In Billy Wilder‘s Avanti! (’72), snippy businessman Jack Lemmon examines the family-owned Grand Hotel Excelsior (on the Island of Ischia on the Bay of Naples) as he checks in. Lemmon: “Well, it doesn’t look like a Hilton!” Desk manager: “I accept the compliment.”

Cut to January 2019, in the scenic beachside city of Santa Barbara…

For the last three or four years the Santa Barbara Int’l Film Festival has graciously gifted Hollywood Elsewhere with a swanky room at the Fess Parker DoubleTree Hotel (633 East Cabrillo Boulevard, Santa Barbara, CA 93103). I always regarded the Fess Parker as a little too sprawling and corporate-feeling, but the festival’s generosity was always appreciated.

Last April the somewhat unfortunate aspects of the Fess Parker were intensified when it re-opened as the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. The Hilton folks subjected the property to “a multi-million dollar renovation,” but what that meant is that the place seems a little less homey (the main lobby has a chillier appearance). On top of which the Hilton attitude seems a tad greedy.

Under the Fess Parker regime a hotel guest could simply park his/her vehicle in a large gated lot — no biggie. The Hilton folks are now charging an extra $10 per day for parking privileges. (“Welcome to our restaurant! Oh, you want cloth napkins to place on your lap while eating? That’ll be an extra five bucks on your bill.”)

Like every hotel in the world, the Fess Parker guys would ask for a debit or credit card imprint to cover incidental expenses or potential damages. For my ten-day stay, the Hilton guys have preemptively withdrawn $375 from my bank account to cover same.

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At the beginning of last night’s Outstanding Director tribute at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, board member Lynda Weinman introduced moderator Scott Feinberg, award-season columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. Well, not precisely. Weinman actually introduced a mythical figure named “Scott Feinman,” who perhaps represents a son, brother or father with whom Ms. Weinman has an unresolved relationship. (Go to 1:10 mark.)

Feinberg diplomatically ignored the faux pas, but let’s imagine for a second that Feinberg had a Jeffrey Wells-type personality or a Hollywood Elsewhere attitude. Which of the following responses would you have chosen as you stepped up to the podium?

Option #1: “Thank you, Lynda Feinberg, for such a kind and gracious introduction.”

Option #2: “Thanks, Lynda. (clears throat) Uhm…Scott Feinman. Feinman. Oh, I get it. Linda’s saying that she regards me as a fine fellow!”

Option #3: “Thank you, Lynda. I like that last name — Feinman. It has a ring.”

I have to leave for Santa Barbara now (2:25 pm). I should have left an hour ago. The idea is to get there by 4:30 pm or so, 5 pm at the latest. I want to catch a 6:10 pm q & a between Roma‘s Alfonso Cuaron and Yalitza Aparicio at the Lobero, which will follow a 4 pm screening. There’s also a cocktail reception for Cold War‘s Pawel Pawlikowski (Opal, 1325 State Street). And then the Big Director’s panel begins at the Arlington theatre at 8 pm.

Anya’s six gray kittens have been bought en masse by a nice woman from Canyon Country — two for herself and her kids, two for her mom, two for her sister. Or something like that. They’re only four and half weeks old — born on 12.27.18. You’re supposed to keep them with their mom until they’re eight weeks old or they won’t be properly weaned; some say they should stay with mom for three months. It’s interesting how you can tell which one is the bravest, the smartest, the most guarded and defensive, etc. Even at four weeks.

For as long as I can recall there’s always been a hard and fast rule about Sundance films not being allowed to play at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. I was therefore surprised to discover that A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name, one of the finest films I saw at Sundance ’19, will have two SBIFF screenings at the Lobero theatre — Sunday, 2.3 at 2pm, and Tuesday, 2.5 at 7 pm. My understanding is that Crosby, who lives in the nearby Santa Ynez Valley, will be in town on Sunday, which leads one to presume he’ll take a bow after the Sunday screening. Here’s my 1.27.19 Sundance review.

When I was but a lad my father and I didn’t like the same music. He was a big Ella Fitzgerald fan, but he had no room in his head for Aretha Franklin. C’mon! There was, of course, no point in trying to persuade him to see past his favorites and prejudices.

One of the first vocal debates we had was over the Beatles “I’m A Loser.” My dad was basically appalled that any songwriter would write a song with that title. What kind of wimp candy-ass would admit something like that, much less sing it as a kind of anthem? I replied that it wasn’t about being a loser in life, but in love. Lennon and McCartney obviously had no reason to worry about people regarding them as losers, I explained. Not with their phenomenal success. Plus it wasn’t the lyrical content as much as how it sounded. The bass line, the harmonies, the harmonica riff, etc. All of these arguments went right over my dad’s head.

