The Non-Believers

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Hollywood Elsewhere is not, shall we say, the biggest fan of the Safdie brothers Uncut Gems, but I’m a rapt admirer of Adam Sandler‘s pinball-machine performance as an insane gambling junkie.

In a post titled “Sandler’s Finest Performance,” I wrote that “within the realm that the Safdies have created, he’s completely authentic. We all know what Sandler’s screen persona has been for the last 25 years — droll, laid-back, quippy, sarcastic smart-ass. Howard Ratner is different. Sandler has never given himself to a character like this before. I just want to make that clear. You could say that Sandler is better than the film. I completely respect what he’s done here.”

Right now we’re smack dab in the middle of ad-buying for award-season contenders, and A24, the distributor of Uncut Gems, is spending like everyone else. The other day I noticed a big front-and-back-cover Hollywood Reporter supplement praising Sandler’s performance. Are you listening, Hollywood rank-and-filers? A24 wants you to hear their plea.

Speaking as the Charley Varrick of conversation stirrers (along with Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone), I would be delighted to run some A24 Sandler ads along with, say, a special two-day advertorial telling everyone how extra-wowser he is. I really would, and my aim is true. But A24 doesn’t want to know about Hollywood Elsewhere.

As we speak most of the big-time distributors are down with Phase One and Phase Two ads on HE (a tried-and-true reality since HE launched in August ’04), but not A24. They won’t even pick up the phone. They’ll spend God know knows how many thousands on this and that promotional venue or activity and God bless them and their strategies, but they don’t believe in award-season blogaroos. Their attitude is basically “thanks for pushing Sandler, bruh, but ad-wise we’re not into the Last of the Crop-Dusting Independents….no offense, love your stuff.”

“They just don’t advertise that way,” a producer confides. “[Display ads] are not in their quiver. It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s just not what they believe in.”

Okay!

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“Well, Bust My Buttons!”

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Just before the 76th Academy Awards everyone was writing about the inevitability of Peter Jackson‘s Return of the King winning the Best Picture Oscar, myself among them. But I was the only one, I believe, to write that the only suspenseful question, Jackson-wise, will be “when will the studs in Jackson’s tuxedo shirt pop open and perhaps fly across the room like scud missiles” (or words to that effect).

Almost 15 years have passed since that highly questionable, impossible-to-watch-a-second-time film won the Big Prize, but last night I was the one dealing with a tuxedo shirt popping open — repeatedly — because of a sit-down bulky stomach issue.

It was mortifying, especially with fashion plate Roger Durling gently admonishing me for allowing this to happen.

If I was a baldly honest, no-holds-barred, Klaus Kinski type I would have confessed to Durling that when I bought my Kooples tuxedo shirt (which has black mini-buttons instead of stud holes) six or seven years ago, I was a good ten pounds lighter. And so the shirt was trying very hard to hold the line and maintain proper appearances, but my gut was a little too much to contain. Everything is cool when I’m standing, but when I sit down the middle button is struggling and swearing and saying to me “Jesus, this is tough…wait, hold on, can you suck your stomach in a bit?…you can’t?…oh, crap…oh, Jesus, I can’t…pop! Sorry, bruh…can you rebutton it? C’mon, hurry up…please, rebutton it before Durling comes over. Shit, here he comes!! Oh, you have re-buttoned it? Well, it popped again! Suck your stomach in, you fat fuck.”

Wells to Jackson: I’m sorry, bruh. I shouldn’t have said what I said back in early ’04. I should have contained myself. I’m nowhere near as gutty now as you were then, but I understand the pain you were going through. If someone were to write “the only question of the night will be when Jeffrey Wells’ Kooples shirt will pop open due to his inability to maintain the slim form that he enjoyed for so many years”…if someone were to write this I would be plunged into despair…it would be like a knife in the heart. The obesity epidemic is obviously real and yes, some people need to man up and stop eating for the wrong reasons, but from here on I solemnly pledge to never joke about someone’s tuxedo shirt popping open and metal studs flying through the air…never again.

Sidenote: What character in what late 1930s film said the line “Well, bust my buttons!”

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Last Night’s Scorsese Hoo-Hah

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Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Roger Durling, Sasha Stone, Anne Thompson, Tatyana Antropova, Lisa Taback, David Poland and yours truly attended last night’s Martin Scorsese tribute at the Ritz Carlton Bacara. Or, if you will, the presenting of the 2019 Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Filmmaking to the director of The Irishman, who of course was there also and full of the usual vim and vinegar and poetry and soulful sharings. The man is indefatigable…a locomotive.

