The question, of course, is whether or not Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness, which has called itself a "triptych fable" as well a boilerplate anthology film, will somehow weave these stories together...will they cross-pollinate the way the three Pulp Fiction stories did?
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After all kinds of grief, delay and unexpected potholes (including a last-minute blowoff by Tatiana Antropova, who had agreed to participate in a “Misfits” Zoom session), Hollywood Elsewhere hosted a three-way, audio-only “Misfts” discussion between entertainment critic, on-air host, podcaster and movie maven Neil Rosen (“Talking Pictures with Neil Rosen“), comedian, podcaster and East Hampton go-to guy Bill McCuddy, and myself.
We got into Road House, of course, along with Immaculate (HE is not a huge fan of Sydney Sweeney), Michael Keaton‘s Knox Goes Away, Asphalt City and Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance, which I’ve seen but haven’t reviewed.
Toward the end I introduced a new “Misfits” sidelight called “Revival House,” a discussion of great or near-great films that most Millennials and Zoomers (who regard anything released before 1980 as ancient history and therefore irrelevant) probably haven’t seen or have little interest in seeing. I started by discussing Cameron Crowe‘s Vanilla Sky (’01) but Rosen and McCuddy weren’t enthused enough, so I switched over to Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63),and sudenly a great emotional switch was thrown because riffing on 20th Century films opens up a floodgate of passion, the kind that is barely felt (or felt infrequently) in today’s realm.
For roughly a half-hour the Wells-Rosen-McCuddy discussion (one hour, 11 minutes) was recorded from inside a soundproof booth at the Wilton Library. But it was interrupted when a Wilton Library staffer tapped on the recording booth door while pointing to her wristwatch and whispering that I can’t record a podcast of any length from inside it. I’ve noticed several people occupying the booth for longish periods (30 or 40 minutes), and I’ve recorded three or four Sasha Stone podcasts from within the same booth. But there’s no point in challenging a librarian.
While Rosen and McCuddy were chatting I picked up my phone and digicorder and strolled outside into a flagstone courtyard. My jacket asn’t warm enough for 40 degres, but I managed. Everything went well.
Except for the very beginning, that is, when I had trouble managing a three-way conversation. When I hit the “add” button it invited one person to join while un-inviting the other. I fiddled around and finally figured it out. If any HE reader-listener turdbrain says so much as one snarky word about this, they will be instantly terminated…fair warning. I’ve been an iPhone owner for 16 or 17 years — don’t even think about giving me shit about this.
James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown would be wise to open later this year as 2024’s award season is looking a bit anemic…compared to ‘23 it’s a weak, mewing little kitten…hobbled by last year’s WGA and SAG strikes.
A boilerplate principle photography period is three months, so James Mangold’s film having begun filming a couple of weeks ago indicates a mid-June finish.
That would give Mangold a fairly comfortable post-production period — five full months — to finish A Complete Unknown for theatrical release…let’s say around Thanksgiving or thereabouts.
Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis (‘13), an early ‘60s folk-music period drama with similar visual elements, shot in the late winter and early spring of 2012. It could have been “rushed” into that year’s Oscar season but the Coens wanted to hang back a bit.
Among the fastest post-production turnarounds in Hollywood history are Robert Webb ‘s Love Me Tender (‘56), Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (‘59), Oliver Stone’s W. (‘08) and Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers (‘19) — all were edited, fine-tuned and finished in the vicinity of 11, 12 or 13 weeks.
Mangold would have 20 weeks to finish and present A Complete Unknown by mid November. If he finishes principal by mid June, he could even pull a Preminger and have it ready to screen at the New York Film Festival by late September or early October.
HE is passively into discouraging or diminishing interest in Proof of Concept Accelerator movies...no offense. I simply wish to align myself with the tens of millions of relatively slender, well-educated squares out there (i.e., those who are not obese or MAGA or who don't wear whitesides)...an alignment with the 95% of the Americans who don't live inside the progressive woke-trans-nonbinary bubble...Americans who inherently don't love the idea of white-male-hating narratives.
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All hail Simon West, Scott Rosenberg and Jerry Bruckheimer‘s Con Air, which is over a quarter-century old now. (Damn near 27 years.) I re-watched it last night with Jett, and it’s still one of the greatest sociopathic action comedies ever made. There’s a perverse satiric thrust built into almost every damn scene, which is one reason why I feel it’s among the best Jerry Bruckheimer flicks ever made.
I’ve been saying this from the get-go but it can’t hurt to repeat: Con Air is a blend of ultra-slick action-movie chops along with an attitude of subversive genre parody. It’s primarily a wickedly funny and (at times) almost surreal conceptual comedy, and secondarily an action thriller. It’s a very handsomely shot and well-edited thing but there’s barely a single sincere line in Rosenberg’s entire script.
And let’s remember that it wasn’t all Rosenberg — Con Air was punched up by a crew of pinch-hitting screenwriters, which was also how The Rock, Gone in Sixty Seconds and Crimson Tide came together.
Con Air plays the big-budgeted action thriller game while mocking and toying with big-budget machismo at every turn. Not in a silly spoof way but using a kind of flip, inside-baseball attitude. As if the people who were paid to put it together — gifted, too-hip-for-the-room writers with jaded nihilist attitudes — felt vaguely befouled for working on a project so caked with cynicism and Hollywood corruption, and decided to inject snide, subversive humor as a form of therapy.
The marvel of Con Air is that the mixture of this attitude with cold action-movie efficiency (this being one of those happy-accident movies that occur every so often) also worked as entertainment because the movie included you in — it made you feel as if you were laughing with it, not at it.
Comment from “jimjonesiii” (posted on 10.2.08): “I`m a fat redneck ape and I approve this movie.”
I love John Malkovich‘s performance as Cyrus the Virus — every line and body gesture says “this time out I’m a total paycheck whore, but you’ll also notice I’m very good at this sort of dry attitude comedy.”
I’ll always chuckle at the buffed-up Nic Cage at his most comically stalwart and sincere. And at John Cusack‘s smarty-pants dialogue and his dopey sandal shoes. And that scene of Dave Chappelle‘s frozen body dropping from 10,000 feet and landing on an old couple’s car hood. (Chappelle was 25 or 30 pounds lighter in ’97, and he had hair!) Cage’s “Don’t mess with the bunny” line. Steve Buscemi defining the word irony. Colm Meaney‘s muscle car (a Sting Ray) getting dropped from 2000 feet up. That idiotic Las Vegas plane-crash finale. Ridiculous but all fun, all the time.
Rosenberg once recalled that Bruckheimer wasn’t pleased with the climax Rosenberg had come up with. Rosenberg, being a typically egoistic writer, got defensive and snarky. Rosenberg: “Jesus…c’mon, Jerry, what more could you want from this thing? What do you want me to do…crash the fucking plane down the strip in Vegas?” Bruckheimer: “Yes! Perfect!”
Con Air is a remnant of an era in which Jerry Bruckheimer movies briefly flirted with with this special signature attitude — i.e., mocking the big-budget action genre and at the same time kicking ass with it.
Con Air was partly Rosenberg, of course, but also partly from Jerry’s own attitude at the time as he hadn’t yet come into his own and was still working to some extent with the legacy and attitude of late partner Don Simpson . And partly from the Clinton era zeitgeist, partly from the luck of the draw, partly good fortune.
The Jerry Bruckheimer who made this film in ’96-’97 would have howled at the absurdity of making a Lone Ranger movie starring Johnny Depp as Tonto.
I will defend Con Air until the cows come home. It’s expensive guy-movie junk in a sense — one that simultaneously chokes on its own cynicism and yet makes you laugh at the absurdity of making movies of this sort, and yet put together with great care and precision and polish.
Bruckheimer used to say “I make guy movies but I don’t serve hamburger — I serve first-rate steak.” Con Air is like a pricey, perfectly cooked marbled T-bone in a great restaurant in old town Buenos Aires or downtown Chicago or the east 50s in Manhattan.
I hold Con Air, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Crimson Tide and The Rock in roughly the same regard. All four are among my all-time favorite guilty pleasure movies. Those were the days. Jerry doesn’t make ’em like this any more.
