Not everyone lives to be 80 or 85 or 90. Poor Luke Perry only made it to the two-thirds mark, or his early 50s. The shocked reaction is over a feeling that Perry was, in a sense, a perennial 20something, as 90% of those who knew him are referencing Dylan KcKay in Beverly Hills 90201. The rest are thinking about Fred Andrews on Riverdale.

Perry never made his mark in films, never costarred with Tom Cruise or Meryl Streep or Clint Eastwood or Sigourney Weaver, never appeared in a success d’estime or Oscar contender. But he was “Luke Perry”.

What does everyone think when somebody famous dies? What caused it, were drugs or booze a factor, what was he doing that was wrong or reckless?…maybe I can avoid the same fate. But sometimes it’s just bad cards.

I’m thinking of Richard Conte‘s Tony Bergdorf in the original Ocean’s 11, keeling over from a heart attack on the Las Vegas strip. A World War II vet, only 38 or 39 years old. Tomorrow is promised to no one.

As far as nausea and revulsion are concerned, I didn’t think anything could top the descriptions of Michael Jackson‘s predatory sexual behavior in the first half of Leaving Neverland, which premiered tonight on HBO. Then I read the Twitter reactions, at least half of which are rank with denial in Jackson’s favor. An awful lot of sick puppies out there. New Orleans filmmaker: “Horrifying, sickening, disturbing.  What a fucking monster.”

I happened to notice a Larry Karaszewski tweet about cartoonists Drew Friedman and R. Crumb. I’ll always feel indebted to Friedman for that Last Action Hero/Arnold Schwarzenegger drawing which appeared in Spy sometime in the fall of ’93. It’s been hanging, framed, on my living room wall for over two decades. [I last posted about Friedman in March ’14.]

A friend reminded me earlier today about Stewart Raffil‘s High Risk, a low-budget action thriller about “four naive Americans, in need of easy cash, deciding to fly to Colombia and raid the safe of a notorious drug lord with connections to the corrupt military regime.” I’ve never seen this 1981 film, but it’s playing for free right now on YouTube. My friend’s point was that J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier, which I’ll be seeing around 7 pm this evening, is an upmarket version of High Risk. Give Raffill credit for at least assembling a fairly decent cast — James Brolin, Anthony Quinn, Lindsay Wagner, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine, Bruce Davison and Cleavon Little.

Almost exactly two years ago the SRO and I visited Chez Jay, the legendary dive-bar eatery on Ocean Avenue. It was still noisy as hell and the service faintly sucked, but the entrees were still delicious. The faintly grubby aura, reddish lighting, checked tablecloths, peanut shells on the floor, banners on the wall, thunky-sounding music system — walk through the front door and you’re Marty McFly in 1971.

Chez Jay has been one of those lowdown, cool-cat, special-vibe places since ’59, and of course will be celebrating its 60th year in business sometime later this year. Very few Los Angeles establishments feel this time-machiney. The name of the place is “I like it like that.”

[Originally posted on 3.12.17.] “I somehow managed to afford dinner there two or three times during my Los Angeles lost-weekend period in the mid ’70s, or right before I drove back east to work at becoming a film writer. This was when Chez Jay was a serious celeb haunt. Jack Nicholson (sporting the tight curly hair perm that he wore for The Fortune) and Lou Adler and a couple of women had the back-booth table one night; I spotted a flannel-shirt-wearing Jeff Bridges during another visit.

“I knew Jay Fiondella, the owner-founder and sometime actor, very slightly back then; every time I ran into him I’d mention how much I liked John Flynn‘s The Outfit (’73), in which he played a poker player who gets held up by Robert Duvall and Joe Don Baker.

I read Paul Theroux‘s “The Mosquito Coast” two or three years before Peter Weir‘s 1986 screen adaptation, which has a reputation today (among the few who even remember it) of being a grimly fascinating tale of obsession and neuroses, and particularly one that failed at the box office.

But I’ve never forgotten “four o’clock in the morning courage,” an Allie Fox phrase (actually stolen from something Napoleon Bonaparte once said) that Theroux used once or twice during the novel’s first half.

Ever since that phrase sunk in, I’ve been telling myself that the real movers and shakers in life are those who can hop out of bed at 4 am (or any hour when it’s still dark) and man up and drill into the task at hand. Losers stay in bed and huddle until the break of dawn — winners wash their faces, put their boots on and face whatever adversity may be waiting. The world is for the few.

All my life I’ve been waking up at 6:30 or 7 am at the latest, going back to junior high school. But since falling and bruising my back a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been snoozing until 8 or even 9 am. Partly because my body needs the rest and rehab, and partly because I always wake up around 3 or 4 am, surf Twitter for a couple of hours, and then go back to sleep at 6 am or so.

