I’m told there were “lots of walk outs” during Monday night’s Red Sparrow premiere at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center. Alice Tully Hall was packed when the film started, less so when the lights came up. One patron overheard while exiting: “Disgusting.” The guy who tipped me says “maybe Russia should have hacked the screenplay.”

All this means, of course, is that older, wealthier folks (younger, poorer types don’t attend posh movie premieres as a rule) are finding Red Sparrow a bit harsh, which was pretty much my reaction.

Jennifer Lawrence before Monday night’s Lincoln Center premiere of Red Sparrow.

From 2.16 HE review: “This is not, to put it mildly, a double-agent film with the finesse and subtlety of, say, Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (’65), which was regarded as a rather cold-hearted piece when it opened a half-century ago.

“The focus on cruelty in Red Sparrow makes that John Le Carre adaptation seem rather mild in this regard. At every turn Sparrow says ‘try a little heartlessness.’

“Red Sparrow is more in the realm of Atomic Blonde, the period (late ’80s) spy film with Charlize Theron, minus the gymnastics. It’s an aggressively sexual thing, I mean, but is mainly about all kinds of physical brutality, including a pair of attempted rapes and two especially savage beating-and-torture scenes that would, in the real world, result in God-knows-how-many-weeks in a hospital.”

Looming Tower (Hulu, 2.28) costars Jeff Daniels and Peter Sarsgaard were asked by Meet The Press‘s Chuck Todd about whether they’d work with Woody Allen again. Allen defenders can repeat the same facts and talking points over and over but “will you work with him again?” has become a meme, which in itself tells you that the Farrows are totally controlling the narrative. Anyway…

Daniels responded creatively by splitting the difference. “It’s a difficult decision because of Purple Rose of Cairo,” Daniels said. “That movie will always be a great experience, a great movie for me, and he will always be a great American filmmaker. I got to work with him at the age of 30, and it changed my life. [That said] I believe Dylan Farrow. Would I do another one with Woody? The difficult decision would be to turn him down.”

Get ready for HE:(plus), a parallel paywall site that will augment Hollywood Elsewhere with extra material and new columns and whatnot. Seriously, no foolin’ — HE Plus will double the dramaquirk-factorangst excitement. Not for me, of course, but hopefully HE readers. It’ll launch sometime in April, certainly before May 1st. I think.

I’m jazzed for the usual starting-a-new-enterprise reasons — it’ll be “fun”, a creative challenge, a dog bark, a splash, an attention-grabber. It’ll be $4.99 mønthly or $49 annually. I could charge less, I suppose, but that would be embarassing. The new material will easily be worth a lousy $1.25 per week…c’mon.

Classic Hollywood Elsewhere isn’t changing or downsizing or anything like that. Everything will stay exactly the same, and for free as always. I’ll continue to bang out four or five riffs, reviews and stories per day, like I’ve been doing since August ’04.

But I’ll also post two fresh articles on HE:(plus) each day plus generate material for some new columns on some kind of biweekly, haphazard, flying-fuck-at-a-rolling-donut basis.

I’m contemplating a biographical column called MISERABLE WANDERER Over Half The Globe (i.e., all the stuff I’d write about if I were to sit down and write a proper autobiography, which of course I’ll never do because of HE🙁plus). A Bluray/streaming column called DYING ART FORM. A relationship column called YOU BROKE MY HEART, a kind of bluesy, world-weary, suburban angst-meets-Miss Lonelyhearts type deal. And TALK’S CHEAP, a forum for HE podcasts. Maybe I’ll implement all of these or junk half of them or whatever. I’ll play it by ear as I go along.

HE’s own Jordan Ruimy will generate a new column, which we’ve tentatively agreed will be titled RUIMY WITH A VIEW. Partly reviews, partly trends or commentary, partly undisciplined musings and incomplete notions…whatever pops out.

A Manhattan-based guy is thinking about tapping out an anonymous smartass-potshot column.

HE’s Svetlana Cvetko has suggested a section that would throw a spotlight on the most promising X–factor female directors currently pitching something or prepping a feature or currently showing a short on the festival circuit or whatever. (I know I’m supposed to avoid “female” but “woman” isn’t an adjective.)

And finally I’m thinking about a new Reddit-like, scattershot column called (a) IL FORO ROMANO or (b) HOLLYWOOD WELTSCHMERZ or maybe something else. It’ll be a kind of HE community bulletin board thing, and will be partly written or “fed” by any trusted friend and/or semi-professional acquaintance of Hollywood Elsewhere who has anything to say. I’ll allow these trustees to post directly without my input. They can post any damn thing as long as it’s not absurd or vulgar or pro-Trumpy or rancid or old-farty, and is reasonably well composed. If they spill ketchup on the tablecloth, they’ll be terminated…simple as that.

