It Hurts To Watch This Film

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It hit me yesterday that Josie Rourke, who made her bigtime feature directing debut with Mary, Queen of Scots, has been absent from the Hollywood realm since Mary opened in late ’18. There are reasons for that, of course. One is that people like me were nearly driven to tears by Mary, an overbearing exercise in woke presentism.

“It Hurts To Watch This Film,” posted on 11.16.18: Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots is a slog and a drag — a hard-to-follow, sometimes infuriating attempt to make a 16th Century tale of conflict between willful cousins (the titular, flinty Mary vs. Queen Elizabeth of England) into something relevant to the convulsive culture of 2018.

I found it a slog because I didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone, and because the damp air (which wafted out from the screen) and chilly-looking Scottish exteriors made me want to wrap myself in scarves and sweaters. Why would anyone want to live in Scotland in the first place? It’s all fog and peat and stone castles. I just wanted to build a fire and huddle.

I spent the entire 124-minute running time trying to understand why I hated this film almost immediately. Have you ever walked into a crowded room and decided on the spot that you really don’t care for the vibe of a certain person standing near the punch bowl? It was like that. Within minutes I was seething with irritation. There were several factors, I gradually realized.

I felt alienated by Rourke’s attempt to impose a woke social atmosphere upon 16th Century Scotland and England — by applying a strong women-vs.-sexist pig narrative and going with multicultural casting choices. I’m not saying it’s invalid to adopt this approach (knock yourselves out), but I did find it numbing to sit through.

Early on I was telling myself I need to see Charles Jerrot‘s same-titled 1971 version with Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson. I don’t recall this film at all, but I was muttering to myself that it has to be better than the newbie…it HAS to be.

I resented having to wade through the thick Scottish accents, and realized early on that I’d have to wait for a subtitled screener to understand all of the plot intrigues. It’s one of those historical flicks in which nothing is fully clear until you go to Wikipedia and read the actual histories.

I admired Saoirse Ronan‘s feisty performance as the titular character (she’s always good) but hated the blatant “acting” by the secondary characters. Every actor explicitly conveys how their character is feeling about what’s going on — whether they’re pleased, unhappy, sad, suspicious, unsettled or whatever — and after 15 minutes of this I was ready to scream. Please, assholes…stop “acting”!

I felt especially hostile to James McArdle‘s performance as the Earl of Moray, Mary’s resentful half-brother. My second most despised performance was Jack Lowden‘s as Lord Darnley — he preens, he poses, he goes down on Mary, etc.

Beau Willimon‘s screenplay is overly complex and labyrnthian — I gave up trying to follow all the twists, turns and betrayals, especially toward the end.

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CNN, Acosta Triumph Against Trump

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A Trump-appointed federal judge has ordered the White House to restore the press credentials of Jim Acosta of CNN. Obviously a huge win for journalism in a mano e mano, balls-to-the-wall confrontation with a totalitarian brute. The decision from Judge Timothy J. Kelly may be appealed by Trump lawyers, but they know it’s a losing brief. CNN argued that Acosta’s free speech and due process rights were violated when Trump had his “hard pass’ revoked; Trump attorneys replied that President Cheeto should have the option to bar any White House journalist he chooses (i.e., pisses him off) in order to guard against overly aggressive questioning.

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A24 + Apple

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Yesterday afternoon, as I was slowly making my way through a snow-and-ice storm in Fairfield County, the Wall Street Journal’s Tripp Mickle and Erin Schwartzel reported that Apple is teaming with A24 to make “independent” features. Tweeted by Washington Post entertainment guy Steven Zeitchik: “A24-Apple is about as smart as entertainment partnerships get. Apple just found a fast-track into the prestige-film game, and A24 has another financial backstop in case its hedge-fund backers go cold. Something for everybody.” If and when the Apple-A24 partnership generates an Oscar-worthy film, HE trusts that somebody at Apple will advise engaging with opinionated, longstanding, elite-eyeball sites (i.e., URLs that producers, directors and studio guys actually read) during Oscar season. Just a thought.