The only thing I really liked about Barry Levinson‘s The Natural was the handsome face, sandy blonde hair and trim, athletic bod of Robert Redford, who was 46 during filming. (His mythical character, Roy Hobbs, was around 34 in Bernard Malamud’s 1952 source novel.) And….all right, in some ways Levinson generated hints of that good old yesteryear baseball vibe, that “time of simplicity and innocence” feeling that guys of a certain age feel a special rapport with or longing for.

Other than these two elements I didn’t believe (or even want to believe) a single frame in this damn film, and in fact came to hate the way Levinson constantly underlined, flaunted, mythologized. If he had only had the discipline to play it straight and real and low-key, but no.

And I’m speaking as a lover of baseball games. I adore sitting alongside the first or third-base lines and smelling the grass and the soil. And as a worshipper of certain baseball films — Moneyball, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, For The Love of the Game, The Rookie, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, etc.

Seriously — fuck The Natural. That awful triumphant-hero music, the way Glenn Close is lighted in the bleachers, Darren McGavin‘s grotesque villain with the glass eye, etc.

I was driving west on Sunset and singing “Honky Cat” with all the skill and deep-down feeling I could muster. Well, I wasn’t actually “singing” as much as singing along with Elton John, but I was holding my end up. I can sing pretty well when I’m in the right mood, and the notes were all within my range and my phrasing and voice control were pretty good if I do say so myself.

So there I was as I approached the Bel Air gate, cruising in Elton heaven. It was sometime in the mid-summer of ’83, a week or two after I’d moved to Los Angeles to work at The Hollywood Reporter, and all seemed right with the world.

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A friend saw J.C. Chandor‘s Triple Frontier (Netflix, 3.6) last night. First HE question: “Ben Affleck looks almost as fat as Harvey Weinstein in the trailer. Does he look this tubby all through the film or…?” Answer: “This is the biggest I’ve ever seen him.”

2nd HE question: “So how is it?” Answer: “Well, it’s pretty good. I was okay with it. The first two acts really deliver. The photography is excellent.”

3rd HE question: “I’ve heard it’s a little bit in debt to Treasure of the Sierra Madre in that greed gets the better of the main characters.” Answer: “Yeah, that’s an element.”

4th HE question: “I’m presuming not everyone makes it out alive.” Answer: “Uh-huh.”

5th HE question: “I’m presuming Affleck dies and maybe Oscar Isaac also. Those two anyway. Because they divert from the plan and try to steal too much.” Answer: “You know how this works.”

Hollywood Elsewhere will be catching Triple Frontier tomorrow (Sunday) evening.

For some undisclosed reason Kris Tapley has walked away from his Variety gig. No, he didn’t go down with the Star Is Born ship — he just wanted to move on. But to what? The immediate question is “but he’s got a kid — why would he bail on a good gig with Variety?” I’m told it’s all cordial and no biggie. Tapley has long bemoaned the Oscar handicapping racket and has long wanted to shift into full-time screenwriting. But again, moving on to what? A father can’t quit a good job unless he has another one waiting.

Right now I’ve got nine likely Best Picture nominees for 2020. What am I forgetting? Which of these nine seem dicey (if any)? I have a notion that if Harriet is well acted and carefully crafted (and who knows if it will be?), it’s going to be a big contender. And don’t forget Soderbergh’s The Laundry.

1. Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman (Netflix, sometime in October) — A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa. (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Jesse Plemons).

2. Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Sony, 7.26) — A faded TV actor and his stunt double embark on an odyssey to make a name for themselves in the film industry during the Helter Skelter reign of terror in 1969 Los Angeles. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino).

3. Marielle Heller‘s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — The story of Fred Rogers, the honored host and creator of the popular children’s television program, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. (Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tammy Blanchard)

4. Greta Gerwig‘s Little Women (Sony, 12.25) — Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War. (Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan)

5. Jay Roach‘s Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate) — Fox honcho Roger Ailes and sexual harassment allegations that resulted in his resignation. (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Kate McKinnon, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Duplass)

6. Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet (Focus Features) — A feminist 12 Years A Slave, based on the story of freedom fighter Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo), her escape from slavery and subsequent missions to free dozens of slaves through the Underground Railroad in the face of growing pre-Civil War adversity. Cynthia Erivo, Janelle Monae, Joe Alwyn, Deborah Ayorinde, Clarke Peters, Leslie Odom Jr., Tory Kittles, Vondie Curtis-Hall.

The guys who edited Oliver Stone‘s JFK (’91) — Joe Hutshing (Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire) and Pietro Scalia (Good Will Hunting, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) — deserved their Best Editing Oscar and then some.

Two years ago a You Tube commenter said, “Sometimes I wonder how many times in my life I’ve seen JFK’s head explode.” Ten months ago another wrote, “Whenever I watch President Kennedy die, it deeply saddens me.” Around the same time another guy wrote, “I’ve probably seen JFK’s head explode a million times.”

Honestly? I’ve probably watched this grotesque footage at least a couple of hundred times, and despite what certain conspiracy buffs have been claiming all along I know for a damn fact there was no occipital back-of-the-head blowout — the spillage was strictly limited from the top of the head down to the right-side temple.