I’ve wanted to own a James Dean Rebel Without A Cause jacket all my life. My problem has been with the big collar. I don’t wear shirts with standard-issue collars — only banded collars (i.e., no collar at all). And I’ve said all along that I won’t wear a Dean jacket unless it has a similar thing going. Like the one below, a Labretta bomber jacket being sold out of England.

Has anyone ever owned one, and if so worn it with jeans and boots and a white T-shirt? Did you feel like you were wearing a Santa Claus outfit? Did anyone make a joke at your expense?

From HE’s own Jordan Ruimy: “I feel like we have to somehow reinvent the idea of art itself. I’d say more than half of criticism now rates movies, TV and books on whether they properly cheerlead for women, gays, blacks, etc. or whether they’re ‘problematic’ for failing to do so in some way. That is really all cultural criticism is now.”

He’s saying (and I agree with this) that film criticism has become a “pass or fail” decision about whether a film in question says the right thing or the wrong thing according to the comintern and the Twitter commentariat.

An example of a strong “pass” came nearly a year ago from Esquire critic Steven Thrasher, a reverent worshipper of Jordan Peele’s film if there ever was one.

Sample quote: “Peele doesn’t allow white liberals to view the theft of black bodies in a faraway frame of an Antebellum Southern plantation, nor to blame crude Trump supporters. Instead, Get Out blames the theft on contemporary, Northern white Obamaniacs. American liberalism, not just Trumpism, continues to make race by way of bodily theft.”

Really? This on top of “a film for the ages“? You have to hand it to Universal’s marketing team — they’re shameless, really going for broke.

Obits for famous people are often written in advance, and you know that somewhere in the first two or three paragraphs of Warren Beatty‘s obit-in-waiting there’s a mention of The Great LaLa Land vs. Moonlight Oscar Envelope Screw-Up.

Nominated for 14 Academy Awards and winner of a Best Director Oscar for Reds. The co-auteur of Bonnie and Clyde and Bugsy, and the ruling creative force behind Shampoo, Bulworth, Dick Tracy and Heaven Can Wait. Teen heartthrob star of the early ’60s after his Splendor in the Grass debut. One of the greatest nookie kings in the history of Western Civilization. And — history will never forget — the guy who didn’t know quite what to do when he opened a Best Picture winner envelope that said “Emma Stone, LaLa Land,” and so he handed it to co-presenter Faye Dunaway.

The snafu wasn’t Beatty’s fault, of course, but in the hazy fog of public memory he’ll never be able to fully rid himself of this world-class embarassment. Fairly or unfairly he’s stuck with it. Ditto Dunaway, Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel and the infamous Brian Cullinan, the Price Waterhouse guy who gave Beatty the wrong envelope and will forever be wearing a scarlet tattoo (“T” for tweeter) on his forehead.

I’m recalling all this because of Scott Feinberg‘s “‘They Got the Wrong Envelope!’: The Oral History of Oscar’s Epic Best Picture Fiasco,” which appeared on the HollywoodReporter‘s site on 2.26 and is part of the 2.28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Great reading, an epic saga, a “howtheydunnit” page-turner.

The piece represents only about 1/5 of what Feinberg gathered together with all the interviews and whatnot. It took him “months.” The initial draft was 31,000 words, and “a lot of juicy stuff” didn’t make the cut, I’m told. I see a book in this — maybe a 50,000 word coffee-table book with all kinds of great photos and sidebars and whatnot. Hell, it would make a great documentary — think of it!

Out of 26 Gold Derby “experts”, eight (8) are betting on The Shape of Water winning the Best Picture Oscar — Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, EW‘s Sara Wilkommerson, Susan Wloszczyna, Jack Matthews, Andrea Mandell, Gold Derby‘s Joyce Eng, Variety‘s Tim Gray and Rotten Tomatoes‘ Grae Drake.

There are currently eleven (11) Three Billboards believers, which reflects the fact that Martin McDonagh‘s small-town drama has been gathering momentum over the past couple of weeks and especially since the BAFTAs — myself, Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Michael Musto, GD honcho Tom O’Neill, Bonnie Fuller, Fox’s Tariq Kahn, ESPN’s Adnan Virk, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers, USA Today‘s Brian Truitt and GD’s Thelma Adams.

And there are five (5) Get Out die-hards — The Tracking Board‘s Ed Douglas, Vanity Fair‘s Michael Hogan, Yahoo‘s Kevin Polowy, Fandango‘s Erik Davis and HuffPo‘s Matthew Jacobs.

