I offered to divulge the ending of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood to a friend, and she said “sure.” I sent it along. Her reaction: “Oh, I kind of like that. But it’s definitely a shitstorm waiting to happen.”

I offered the same info to a producer friend. She politely declined but mentioned that “the ending is posted on Wikipedia” so it’s not a big deal anyway. I went right to the page….hilarious! The Wiki ending is all but completely fabricated.

In a 6.6. Hollywood Reporter piece about Quentin Tarantino’s film, Tatiana Siegel wrote that “the road will inevitably get bumpier for Tarantino over the ensuing weeks,” in part because “the film features graphic depictions of violence against women.”

Siegel is alluding to beatings along the lines of what happened to Jennifer Jason Leigh‘s character in The Hateful Eight, which I for one found sadistic and repellent. No specifics, of course, but I didn’t have this same reaction to the alluded-to violence in OUATIH.

From 5.23.19 Intercept podcast titled “Joe Biden Would Be A Disaster”:

Excerpt #1: “I think it is patently absurd the notion that [Joe Biden] thinks he’s the future of a party where, in fact, he’s been one of the backbones of it for the better part of five decades.”

Excerpt #2: “Biden is that guy. He’s the guy who is so familiar. He is the middle of the road, I take the train, Amtrak, Delaware, folksy, aw shucks, not perfect, not polished, not ivy league, not a woman, not a person of color, not gay, right? Like, he’s all the things that revert back to who historically had always had the grip on power and the reassurance that that kind of person might still have a grip on power.”

Excerpt #3: “People say ‘electable, electable,’ but this is the era of Donald J. Trump. Does anyone even know what electable means anymore? What counts as electable? Never forget [that] in 2016, 17 Republicans ran for their party’s presidential nomination and the guy from Home Alone 2 won. So anyone who tells you at this stage that Biden has this in the bag is either a liar or a fool.”

Our 11 and 1/2 hour Norweigan Airlines flight (Paris to Los Angeles) touched down around 6:20 pm. I really hate extra-long flights. “Comfortable” but vaguely agonizing, seemingly endless, confinement, cat-napping, never-quite-slumbering, tolerable, watching this and that, listening to my iPhone music, eliminating iPhone photos…anything to stave off those soporific waves of boredom.

I watched episodes #7 and #8 of Fosse Verdon (the finale is devastating), watched most of Out of the Past for the 17th time, watched all of The Limey, read five or six chapters of Sam Wasson‘s “Fosse“, gave myself two whore baths, read about 75% of Brett Easton Ellis‘s “White” (anti-snowflake, anti-identity politics, anti-“woke” watchdogs, anti-safe spaces…”a veritable thirst trap for the easily microaggressed”) and generally suffered like I always do.

3:45 pm in Paris, 6:45 am in Los Angeles: For the next 11 hours Hollywood Elsewhere will be subject to a form of solitary confinement. Norweigan Airlines won’t be offering Wi-Fi until sometime next year, and so posting-wise I’m up shit creek without a paddle. I’ll use the time to watch the last two episodes of Fosse Verdon, which I’ve downloaded to my Kindle 10.

Boilerplate: “Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.” Liv Tyler crying again?

For the first time in the history of U.S. presidential elections, a strong majority of likely Democratic voters — 57% — is in favor of electing one of two Presidential candidates who will hit 80 less than two years after taking office.

We’re all healthier and more athletic these days, 70 is the new 60 and Joe and Bernie have always sounded fairly sharp and shrewd to my ears. (Although Bernie has always struck me as the more lucid.) But anyone with older grandparents or great-grandparents knows what 80 and beyond tends to be like for the most part. Not always (depending on genetics + lifestyles) but often enough.

People generally enjoy 45 years of dynamic prime-time expertise and accomplishment, usually from age 30 to 75. Or 25 to 70. Or 35 to 80 or something like that. Ronald Reagan, our second oldest President, was in his late 70s at the end of his two-term Presidency. The prospect of a U.S. president turning 80 at the beginning of a first term has never been considered before, much less regarded as a likely scenario.

This is a totally new thing in the history of this country, and it seems to me that no one is really getting into this out of a general fear of sounding ageist, which the p.c. community correctly regards in the same light as racism, homophobia and fat-shaming. (Godzilla–shaming isn’t the same thing.)

I despise ageism, but that doesn’t change the fact that this country’s voters have never before seriously considered the idea of an 80something President. Think about this for 30 seconds.

If your gut you know it feels like a better idea for a younger person to succeed Trump. It just does. But I’m deathly afraid that Elizabeth Warren, whom I love and respect, might not prevail in the general election, although I can’t imagine anyone of sound mind not preferring her to Cheetoh.

It’s hitting me over and over what a terrible jam the Democrats are in right now. There’s no candidate except for Mayor Pete who’s really got the magic mojo, who’s exactly right for the job and who’s exactly the right age. And yet only 7% of likely voters favor him.

I’m sorry but it’s somehow comforting to hear that Simon Kinberg‘s Dark Phoenix (Fox/Disney, 6.7) really and truly blows.

