“Now you listen to me, I’m an advertising man, not a red herring….and I can hear colors.”

Having written three or four times about Cary Grant’s therapueutic LSD experiments in the late ’50s and early ’60s, I find it hilarious…okay, amusing and intriguing…that James Lapine, Tom Kitt and Michael Korie are about to present Flying Over Sunset, a stage musical about Cary Grant, Claire Booth Luce and Aldous Huxley dropping acid together inside a Malibu home in 1957. Previews will begin at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont on 3.12; the show opens on 4.16.

Grant will be played by Tony Yazbeck (a half reasonable look-alike), Luce by Carmen Cusack and Huxley by Harry Hadden-Paton.

Problem #1: In the below video Yazbeck is wearing an undercut with the usual whitewalls — i.e., super-short hair around the ears that exposes scalp. Cary Grant never, ever wore an undercut. His thick black hair was always cut with a little length around the ears. After casting Yazbeck why didn’t the producers tell him to grow his hair out a bit? No one is expecting Yazbeck to look or sound exactly like Grant (his voice is way too thin and high-pitched to even attempt an imitation) but why alienate viewers by contending that Grant wore a Hitler Youth?

Problem #2: Yazbeck looks like a handsome cross between Oscar Isaac and a dapper Palestinian. (Yazbeck is “a common family name and surname of Palestanian origin,” according to Wikipedia.) Am I allowed to sat that Yazbeck’s nose is clearly larger than Grant’s? This is another example of “woke” casting. Are you telling me that if there was a new musical about, say, a Palestinian surgeon that producers would hire a guy who looks and sound typically English? Not in this day and age — they’d find an actor who looks Middle Easternish. So why didn’t Lapine hire an actor who looks like he might’ve actually been born to Anglo Saxon parents in early 20th Century Britain?

Problem #3: The “trip” in the show happens in 1957, and yet Grant’s first trip happened under professional supervision in 1958. (This, at least, is what’s reported in “Cary in the Sky With Diamonds,” a 2010 Vanity Fair article by Judy Balaban and Cari Beauchamp.) Obviously a minor detail, but on the other hand why fudge it?

Huxley, Grant, Luce.

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Lesson #1 of “Three lessons for PleaseNotBernie“, written by N.Y. Times columnist Ross Douhat: “You need candidates who aren’t actually winning primaries to drop out.

“The fatal conceit of establishment politicians facing an insurgency is that because the insurgent has obvious weaknesses, they should hang around and hang around, piling up third-place finishes and minor delegate hauls, in the hopes of gaining…something. What they are actually likely to gain is blame, irrelevance or both; just ask those noted influencers Jeb Bush and John Kasich.

“So if you are, say, Amy Klobuchar, the fact that you have a solid case for your own electability is not a reason to stick around for Super Tuesday if you finish behind Pete Buttigieg in South Carolina as well as in Nevada. If you’re Buttigieg, your strong Iowan and New Hampshire performances aren’t a reason to stay in if it’s clear you can’t compete nationally with Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden. If you’re Biden, if you lose South Carolina, you should drop out the next day. And so on.

“None of this means that simply consolidating the field will stop Bernie; he might well win a head-to-head race, too. But giving him five or six opponents in every contest makes the solidity of his core support an insurmountable advantage. And if you can narrow the field.”

We all know there’s no real chance to stop Bernie. But there might be a sliver of a possibility if Biden, Klobuchar and Warren quit after the South Carolina primary.

Nicole Wallace: “[What you’re describing] sounds like political suicide.”
James Carville: “It is. If you don’t win the Senate back, you don’t get anything. Nothin’ is gonna change. If you don’t push yourself to be a majoritarian party…[especially] if you have 55% of the voters available to you, then you’re making a real mistake.”

From Jeremy Faasler:

So are Democrats really serious about running a candidate against Donald Trump who…

