The trailer for Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet (Focus Features, 11.1) feels a little too on-the-nose. The obvious gold standard in this agony-of-slavery realm is Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, but I’m not sensing a similar degree of investment and authenticity. Tonally it reminds me a little bit of Nate Parker‘s Birth of a Nation. (In that 2016 film the hateful young white slave owner was played by Armie Hammer; here the same type of character is played by Joe Alwyn.) I loved Cynthia Erivo in McQueen’s Widows, but Janelle Monae isn’t exuding “period” vibes. Harriet will play the Toronto Film Festival, but not Venice or Telluride. I’d love to see Harriet become an important, must-see film, if for no other reason than the Trump administration’s reported decision to delay the Harriet Tubman $20 dollar bill until at least 2026.

Based on Christine Leunens‘ “Caging Skies“, Taika Watiti‘s Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight/Disney, 10.18) is a satirical absurdist comedy — a jape, a goof. The trailer makes it clear that Watiti (Thor: Ragnarok, the forthcoming Thor: Love and Thunder) has zero interest in investing in the reality of early 1940s Vienna or anything else in that cultural, historical or geographical vein. It’s as if the Max Fischer Players had adapted Leunens’ book. The idea is to lampoon and have a general giggle about the absurdity of Naziism, anti-Semitism and racism itself.

“There are just three simple yes-or-no questions Congress should ask Robert Mueller:

“Mr. Mueller, the president said your report found, in his words, ‘no collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration.’

“First, did your report find there was no collusion?

“Second, did your report find there was no obstruction?

“Third, did your report give the president complete and total exoneration?

“That’s it. That’s the ballgame.”

— from “With Three Simple Answers, Mueller Can Speak Volumes,” a 7.22 N.Y. Times op-ed piece by Obama administration action solicitor general Neal K. Katyal.

In a nutshell, The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer has begun the process of rescuing former Minnesota Senator Al Franken from #MeToo banishment, ignoble obscurity and the loneliness of Moses in the desert.

I’m waiting for a flight with no time to unpack the laptop, but the gist of Mayer’s thoroughly reported article is that (a) Franken’s chief accuser, Leeann Tweeden, is unreliable and certainly suspicious in terms of her rightwing associations, (b) a number of U.S. Senators who called on Franken to resign are now sorry they did so, and (c) perhaps it’s time to consider evaluating each case of alleged inappropriate sexual behavior by its specific merits instead of a carte blanche “believe all women” response.

Kneejerk #MeToo lynchings serve no one. Be fair, be prudent, examine all pertinent info.

Read the piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken

I’ve heard that the most significant dramatic current in Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighorhood has a bit less to do with Tom Hanks’ Fred Rogers and somewhat more to do with Matthew Rhys as magazine profiler Lloyd Vogel. Vogel (based on the real-life Tom Junod), has been assigned to write a profile piece on Rogers, but his longstanding aloofness and resentment towards his father gets in the way. That aside, it’s a good trailer. And that score by Nate Heller!

I’ve done no reporting on the relationship between veteran hotshot publicist Peggy Siegal and odious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. I therefore have no argument with that 7.19 Hollywood Reporter piece, written by Gary Baum and Scott Feinberg, that basically asserts that Siegal used poor judgment in having had certain dealings with Epstein in a professional capacity.

The apparent motive behind the piece was basically to paint Siegal with a dark, career-wounding, guilt-by-association brush.

If I had been in Peggy’s shoes I would have certainly kept my distance after Epstein served his sweetheart Florida sentence, but she’s not a demon for adopting what boiled down to a look-the-other-way attitude. Remember that people in p.r. are always attracted to and dealing with people in possession of great wealth and powerful connections. It goes with the territory.

It’s also a common fact that big-time publicists sometimes rub shoulders with possibly shady fellows in this or that respect. It happens; it’s fairly common.

Where, for example, was the Hollywood Reporter article that besmirched the reps of Weinstein Co. employees who knew or strongly suspected what Harvey was up to, sexual manipulation and assault-wise, but said and did nothing? It’s very easy to point fingers in hindsight.

Earlier today legendary director-screenwriter Paul Schrader weighed in on the Siegal-Epstein thing:

The official roster of the 2019 Venice International Film Festival will be announced on Thursday, 7.25. The festival will happen between Wednesday, 8.28 and Saturday, 9.7. Many of the Venice titles will presumably play Telluride, of course.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has been a fount of information on this. Here’s his most recent post on Venice. I don’t know this for a fact, but Cedric Succivalli is somehow connected to the Venice ’19 selection committee. Ruimy informs that Succivalli tweeted the 21 directors who have been selected for the Venice competition. Then he deleted the tweet. A.A. Dowd captured the tweet and posted it.

Here’s the Succivalli list:

An Officer and A Spy (Roman Polanski)
Ad Astra (James Gray)
The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
Against All Enemies (Benedict Andrews)
Ema (Pablo Larrain)
Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waitti)
The Pope (Fernando Mereilles)
The Truth (Hirokazu kore-eda)
About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)
The Goldfinch (John Crowley)
Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)
Gloria Mundi (Robert Guédiguian)
Qui Ridio io (Mario Martone)
The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)
Cherry Lane (Yonfan)
The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul)
La mafia non è più quella di una volta (Franco Maresco)

Also allegedly screening out of competition will be an extended version of Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo. No, this isn’t a joke.