“If a movie can be said to suffer from low-grade depression, this one certainly seems to be, shuffling in its socks and bathrobe through a not-quite-two-hour running time with an attitude that is closer to grudging obligation than enthusiastic commitment.” — Washington Post critic Michael O’Sullivan.

Sung to the tune of Randy Newman‘s “Short People”:

“Dark Phoenix got no reason to / Dark Phoenix got no reason to / Dark Phoenix got no reason to exist.”

I’ve been coming to Paris for decades, but until today I’d never visited the Last Tango in Paris apartment building in Passy with that musty-looking apartment that Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider had their anonymous encounters in.

In the film the address is 1 rue Jules Verne, but in actuality it’s located at 1 rue de l’Alboni. On top of which the bar/tabac where Schneider goes to call her mother on a pay phone is right across the walkway and down one flight.

The fact that I could sense a very faint residual after-vibe was entirely due to my own fevered imagination, but nonetheless this is the place where it all happened. Only Vittorio Storaro lives on.

There are sea-faring dramas (i.e., films that primarily take place on floating vessels making longish or otherwise difficult voyages) and there are submarine movies (i.e., films that mostly happen underwater in 20th Century submersibles). These are two different kinds of aquatic animals and should not be mixed up or confused.

Topping the list of HE’s finest sea-faring dramas: Peter Weir‘s Master and Commander, J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Lifeboat, Peter Ustinov‘s Billy Budd, John Huston‘s Moby Dick, Lewis Milestone‘s Mutiny on the Bounty (no one’s idea of a great film but one that delivers excellent 18th Century sea-faring realism), Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips, Wolfgang Petersen‘s The Perfect Storm, James Cameron‘s Titanic, Richard Sales‘ Abandon Ship!, Byron Haskin‘s Treasure Island, John Sturges‘ The Old Man and the Sea, Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi.

No good: Ron Howard‘s In The Heart of the Sea. Irritating: Baltasar Kormakur‘s Adrift w/ Shailene Woodley. Disqualifiied: the stupid Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Cabin Boy.

HE’s finest submarine movies, in this order: Das Boot, Crimson Tide, U-571, The Hunt for Red October, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Destination Tokyo, Run Silent, Run Deep, The Enemy Below, Ice Station Zebra, Up Periscope, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea….what others?

Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws is neither fish nor fowl — it’s basically a landbubber monster movie that concludes with a third-act voyage in which three men try to hunt down and kill the beast.

“Digitally restored concert footage and rare behind-the-scenes video show how Dylan embarked across America in ’75 with his bandmates and fellow musicians. 142 minutes long. Will open in select theaters on June 12th, concurrent with Netflix streaming debut,” etc. Reactions? I for one would love to see this theatrically when I return to Los Angeles on 6.5. Update: My plane lands at LAX at 6 pm, and the last Netflix screening that I’m aware of begins in Hollywood an hour later. I guess not.

Yesterday “High Sierra Man” took exception to an observation I posted about Steve McQueen‘s Le Mans that I posted in “Roar of Motor Oil, Smell of the Crowd“, to wit: “Le Mans marked the end of McQueen’s superstar phase.”

High Sierra wrote: “Except after Le Mans he famously got his name above Paul Newman (a clever battle of marquee placements) on blockbuster Towering Inferno, starred in breakout hit The Getaway, starred in the epic Papillon and a few years later died. So you’ve got that on your side. Worth noting: ten years after McQueen died he was still a brighter burning screen star than 95% of the wankers clogging up our current cinemas. McQueen Then, Now, Forever.”

“Filmklassik” agreed, calling my statement “frankly silly. McQueen was being offered EVERYTHING in the 1970s. Everything.”

HE to High Sierra Man and others: Agree about ‘then, now and forever.’ Always have, always will. But I was referencing Gabriel Clarke & John McKenna’s 2015 doc Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans. Their film stated very plainly that this ‘71 race-track pic was the film that broke McQueen’s spirit as well as his legend to a significant extent, and that things were never quite the same after it.

In my mind McQueen had a great 14-year run from ‘60/‘62 (The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is For Heroes) to his last quality spurt (Junior Bonner, The Getaway and The Towering Inferno) that ended in ‘74. Call it 15 years.

But his Godly McQueen aura, that quietly measured and invincible thing that peaked with Bullitt, that Zen-like, supercool man-of-few-words + awesome motorcycle and Mustang-driving era was shorter — The Great Escape to Le Mans or roughly an eight-year stretch.

Late last night I noticed The Longest Day playing on a huge flat-screen inside a Montmartre bar-cafe. Not in the tourist area but on rue de Ruisseau, which is strictly inhabited by locals. My thought was “wow, that’s odd….what Parisian would want to watch this heavily sanitized, conservative-minded, nearly 60-year-old war film that was produced by old-school Hollywood types?” The 75th D-Day anniversary aside, I can only surmise that oldsters have recollections of the trauma that their parents went through during the German occupation, etc.