1. Will be 79 years old on Election Day and would turn 80 in his first year of office.
2. Had a heart attack that drastically reduced his life expectancy.
3. Has never passed any significant legislation during his 30 years in office. [HE comment: I thought Sanders had passed two or three bills…no?]
4. May cause several of the moderate House Democrats we elected in 2018 to lose this year.
5. Refused to pay child support for much of his 30s.
6. Wrote [an essay] saying “a woman fantasizes about being raped by three men simultaneously” and blaming cervical cancer on a lack of female orgasms.
7. Complains nonstop about a “Democratic establishment” even though he’s been in Congress for 30 years and is part of that establishment.
8. Supported Fidel Castro and said he wanted to “throw up” when he heard JFK criticize him. [HE question: In what year? Who recorded or documented this quote?]
9. Went to a rally for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas where they chanted “Death to America” and “The Yankee will die.” [HE: Where was the rally? Who reported or reecorded those “death to America” comments?]
10. Honeymooned in the Soviet Union. [HE to Fassler: My ex-wife and I honeymooned in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1987 — no biggie.]
11. Is married to a woman with a history of shady business dealings.
12. Refuses to speak to [reporters for] local papers in his home state of Vermont.
13. Supported a controversial bill that moved toxic waste to poor Latino communities in Texas.
14. Voted for a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to be detained indefinitely pending deportation.
15. Voted against Senator Ted Kennedy’s immigration bill in 2006.
16. Voted against the Brady Bill and received support from the NRA in his initial runs for Congress.
17. Voted against Amber Alerts.
18. Has alienated colleagues in the House and Senate who would otherwise have been his allies.
19. Called Planned Parenthood “the establishment.”
20. Has a campaign staff whose most prominent surrogates either voted for Jill Stein or refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
21. Refuses to release either his medical records or his tax returns.
22. Tried to convince superdelegates to give him the Democratic nomination despite losing elected delegates in a landslide.
23. Allowed his supporters to disrupt the convention of the first female presidential nominee.
24. Did only 43 events for Hillary Clinton after she won the nomination – by contrast, Hillary did more than 100 events for Barack Obama in 2008.
25. Disdains identity politics, saying that it’s “not enough to say ‘I’m a woman, vote for me.’” [HE comment: Bernie’s right about that.]
26. Has an army of supporters who frequently bully, dox and harass anyone who criticizes him (i.e., Bernie Bros).
27. Frequently campaigns against more moderate Democrats in favor of far-left candidates—who usually go on to lose their primaries by wide margins.
28. Was helped by Russia during the 2016 election and is being helped by them again today.
29. Has fired staffers within 24 hours of their hiring because of their racist posts. [HE comment: Isn’t that usually regarded as an appropriate response?]
30. Yells at network executives who don’t give him more positive coverage.
31. Disdained Barack Obama in private and tried to run against him in 2012.
32. Refuses to join the party he’s running to be the leader of.
33. Most importantly: Sanders has no idea how to get any of his proposals enacted into law.

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I will naturally vote for and speak admiringly of Bernie Sanders whenever I’m able to muster enthusiasm (which may be infrequently), but only the willfully blind believe he has any kind of realistic shot against The Beast.

No exaggeration, dead serious — this is one of the DARKEST TRAGEDIES to ever befall this once-great nation. I’m gut-struck, destroyed. Why can’t I find a heroin dealer when I really need one? Or at least somebody with a few Percocets to spare.

A rancid, ill-informed, foam-at-the-mouth animal — easily the most toxic, dangerous, sociopathic, press-hating, would-be totalitarian to occupy the Oval Office in our nation’s history — is going to be re-elected on 11.3.20. And the second-term anguish will be even worse. Fuhgedaboudit.

The environment weeps. People who long for a semblance of pragmatic sanity and practical compassion in government weep. Downballot Democrats are doing more than weeping — they’re panicking. My heart is shattered, broken.

And the Bernie faithful, God help us and for the noblest and most aspirational of reasons, are the orchestrators — the agents of this coming horror, this ruination, this destruction. Damn, damn.

According to Ben Brantley‘s 2.20 N.Y. Times review, Ivo Van Hove‘s radical re-think of West Side Story — a stage revival currently playing at the Broadway theatre — is “attention–splintering.”

Titled “Sharks vs. Jets vs. Video,” the subhead states that the non-period-specific production boats “new choreography, a ravishing orchestra and smothering visual effects.”

The “s” word refers to huge video screens that complement and/or challenge the live-action, human-scaled activity.

“I fail to detect a natural rhyme or reason for the way video is used here,” Brantley states. “There are a lot of split screens and a lot of frankly clichéd, commercial-style images of characters running and brooding. I don’t think van Hove is commenting on our fragmented 21st-century attention spans, [but] the fact that our focus is repeatedly splintered obviates much chance for emotional concentration and, consequently, the possibilities for being truly moved.”

Another complaint is that it’s hard to tell the previously pale-faced Jets from the Puerto Rican Sharks. Now, says Brantley, “both gangs appear to be multiracial melting pots. Could this be van Hove’s point, that prejudice exists only in the mind’s eye? Maybe, but once these boys and girls start to rumble, you’ll wish they were wearing team uniforms.”