HE: “An extended version of Mektoub/Intermezzo? That sounds absurd.” Ruimy: “Oh, I know. You could be forgiven for interpreting this roster as a message being sent by Venice to PC culture. Polanski in competition. Only one or two female directors in competition. Mektoub: Extended Cut. Woody Allen‘s potentially premiering A Rainy Day in New York there.”

A friend has slipped me a May 2019 draft of Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon, his theatrical follow-up to First Man. (Chazelle is currently working on The Eddy, an eight-episode Netflix series set in Paris.) Babylon is a late 1920s Hollywood tale about a huge sea-change in the nascent film industry (i.e., the advent of sound and the up-and-down fortunes that resulted) and about who got hurt and who didn’t.

A la Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Babylon (which may or may not be distributed by Paramount or Lionsgate) offers a blend of made-up characters and a few real-life Hollywood names of the time — Clara Bow, Anna May Wong. Paul Bern and an “obese” industry fellow who represents Fatty Arbuckle. (I’m presuming there are others.) I’ve only read about 40% of it, and I’m certainly not going to describe except in the most general of terms. It runs 184 pages, and that ain’t hay.

Most of Chazelle’s story (or the portion that I’ve read) is amusingly cynical and snappy, at other times mellow and humanist, and other times not so much. It takes place in the golden, gilded realms of Los Angeles during this convulsive, four or five-year period (roughly 1926 to 1931, maybe ’32) when movie dialogue tipped the scales and re-ordered the power structure. Everyone above the level of food catering had to re-assess, re-think, change their game.

It starts out with a long, bravura sequence that will probably impress critics and audiences in the same way La-La Land‘s opening freeway dance number did. Except Babylon is darker, raunchier. The first 26 or 27 pages acquaint us with the main characters (one of whom may be played by Emma Stone) while diving into the most bacchanalian Hollywood party you’ve ever attended or read about. Cocaine, booze, exhibitionist sex, an elephant, the singing of a lesbian torch song, heroin, blowjobs, and a certain inanimate…forget it.

Unless Chazelle embarks on a serious rewrite, the 27-minute opening of Babylon is going to seem like quite the envelope pusher. It’s basically Fellini Satyricon meets Day of the Locust meets the secret orgy sequence in Eyes Wide Shot meets the Copacabana entrance scene in Goodfellas. Plus Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby meets The Bad and the Beautiful meets Singin’ in the Rain meets The Big Knife…that’ll do for openers.

It seems to me that Chazelle wrote Babylon with a jaded, somewhat angry attitude. When a couple of scenes tip into near-porn you say to yourself, “Yeah, I get it — he’s showing this stuff in quotes…as commentary.” Laugh if you want but the audience will be attending this party in the company of a lot of self-obsessed, deluded or ruthless types. Anyway, that’s all.

From “Don’t Fuck It Up,” posted on 12.30.15:

In any creative enterprise the worst mantra you can repeat to yourself is “don’t fuck it up.” Those words are, of course, rooted in fear and a corresponding lack of confidence on the part of the artist. I know. In the late ’70s I tried like a motherfucker be a diligent, exacting movie journalist while repeating these words over and over, fearful as I was of exposing myself as the marginally talented, somewhat under-educated guy I feared that I was deep down.

Anxiety, insecurity and fear are jail cells. “Don’t fuck it up” did nothing but freeze my instincts and make me afraid of my own voice, and of what the world might think.

What are helpful words to go by when you’re creating? “Let’s see what happens if I fuck with this or fiddle with it in some fuck-all way” has always worked for me. Once you stop giving a shit, everything starts to flow. You can’t uncork artistic discovery if you’re too worried about disappointing your bosses or fans or whomever. If you overdo the fuck-all you can always formalize and clean it up, but you can never fix work that’s been created with a sword over your head.

From the “Crosby vs. Feinberg” comment thread, penned by yours truly a few hours ago:

(1) David Crosby being asked by Scott Feinberg to recall certain deeper feelings and recollections about Joni Mitchell clearly irritated him.

Perhaps because Crosby feels very badly about the greatest singer-poet troubador of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s being in a somewhat diminished state today. (Memory lapses, or so I’ve been told.). Due to her stroke of 2015. Which Crosby has observed the aftermath of first-hand.

At one point Scott was asking about (or certainly alluding to) the hanky-panky history between Le Croz and Joni and Graham Nash, and on some gut level Crosby reacted with some kind of angry primal revolt. Something to do with (a) the aroma of inane questions about who was diddling who at what juncture and (b) rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(2) Scott is very exacting, highly focused, hard working, ultra disciplined, knows his stuff, cares a great deal, etc.

All that said, I think his first misstep may have been when he asked Crosby to explain what the term “harmony” means. Which, for any kind of seasoned musician, isn’t too far from an interviewer asking an average human being to define what “breathing”, “eating”, “talking” and “walking upright” mean.

And then Scott doubles down by asking Croz to explain how standard “harmony” differs from sophisticated harmonies a la CSNY, Beach Boys, Beatles, etc. Which, at first brush, isn’t too far from that scene in George Pal’s The Time Machine (‘60) in which a blonde-haired Eloi asks Rod Taylor what “laws” are. Or what a “book” is.

Scott didn’t ask these forehead-slappers to be perverse. He asked them because he sincerely believes that a significant percentage of 20something and even 30something listeners might not have a clear idea what these terms mean. Which may in fact be the case, but C’MON, MAN!!! Club me to death with a croquet mallet or, you know, a putting iron.