All hail the character, backbone and general indifference-to-consensus of EW‘s Christopher Rosen, who is standing by Lady Bird. Of the four leading GD contenders, Greta Gerwig‘s period drama is far and away my favorite as well as the best.

In Ramin Bahrani‘s 99 Homes, Michael Shannon played a foreclosure shark who was showing financially struggling Andrew Garfield the ropes of the Florida real-estate game. You knew Garfield would rebel against Shannon’s cynicism at the end because that’s what guys do in films like this — they stand up and cleanse their souls at the end of Act Three. Bahrani’s Fahrenheit 451, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel about a dystopian society that burns books, feels like the same basic dynamic — Shannon the hardened cynic explaining the logistics and necessity of book-burning to the naive Michael B. Jordan. Costarring Sofia Boutella, Martin Donovan, Laura Harrier, Keir Dullea. The HBO pic pops sometime in the spring.

I’m sorry to report that the great Cynthia Heimel, a wise and once-scalpel-wielding New York columnist (“Problem Lady”), satiric women’s-market author (“Sex Tips For Girls,” “If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?,” “Advanced Sex Tips for Girls: This Time It’s Personal“) and legendary party girl, is gone. She died yesterday. Hugs and condolences to friends, family (i.e., her son Brodie), colleagues, fans.

Heimel and “Details” columnist Stephen Saban were major Manhattan scenesters and Soho Weekly News chroniclers in the late ’70s and ’80s. They visited every hot Manhattan club, knew everyone, partied’ till the wee hours. I knew Cynthia a bit starting in ’81 or thereabouts, although she was way above my journalistic station back then. We actually went out a couple of times, if you wanna know. She lived in the Chelsea district (18th or 19th near 8th) when I was living on West 4th and then 81 Bank Street. Then we went our separate ways.

Then we re-friended in ’15 and ’16 when she moved to a modest home in Inglewood. I can’t honestly describe Cynthia as a happy-camper type when we started to chat back then. We went to a screening of Spotlight in…I forget, November of ’15 or thereabouts. We went on a couple of shopping and medical-clinic errands. (She wasn’t radiantly healthy.) We watched a couple of films and had dinner at her place once. She had a friendly dog who was part husky. We kind of piddled along for a while, then we drifted apart again.

Cynthia and I had a mutual friend in legendary film critic Andy Klein. Andy, Cynthia and I chatted back and forth and hung a couple of times in ’16, I think. We definitely shared a dinner a couple of years ago (March or April of ’16) in Santa Monica. 6 pm update: I called Klein this morning after hearing of Cynthia’s demise — he called back around 20 minutes ago. I also wrote Saban, who lives in Echo Park and is doing okay, I’ve read. He hasn’t replied.

One time in the spring of ’16 Cynthia stopped responding to my messages. After a couple of days I asked Klein if she was alive and well. “I’ve spoken to her both last night and the night before, so I can attest that she’s okay,” he replied. “Depression has stifled her social interactions. I mean, I’m depressed but she’s DEPRESSED.”

“Very sorry, very sad,” I wrote on Facebook. “I was a huge fan of Cynthia’s back in the day. A sassy-sexy Dorothy Parker-level columnist and author, at least in my estimation. An excellent writer, quite the wit, didn’t miss a trick. She was very highly renowned in the late Carter, Reagan, Poppy and Clinton eras. Things started to downshift after she lost her monthly column for Playboy in ’00.”

On top of everything else Cynthia was a mensch. She was often gloomy but once you had her attention you could trust her judgment, and when she needed a favor I always came through.

Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, Stacey Wilson Hunt and Chris Lee have posted a piece about the views and attitudes of the Academy’s new voters, all of whom were invited to join the Academy over the last two years and who constitute roughly 17% or 18% of the present membership. Of the 14 members interviewed, more than half were women and more than a third were people of color.

By all means read the piece, but I for one found it surprising if not shocking that the biggest concerns of the New Academy Kidz appear to be representation, representation and….uhhm, oh, yes…representation.

In other words, after reading the article I wasn’t persuaded that these guys are greatly concerned with the idea of honoring great cinema according to standards that have been accepted for many decades. Tastes have changed but regard for cinema art never faltered. Until now, that is.

If these 14 Academy members were to sit down for a round-table discussion with the ghosts of James Agee, Ernst Lubitsch, Katharine Hepburn, Pauline Kael, Samuel Fuller, Ida Lupino, Irving Thalberg, Luis Bunuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Marlon Brando, F. W. Murnau, Andrew Sarris and Marlene Dietrich, I don’t think there’d be any kind of meeting of the minds. Or not much of one.