Oh, and “I Feel Pretty” has been deep-sixed.

Maybe Brantley has a point or two; maybe his opinions are outliers. But at the very least this new show appears to be reflective of the here-and-now — rougher, punchier, franker, more jagged-edged. A reinterpretation with fresh blood in its veins.

And it leads me to wonder how Steven Spielberg’s period-specific film (mid ’50s) will impress today’s audiences. I somehow doubt that Spielberg’s version will be anywhere near as nervy and provocative as Van Hove’s show.

I’m sorry but I keep sensing that Spielberg’s film will somehow underwhelm, especially if it features dp Janusz Kamiński‘s default desaturated color scheme with milky shafts of intense light piercing through, etc.

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What would the U.S. of A. feel like on a day-to-day basis if our Democratic system had been effectively dismantled and we were living under a tyrannical despot spouting lies and disinformation on a daily basis? I’ll tell you what it would feel like. It would feel like right here, right now.

“The outcome of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial was precisely that he is above the law, that whatever he says is the law, that we should wait to see what he says and then adapt the law to that….that is precisely what tyrants over the centuries and authoritarians over the last century have always said. Our founding document, the Constitution, is basically a design about how to prevent someone from becoming a tyrant…[the idea] of three parts of the government balancing each other out. But what happened in the impeachment trial was exactly the opposite. The Congress gave way, and then Justice Roberts also gave way [by waving away notions of evidence and testimony]. So basically what we saw was a trial that wasn’t a trial.” — Timothy Snyder, author of “The Road to Unfreedom.”

In a chat with The Wall Street Journal‘s Tunku Varadarajan, Clint Eastwood has distanced himself from Donald Trump and allied himself with Michael Bloomberg.

Excerpt: “’The politics [have] gotten so ornery,’ Eastwood says. He approves of ‘certain things that Trump’s done’ but wishes the president would act ‘in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level.’ As he drives me back to my hotel, he expresses an affinity for another former mayor: ‘The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there.'”

Will Team Bloomberg make a political ad about this endorsement? Probably within 24 hours. Less?

Earlier today in Times Square, Rei Ami and her Bear & Owl management team (including Jett Wells) celebrated the launching of a huge digital billboard. Top Row: Gavin Pomerantz (Bear & Owl Mgmt), REI AMI (artist), Theo Feldman (Bear & Owl Mgmt.) Bottom Row: Sky McElroy (Bear & Owl Mgmt), Ryan Schwabe (mastering engineer for the song), Tom Michel (a.k.a. “Hazey Eyes”, Bear & Owl client), Jett (Bear & Owl mgmt.)

Three years ago my “U-turn the Titanic and head back to the iceberg” idea was dismissed by DimitriL:

“It likely wouldn’t have been feasible to get back to the iceberg,” he wrote. “Reports state that Titanic was going fast enough after it sideswiped the iceberg that it took a few miles to come to a complete halt. Even if they could’ve turned around (with a half-mile turn radius), they would have had to slowly backtrack in the dark with no radar. Doubtful.”

But my other suggestion still holds water. “If the crew had thrown the large banquet tables from the first-class dining room into the sea they could have been used as rafts for those who couldn’t fit into the lifeboats,” I pointed out. “The Titanic’s first-class area was full of wooden furniture that would’ve floated. Tables, bedframes, armoires, bureaus, etc.

Original post: “If the Titanic had turned around and sailed back to the fatal iceberg before stopping engines, a couple of hundred passengers could have been ferried from the sinking ship to the iceberg to wait it out until the Carpathia arrived. Yes, it would have been cold sitting on the iceberg but they would’ve survived.”

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There’s nothing raw or natural or bracing about Call of the Wild, trust me. It’s a synthetic heartwarmer from top to bottom. Mostly “set” in the Alaskan wilderness described long ago by Jack London, it’s a cloying, patronizing, family-friendly CG-dog movie shot on Los Angeles-area sound stages.

If there was ever a film destined to receive a 20%-or-lower rating from Rotten Tomatoes, this was it. And yet, believe it or not, it currently has a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes — technically a failing grade but at the same time too kind.

Out of 110 RT critics, roughly 70 gave it a pass. In some cases because they sensed that families and their kids will flock to Call of the Wild this weekend, and they don’t want to sound like grouchy grumps. Many of these wave-it-on-through types are whores and cowards — no balls, no honesty, not much of a soul.