“P. Vice“, posted on 10.2.08: “I love it. First we decry the unwashed apes and their pathetic taste in movies, then we praise shit like Con Air which is a movie about apes, made by apes for…you guessed it…apes. Hypocrites, one and all.
“And besides, Armageddon is clearly the real deal when it comes to slyly satirizing genre conventions while satisfying them with a straight face. Simon West doesn’t deserve scraps from Michael Bay‘s dinner table.”
LexG, posted on 10.2.08: “CON AIR = COMPLETE, TOTAL and WHOLESALE MEGAAAAAA-OWNAGE. I love that score. Especially the part that goes TSEW, TSEW, TSEW, TSEW over and over again. MASTERPIECE. And also the only time Scott Rosenburg’s weakness for wack-ass character names was amusing. DIAMOND DOG is somehow awesomely stupid, yet MR. SHHHHHHH and MAN WITH THE PLAN is just straight-up EMBARASSING.”
“Nick Rogers,” posted on same date: “Con Air contains some of the most subversive, and entertaining, ‘slumming’ performances I’ve ever seen. Wells, don’t feel guilty about liking this at all. Can’t say I agree with you about Gone in 60 Seconds (too much talking, not enough carjacking), but this is a brilliant post.”
[Originally posted on 9.6.20] I’ve been a sucker all my life for scenes of long-delayed revelation or confession that are nonetheless inaudible due to directorial strategy.
Two of my top three are YouTubed below. My third favorite is Leo G. Carroll‘s remarkably concise explanation to Cary Grant about the whole George Kaplan decoy scheme in North by Northwest. The all-but-deafening sound of nearby aircraft engines allows Carroll to explain all the whats, whys and wherefores in roughly ten or twelve seconds; otherwise a full-boat explanation would take at least…what, 45 or 50 seconds? A minute or two?
My favorite is the On The Waterfront moment in which Marlon Brando‘s Terry confesses to Eva Marie Saint‘s Edie that he was unwittingly complicit in her brother’s murder. Because it’s not just an admission but a plea for forgiveness with Terry insisting it wasn’t his idea to kill Joey or anyone else (“I swear to God, Edie!”), and that he thought “they was just gonna lean on him a little,” as he says to his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) in the film’s second scene.
I’m mentioned the Mississippi Burning moment between Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand a couple of times before. It’s arguably the most powerful moment in this racially charged 1988 thriller, which is based on the infamous 1964 murder of three civil-rights workers. A third-act fantasy spin was the main criticism when it opened, but it emotionally satisfied and that’s what counts.
There’s also that Foreign Correspondent moment inside the Butch windmill when Joel McCrea can hear the murmur of bad-guy voices but not what’s being said. Others?
Cary Grant, Leo G. Carroll during the Chicago / Midway airport confession scene.
The great M. Emmet Walsh, whom I worked for in late ’85 and early ’86 and got to know moderately well during that brief period, has passed at age 88….just shy of 89.
Walsh’s three finest performances were given in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Blood Simple (sleazy private detective), Ulu Grosbard‘s Straight Time (Dustin Hoffman‘s sleazy parole officer) and a flinty high school swim coach in Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80).
I first became acquainted with Walsh while working as a unit publicist on New Line’s Critters (’85). I told him that his Blood Simple performance as oily shamus Loren Visser was the stuff of film noir legend and that it warranted a Best Supporting Actor campaign.
Walsh agreed and subsequently hired me to run the show, so to speak — creating press releases, creating trade ads and generating press attention that might push his candidacy along.
Walsh had a snappy, feisty mind, and he didn’t hesitate to tell me when my press kit prose was slightly off-kilter or over-baked.
We ultimately couldn’t persuade the Academy, but Walsh won the 1985 Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. I’d like to think I had something to do with that. Plus I got to join Walsh for a lunch with Joel and Ethan somewhere in downtown Manhattan in early ’86.
The Walsh campaign was the highlight of my publicity work during the mid to late ’80s (staff writer at Samuel Goldwyn, unit/in-house publicity for New Line Cinema, press kit writer for Cannon Films).
I ran into Emmet three or four years ago inside a Spirit Awards tent. Good to see him again.
“Same Old Song,” posted on 1.23.14: “The thing I dearly love about this ending is the fact that the mortally wounded Lorren Visser is, at the end of his life, suddenly very concerned about a tiny droplet of water on a water pipe that’s about to land on his face.
“It’s not the slug in his stomach, which he can do nothing about. He knows he’s about to go and is even cackling about it, weird guy that he is. What Visser can’t accept is that damn little glob of H20. Taking shape, getting heavier, larger. The water looks down at Visser and he looks up at it. Waiting, waiting…and then it drops.”
...presumably some strong reactions are kicking around or festering.
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John Cena‘s recent nude moment on the Oscar stage reminided me of something I’ve never mentioned and had almost forgotten about.
I’ve written before about having servied four days in L.A. County Jail, for the crime of having failed to pay 27 parking tickets. It happened sometime in the late spring or early summer of ’74, and it was during the initial processing (when they create your identity card, make you take a shower and give you the orange jumpsuit and your bedding) that I noticed that the Oscar streaker guy, Robert Opel, was also being processed.
Opel’s photo had been in the papers; he’d also been interviewed by local TV news shows so the recognition was instant. Did I go over and strike up a conversation? Nope — wimped out. But it was him, all right.
Opel was born in 1939 in East Orange, New Jersey. After graduating from a Pittsburgh-area college he allegedly worked as a speechwriter for California Governor Ronald Reagan.
Opel was teaching for the Los Angeles Unified School District at the time of the Oscar streaking incident, and was canned because of that.
Opel was mostly gay with a little bi action on the side. After moving from L.A. to San Francisco during the mid ’70s, he opened Fey-Way Studios, a gallery of gay male art, at 1287 Howard Street. The gallery helped bring such erotic gay artists as Tom of Finland and Robert Mapplethorpe to national attention. But in the mid ’79 he was in a relationship with Camille O’Grady.
At age 39 Opel was shot to death at his San Francisco studio — it happened on July 7, 1979. His killer was Maurice Keenan, a thief who is still doing time for the crime.
There’s a documentary about Opel on YouTube. It’s called Uncle Bob, directed by Opel’s nephew and namesake.
It was much too baroque and Fellini Satyricon-ish and Terry Gilliam-esque for that. A friend, however, believes that it won because of the sexual stuff.
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Hulu intends to produce an eight-episode series about the wrongful prosecution and incarceration of femme fatale Amanda Knox, who will be played by Margaret Qualley.
The problem is that Qualley is too old for the part. Knox was 20 when Italian authorities in Perugia became convinced that she might have murdered her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in late ’07 — Knox was a foxy young flower back then, freshly bloomed. The attractive Qualley is 30 and looks it — she might have passed for 20 five years ago, but she’s no spring chicken now.
On top of which the Knox story has been thoroughly mined and explored over the last 13 years or so. How many times can average Joe and Janes be expected to show interest?
In 2011 saw the release of a negligible Lifetime TV movie, Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy. Two years later came “Waiting To Be Heard”, a Knox-authored memoir. In 2014 Michael Winterbottom‘s not-so-hot Face Of An Angel opened. In 2016 a Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox, appeared. And then, of course, came Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater (’21), which is largely based on the Knox saga.
The Hulu series is basically about Knox and husband Chris Robinson, who felt exploited by Stillwater, wanting to make some dough. They’re exec producing along with Qualley, Warren Littlefield, Lisa Harrison, Ann Johnson and Graham Littlefield. Monica Lewinsky is also exec producing.
“Knox vs. McCarthy Again,” posted on 8.8.21:
In an 8.6 HE riff titled “McCarthy Coolly Dismisses Knox Beef,” I linked to Janelle Riley’s 8.4 Variety interview with Stillwater director-cowriter Tom McCarthy.
McCarthy responded to the gist of Amanda Knox‘s complaint about Stillwater being fundamentally based on her 2008 murder conviction and subsequent exoneration, and her not having been consulted prior to filming. McCarthy also mentioned that her statements were somewhat undermined by the fact that she hadn’t yet seen the film.
Yesterday Knox posted a series of tweets about the McCarthy interview [excerpts after the jump], and made some reasonable points. However, she also tweeted the following:
HE response to friendo: “Seeing Stillwater would not be an ‘ideal date night’ and that’s why she still hasn’t seen it yet? But she would be amenable to seeing it, she said earlier, if Focus would invite her to a screening. The date night remark was playful, but she invites skepticism.”
Friendo to HE: “You have to admit that it’s hilarious when, in being asked at the outset in the new interview what his inspiration for the movie was, McCarthy says, ‘One inspiration was a relative of mine who had a fractious relationship with her father. I asked if she minded talking to me about it.” This after previously not being afraid to openly and preemptively acknowledge the Knox case was a springboard, before he had to worry [that Knox might be] endangering his Oscar campaign. Now Knox is incidental, he claims, while asserting that he was inspired by a friend. That kind of covering-one’s-ass (publicly and badly) is the hallmark of a really insubstantial person, or a scaredy-cat on the run.”
On 9.24.22, or roughly 19 months ago, I tapped out a longish piece about a traumatic encounter with an old pally inside Wilton’s Village Market.
Although I’d regarded this guy as a great friend and an excellent human being for decades, he’d alarmingly turned into a wokester fanatic sometime in ’20 or ’21 or thereabouts. Goaded by his three Millennial-aged daughters, he’d decided I was suddenly allied with society’s bad guys and that I’d more or less become some kind of suppressive, anti-feminist, Harvey Weinstein-like figure.
I’ve seen red over a few things in my time, but my mind turned into molten lava when the Chance Brown condemnation came down. How fucking dare you?
I didn’t mention his name in the Village Market piece, but referred to him as “Strelnikov” as his chilly ranting reminded me of Tom Courtenay‘s communist enforcer in David Lean‘s Doctor Zhivago (’65).
His actual name was Chance Browne, a cartoonist (“Hi and Lois“) and musician and an all-around good fellow until the Great Awokening turned his head around.
I’m revealing Chance’s identity because (deep breath) he died last Friday afternoon from pancreatic cancer. His family requested radio silence at first, but Chance’s sister broke the news on Facebook a day or two later, and I’m figuring “okay, olly olly in come free.”
Here’s what I posted a day after his passing:
“The greatly talented, often joyful and widely beloved CHANCE BROWNE has left the earth and has merged with the infinite. He is now at one with legendary astronaut Dave Bowman at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, gazing down upon our blue planet with a certain childlike amazement.
“Chance passed yesterday afternoon (Friday, March 1st) around 1 pm. Taken down by pancreatic cancer, which he had only recently discovered.
“My heart is broken but what else can I or anyone else say? This is obviously a different deal than the passing of John Lennon (43 years and 2 months ago), and yet it feels emotionally similar in a certain way. To me at least. This sounds kinda silly but I thought Chance would just keep on Chance-ing forever. I really did. I thought he’d just keep going. I really thought we all had an eternal lease on life.
“I am shocked and thrown by this terrible waffle-iron…this feeling of having been clobbered on the side of my face or my head or whatever. I haven’t felt this shocked and thrown by the passing of a good and gentle soul in such a long time. But it’s happened. We may as well grim up and face it and join hands and ask ourselves who we are now and who we used to be, and where we’ve been and where we’re all going. We’re all getting there, no exceptions. Chance has simply left a bit earlier. He’ll almost certainly be waiting.”
Chance found out that he was more or less doomed a month and a half ago. On the afternoon of 1.17.24 he messaged a mutual friend, Mike Connors, as follows: “I have bad news, my brother. I just got diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer (!). I’m starting chemo tomorrow. I feel like dice must feel when they get shook up and thrown down the table. I may last another six months to a year or more with chemo. I love you and I’m sorry to leave the party too soon. I’ve got some time so we’ll talk.”
Alas, this never happened. This message was their last exchange.
Untimely passing cartoon, roughed out by Chance 11 or 12 years ago:
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