The Irishman will win the 2019 Best Picture Oscar. It will, it should, it must, the Godz insist, etc. I’ve seen it three times now — at Netflix, at the Chinese premiere, and a few days ago at the Westside Pavillion.

Key Scorsese passage: “I realize that commitment and dedication to the art form are always rare so, you know, when you see it, this incredible commitment and dedication, please don’t take it for granted. It’s a new world today, of course, and we have to be extra vigilant. Some actually believe that these qualities that I’m talking about can be replaced by algorithms and formulas and business calculations, but please remember it’s all an illusion because there’s no substitute for individual or artistic expression…as Kirk Douglas knew and as he expressed through his long film career.”

The event was attended by roughly 300 rich people + four or five journalist blogaroos. Nice vibes, nice food, excellent video tributes, legendary speeches, etc.

Sasha picked me up at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Riverside at 3:50 pm, and we arrived two and a half hours later. Tatyana arrived maybe 15 minutes after we did. We decided against staying at the Villa Rosa Inn (the room was chilly and odorous and a bit haggard), so the Beetle carried us straight home. The return trip took about 90 minutes, Santa Barbara to West Hollywood.

Al Pacino / Buddy Rich

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During last night’s Martin Scorsese tribute in Santa Barbara, Irishman costar Al Pacino spoke for a little more than 12 minutes, and with a rambling, jazzy attitude. Boppity-beep-beep-bedulluh-bedulluh-pop…pow! Please, please go to 9:07 for his story about attending a Frank Sinatra concert at Carnegie Hall sometime in the early ’80s, and how Rich, who was then around 65 or so, performed a drum solo as the opening act. And then…well, listen to Al tell it. The message is if you stick to something you’ll get better and better at it, and that artists sometimes reach the peak of their powers in their 60s, 70s or even beyond, and that Buddy Rich was one example and so, right now, is Martin Scorsese.

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McCartney’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

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Four years ago the original Rubber Soul album cover photo was unearthed and circulated. By this I mean the naturally-proportioned image that wasn’t used in favor of the famously distorted image that become instantly iconic.

The photo session happened sometime in November ’65, and reportedly on or near the grounds of John Lennon‘s home on the St. George’s Hill estate, Weybridge, Surrey. (It’s currently called Kenwood).)

The folk-rockish, Dylan-influenced suede buckskin jackets obviously indicated the shot was taken in cool, autumnal weather. But until this morning I didn’t realize that the weather was more on the frigid side, as in one of the fabbies muttering “Jesus, take the shot already, it’s fucking cold out here.”

How do I know this? Paul McCartney has pulled his sleeves over his hands and fingers. Nobody does this unless it’s biting cold. (Or unless they’re light on Jack Löndon-like manliness.) I occasionally did this myself while walking around my New Jersey and Connecticut home towns so don’t tell me.

I didn’t pay attention in 2015 when this photo was first circulated, so this is new. Five decades plus and I never saw the freezing McCartney hands until today.

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“Hoosiers” Complicated By Booze and Ghosts

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A middle-aged ex-basketball star with a drinking problem (Ben Affleck) lands a gig coaching a basketball team at his old high school in Torrance. We’ve all seen this film, of course. Hoosiers mixed with alcohol meets Kevin Costner‘s McFarland, USA. We also know there are only so many ways to tell this kind of story, and all of them with the same ending.

The compelling X-factor is the fact that Affleck’s own struggles with alcohol add a palpable subcurrent. Plus director Gavin O’Connor (The Accountant, Miracle) knows his way around athletic dramas.

The current title is The Way Back (Warner Bros., 3.20). A year and a half ago it was called The Has-Been.

Deadline Boilerplate, posted on 6.11.18: “The Accountant team of Ben Affleck and director Gavin O’Connor are circling The Has-Been, a drama scripted by Brad Ingelsby. I’m told Warner Bros is trying to make a deal on a movie that would happen on a fast track. No deals have been completed at this point.

Brad Ingelsby‘s script “centers on a former basketball all-star who has lost his wife and family foundation in a struggle with addiction. He attempts to regain his soul and salvation by becoming the coach of a disparate, ethnically mixed high school basketball team at his alma mater. The Has-Been will be produced by Affleck and Jennifer Todd, Mark Ciardi and Gordon Grey, with O’Connor also expected to be involved as a producer along with the writer.”

I’d like to read Inglesby’s script, if anyone has a PDF. Reach out on Facebook and I’ll send you an email.

Competing Tragedies

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As horrific as this morning’s Saugus High School shooting was (two fatalities, three critically wounded, shooter apprehended), none of us are shocked or surprised when this kind of thing occurs. The truth (and God help us) is that school shootings are an almost routine occurence. We know this won’t be the last, and that random slaughter is more or less a facet of American life now.

Which is why the bigger gut-punch, for me, is the two-day-old news about the drowning of Venice, Italy — the worst flood there since 1966, and a harbinger of future floods to come. The eternal beauty and serenity of Venice is no longer a given, and the vibes are anything but serene with this the Sword of Damocles hovering. It’s shattering, heartbreaking.

Wash, rinse, repeat: Many world-class cities (Manhattan included) are going to be flooded in the coming decades, and it’s basically the fault of those on Donald Trump‘s side of the aisle — thoughtless industrialists, the denial brigade, China, India, cattle industry, etc. And 38% of the American electorate is down with the Trump agenda. Because they’re devoted to aggressive ignorance, and because the maintaining of Anglo Saxon dominance and pushing back against POC encroachment is paramount to them.

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Robert Altman’s “Images”

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Thanks to Sony Pictures and the tireless p.r. team behind A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood for the nice Mr. Rogers sweater. I’ll never wear it outside my home, but it’s very warm. (I regard thick red sweaters as an east-coast Republican thing — I’m more of a black Italian sweater type of guy.) But it’s very generous of Sony to send this over along with some other Rogers items. Thanks, guys.






The Battle Is Lost

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Over the last year I’ve been campaigning against the wearing of black sneakers with white midsoles, aka “whitesides.” Last November I announced that these grotesquely designed creations had become “the new Crocs,” and as bad as the wearing of gold-toed socks. I naturally presumed that X-factor industry types would agree with me.

But over the last couple of days I’ve noticed that Matt Damon, Christian Bale and Adam Sandler are all wearing these godforsaken things. Even Brad Pitt is wearing a variation — i.e., cream-colored sneakers with whitesides. For whatever reason these guys are refusing to acknowledge that wearing whitesides makes you look like a huge dork.

I suppose this means that I’m the clueless one, right? The guy who doesn’t get it? I think not. I’ve been to Italy a few times and I know what goes, and these shoes are an embarassment to mankind.

My Heart Aches For The Coens

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The last effort from Joel and Ethan Coen was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an anthology film for Netflix. But that didn’t count because it wasn’t really a single-narrative “Coen Bros. film” that opened in theatres. Within that realm, Joel and Ethan have been M.I.A. since Hail, Caesar!, which came out three years ago. Except that was a bit of a disappointment. It was fine (Josh Brolin was excellent) but at the same time a bit strained and somehow incomplete.

If you ask me the last real Coen brothers film was Inside Llewyn Davis, which was six fucking years ago.

I “liked” but didn’t love True Grit (’10) all that much. It was basically about Jeff Burly Bridges going “shnawwhhhhr-rawwwhhrr-rawwrrluurrllllh.” It certainly wasn’t an elegant, blue-ribbon, balls-to-the-wall, ars gratia artis Coen pic — it was a well-written, slow-moving western with serious authenticity, noteworthy camerawork, tip-top production design and, okay, a few noteworthy scenes.

So let’s just call the last ten years a difficult, in-and-out, up-and-down saga, but at the same time acknowledge that the Coens have enjoyed two golden periods of shining creativity and productivity.

The first golden period was a four-film run — Blood Simple (’84), Raising Arizona (’87), Miller’s Crossing (’90) and Barton Fink (’91). The Hudsucker Proxy (’94) was a weird, half-successful, half-sputtering in-betweener. The second golden period (’96 to ’09) was a nine-film run that included Fargo (’96), The Big Lebowski (’98), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (’00), The Man Who Wasn’t There (’01), Intolerable Cruelty (’03), The Ladykillers (’04), No Country for Old Men (’07), Burn After Reading (’08) and A Serious Man (’09).

My moviegoing life has been diminished by the absence of the “real” Coen Brothers. If I was a mega-millionaire I would invest in whatever they want to make.