I mainly got the idea that the New Academy Kidz are heavily invested in (a) inter-industry politics, (b) a mission of bringing about long-overdue change and the necessity of advancing diverse representation as well as the concerns of women in all branches of the film industry, and (c) hoping to weaken or otherwise diminish the power of the old white fuddy-dud boomers.

“The bulk of the new voters we surveyed were generally pleased with this year’s Oscar nominations,” the Vulture guys have written, “and many detected a clear delineation between traditional Academy picks and the sort of fare their freshman class was more inclined to go for.

“’With Get Out, Lady Bird and even Call Me by Your Name, you’re feeling the younger demographic,” said a new member of the directors branch. “Then you have The Post and Darkest Hour, which definitely represents the older half of the Academy.”

HE insertion: Wait…”even” Call Me By Your Name? Fuck does that mean? That Luca Guadagnino’s film isn’t outsiderish or P.O.C. enough? Or that it feels a bit too mainstream or something?

As a former employee of Kevin Smith (salaried columnist from ’02 to August ’04) and a longtime admirer of his films and his patter, I’m personally relieved and overjoyed that he escaped the Big Sleep last night after succumbing to a “massive” heart attack. That Instagram photo he released last night looks like a signature image from an alternate-universe version of Get Out — the only thing missing is a tear running down his cheek.

As a lifelong loather of almost all things Christian (mainly due to the rightwing political associations that have clung to this arrogant faith since the political takeover in the early ’80s), I naturally recoiled when I read those “praying for you, brah” tweets by Chris Pratt. The 38 year-old actor has acquired a rep as an allegedly conservative-minded fellow, so the shoe seemed to fit. I therefore understand or half-sympathize why Pratt was attacked for trying to go all Christian-smothery on Smith.

On the other hand the response from Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn struck me as sensible:

“So I just read Pratt’s tweet to Kevin Smith saying he would pray for him & made the mistake of reading the comments, many of which go off on Chris for saying he’d pray. If you’re offering Parkland shooting survivors prayers, but are unwilling to deal with the problems of gun violence in this country in a practical way, those prayers are empty. But no one expects Chris Pratt to shoulder doctors out of the way and perform heart surgery on Kevin Smith. Nor does Kevin need Chris to pay his medical bills. So I think his prayers are appreciated, and about all he can do.”

Yesterday on Facebook HE’s own Jordan Ruimy again predicted that Jordan Peele‘s Get Out will win the Best Picture Oscar. Then he doubled-down on Twitter this morning.

What he means is that Get Out, a half creepy, half satiric, racially-stamped Stepford Wives, will slipslide into a win because a huge number of Academy members have it down as their #2 or #3 choice, and that the “kooky” preferential ballot will do the rest.

Hollywood Elsewhere says no way. I’m not even sure that Get Out will win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, which will most likely be won by Three Billboards‘ Martin McDonagh. It might win in this category, but forget Best Picture — the apparent momentum of the last week has all been with Three Billboards with everyone assuming that The Shape of Water‘s Guillermo del Toro will take Best Director.

I’ll say this much: One thing favoring Get Out is that the people who love it really love it, while the Three Billboards and Shape of Water crowd is more composed of likers and accomodationists.

HE arguments & agreements with Facebook comments:

“That would be great but I doubt it” — Alex Conn. HE: “What exactly would be ‘great’ about Get Out winning Best Picture? Great in what way? And how likely is this? A clever, financially successful genre film that says upscale liberal whites are just as odious as Charlottesville racists — who in AcademyLand really believes that?”

“It’s a good movie but not Oscar-worthy. The academy will give it the old ‘good effort, good try’ treatment come Oscar time. My money is on Three Billboards.” — Trexis Griffin. HE to Griffin: “But that’s the new thing — a significant portion of the new membership does consider genre fare like Get Out to be Oscar-worthy.”

“Nah. Too genre for Oscar. This one screams Best Original Screenplay.” — Tim Fuglei. HE comment: And possibly not even that.

“Jordan, will you eat a bug if wrong?” — Jay Smith. HE to Ruimy: Seriously — what act of contrition will you actually perform if you’re wrong?

“It’s Get Out or Three Billboards. There are good and bad reasons for both. Three Billboards is actor-driven and actors dominate [in the voting]. Get Out could win, but you have to wonder how the BAFTAs had the option of choosing it to win Best Picture but went with Three Billboards for both Best Picture and Best British film? Between that and having no SAG ensemble nom is why I am not predicting Get Out to win, but it is one of three that could. I have no idea what will win.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.