I know one thing about Sundance ’19, and what it’s helped to bring about. The millions who are still glomming on to the myth of Michael Jackson — that half-magical, commercially formidable, white-sock superstar aura that has persisted and expanded since his death on 6.25.09 — the millions who are still feeding off Jackson are about to experience a profound kick in the head from Leaving Neverland, which will eventually air on HBO.

Sundance ’19 deserves a 21-gun salute and a hearty cheer for helping to launch this important four-hour film.

How many of Hollywood Elsewhere’s top eight Sundance ’19 films — Luce, Leaving Neverland, Official Secrets, Cold Case Hammerskjold, David Crosby: Remember My Name, Memory: The Origins of Alien and Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird — will connect with Joe and Jane Popcorn? Not to mention the buzzy titles that I wanted to see but missed (The Nightingale, The Hole in the Ground, Blinded By The Light)? Perhaps only two or three, perhaps all. Who knows?

I know that the above eight are rooted, riveting and fraught with discovery, and that they put me right in the zone. Thank you, Sundance ’19, for including these stand-outs.

I also know that it feels great to be back in ground-level, warm-aired Los Angeles and not (here comes the other side of the Park City experience) in that congenial p.c. Stalinist boot camp aura in the Wasatch Mountains.

HE’s Sundance experience was genuinely exciting and even throttling from time to time, but for the most part the elite, beaver-hat-wearing commissars reiterated their commitment to their “socialist summer camp in the snow” aesthetic, and what has basically become an annual experiment in mass p.c. hypnosis and utopian wish-fulfillment.

For Sundance ’19 was first and foremost about itself — about enforcing a vision of how the world needs to be, and by fulfilling its own self-created image and making real (at least temporarily) its own Neverland vibes.

We’re talking diversity, representation, a higher percentage of films directed by women and people of color (which is obviously welcome and exciting), aggressive frowning at the idea of older white-male critics (thank you, Keri Putnam, for making my life interesting!) and the idea of accumulated taste (which inevitably results “from a thousand distastes,” as Francois Truffaut once said), and cheering the idea of “under-represented” critics.

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All mock posters created by The Shiznit.

“’Why Did You Do That?’ is otherwise known as ‘the song about butts that Lady Gaga sings in A Star Is Born. Truth be told, there’s only one butt in the song, but it’s a memorable one: As Gaga’s Ally sings in the opening lines, ‘Why do you look so good in those jeans? / Why’d you come around me with an ass like that?’ Question: Is ‘Why Did You Do That?’ terrible, is it a bop, or is it a terrible song that’s also a bop?” — from “I’m Obsessed With That Song About Butts From A Star Is Born,” by Nate Jones, Vulture, 10.10.18.

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We’ve just begun the final year of the second decade of the 21st Century. Somebody on Twitter was asking this morning for lists of the best films of the last nine years, and so I might as well (a) re-post my long-game roster as well as (b) HE’s top ten from this period (2010 to 2018) at the very end:

Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone (10).

Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).

Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom (7).

Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).

Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)

Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)

Best of 2016: Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)

Best of 2017: Call Me My Your Name, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Square, War For The Planet of the Apes, mother!, The Florida Project. (7)

Best of 2018: Roma., Green Book, First Reformed, Hereditary, Capernaum, Vice, Happy As Lazzaro, Filmworker, First Man, Widows, Sicario — Day of the Soldado. (11).

TOP TEN OF THE LAST NINE YEARS (totally arbitrary, partly whimsical, tethered to the moment): Manchester By The Sea, A Separation, The Social Network, Zero Dark Thirty, Call Me By Your Name, Son of Saul, The Wolf of Wall Street, Leviathan, The Square, Moneyball.

This is a small correction riff, and by no means a big deal. But Borys Kit and Tatiana Siegel‘s 1.30 Hollywood Reporter story about Bryan Singer possibly standing to reap $40 million from Bohemian Rhapsody starts off with a partly misleading sentence:

“Director Bryan Singer is set to earn tens of millions of dollars off the massive success of Bohemian Rhapsody, despite being fired from the movie mid-production and surrounded by controversy.”

The last time I checked “mid-production” referred to “being in the middle of production” or, you know, not at the beginning or end. In fact Singer was fired off Bohemian Rhapsody toward the end of principal photography, or between early and mid-December 2017.

Principal photography had begun in September 2017. There were roughly two weeks of filming left when Singer was canned. Dexter Fletcher shot this final portion in early to mid January 2018.

Singer was therefore not fired “mid-production” but at the tail end of the shoot. No biggie but chronologies matter.

Posted on 1.26.19: