rich Uriah Heep (Bill Camp) while her teenage son (Ed Oxenbould) looks on. Indeed — Mulligan all but invites Oxenbould to take part.

One glance at Oxenbould tells you he couldn’t possibly be the biological son of Mulligan and Gyllenhaal. He couldn’t be a distant nephew. And yet — this is interesting — he could easily be the son of Dano and co-screenwriter Zoey Kazan, who’ve been romantically partnered since 2007.

Paul Dano’s Wildlife is not a three-character domestic drama about a peevish, beer-drinking father (Jake Gyllenhaal) regarding his wife and son (Carey Mulligan, Ed Oxenbould) from a distance. If the Criterion cover was honest it would show Oxenbould looking through a bedroom window with horror as he watches Mulligan doing it doggy-style with Bill Camp.

Read more

Some of the La Pizza regulars (myself included) got together on Zoom this evening to chat and swap Cannes Film Festival stories and, I guess, remind ourselves that journalistic bon ami is still a thing, even in these suffocating times. Thanks to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson for inviting me to participate.

18 industry pallies in all — Eric, Anne, myself, Rajendra Roy, Jordan Hoffman, Eugene Hernandez, Brian Brooks, David Ehrlich, Ann Hornaday, Rebecca Keegan, Tomris Laffly, Svetlana Cvetko, David Scott Smith, Amy Nicholson, Charlie Olsky, Michael Lerman, Carl Spence, Sean Berney, David Nugent, Diana Drumm, Jacqueline Coley, Dusty Smith, Jeff Deutchman.

I made the mistake of asking early on if the 2020 Telluride Film Festival is going to happen or not. The gang wasn’t in the mood at first. They were more into hive humor — anecdotal, giggly, quippy. Then again the conversation at regular La Pizza gatherings over the years has mostly leaned in this direction so this was a good recapturing.

Okay, I felt a tad underwhelmed by all the goofing around. It was like chatting with friends in the high-school parking lot after classes have ended at 2:45 pm. I was once again a miserable 17 year-old who resented the in-crowd. Some were sipping wine and therefore “happy,” and I was doing my usual suppressed Klaus Kinski while trying to be a good sport, etc.

At the very end of the session Anne Thompson asked for predictions about Telluride. Some…okay, most seemed to say it’s not going to happen in the usual traditional sense, but on some kind of closed or private screening basis in Los Angeles and New York. Or something like that. Hoffman said he believes that of all the hot fall festivals Telluride is the least likely to happen.

Thanks again to Eric and Anne. It was nice to talk shit and share recollections. I chuckled a few times. No harm, no foul.

“The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most. The people who are voting for Trump for the most part…he wouldn’t even let them in a fucking hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you. I’m talking to you in the audience.” — Howard Stern earlier today, speaking to listeners of his Siris XM talk show and quoted by the N.Y. Daily News‘ Brian Niemietz.