Son of Drop-Out Moments

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I experienced a drop-out moment yesterday while watching Mary, Queen of Scots. It was when I realized that Josie Rourke‘s 16th Century epic would be adopting an historically woke, Hamilton-like approach to casting. I never knew, for example, that black dudes had networked their way into the upper chambers of English and Scottish government in the late 1500s. I’d read that Henry Stuart, aka Lord Darnley, was an alcoholic, but I never knew he was bisexual. And I never knew that Elizabeth Hardwick, a friend and confidante of Elizabeth I, was Asian.

I didn’t stop watching Rourke’s film, but I immediately stopped believing in it.

It also depressed me to consider that if I post any kind of objection to a multicultural casting approach, to the idea that militant 21st Century”woke”-ness was just as prevalent in olden times as it is today, that I might pay a certain price. For there are twitter fanatics out there who will suspect me of harboring the wrong kind of objections to such an approach. We are truly living through Orwellian times — an era in which concepts of historical accuracy must always be subordinate to wokeness, and in which William S. Burroughs‘ “brain police” are constantly monitoring the situation.

It was screenwriter William Goldman (Marathon Man, All The President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) who first explained what a “drop-out” moment is — i.e., when something happens in a film that just makes you collapse inside, that makes you surrender interest and faith in the ride that you’re on. You might stay in your seat and watch the film to the end, but you’ve essentially “left” the theatre. The movie had you and then lost you, and it’s not your fault.

Goldman explained in detail how Sofia Coppola‘s Lost in Translation caused him to drop out. He observed that as the film begins, Bill Murray‘s character “has just been in a movie where there is a fabulous vehicle chase, buses destroyed, explosions and, we find out, he did his own driving.” Murray, in short, “is playing a famous action star.

“Look, I started following him over a quarter-century ago, on Saturday Night Live Live and in the movies, from Meatballs on, and maybe in real life he can kick the crap out of Harrison Ford and maybe stripped he has pecs that make Arnold Schwarzenegger look flat-chested — but I do not believe this, not for a New York minute.

“Murray is a comedy star. He’s goofy and he fumbles, and the minute you try and shove this other persona at me, make me think he is the toughest guy on the planet, sorry, I do not go there. And I stopped, from this moment on, believing in this flick. And when belief goes, caring is right behind.”

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Inheritor of Warren Oates-Lee Marvin Mantle

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Look at Benicio del Toro as he chats with BUILD’s Ricky Camilleri — he’s a ’50s beatnik, a Russian revolutionary, a wolfman, a Silicon Valley malcontent. I know Benicio very slightly, and I’ve heard the stories. Deep cat, wicked laugh, hungry poet, a man of appetites. Or, if you will, “the thinking man’s Hollywood badass.”

I was persuaded that Benicio was extra-level 24 years ago. That’s when I first saw him as Kevin Spacey‘s outgoing assistant in George Huang‘s Swimming With Sharks. In January ’95 I saw him in The Usual Suspects at Sundance, enjoyed the hell out of his Fred Fenster riff in that police line-up scene, and the rest was history.

Three personal encounters: (a) In April ’95 I persuaded Benicio (plus Bryan Singer, Elizabeth Shue, Lara Flynn Boyle, Gregg Araki, Don Murphy, et. al.) to pose for a Los Angeles magazine piece about the new neo-noir. Benicio didn’t want to pose with a gun, and I sided with him — I felt his pain. A low-key argument with my editor ensued; (b) A brief “hey” at West L.A.’s Lazer Blazer; (c) I next ran into Benicio at Gare du Nord on 1.1.00 — the day after the big Millennial new year. Standing on the platform with a suitcase, cool as a cucumber….”yo!”

I’ve no argument with Benicio being the new Lee Marvin or Warren Oates. Why have these analogies surfaced? Because critics are hugely impressed with Benicio’s Richard Matt in Ben Stiller‘s Escape at Dannemora (Showtime, 11.18). Me too, although I’ve only seen two episodes’ worth. I’ll be working on the remainder this weekend.

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Frog Cake

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Nobody is more LQTM than myself, but I burst out laughing when I read about an Australian father who’s livid over a local grocery store screwing up a birthday cake for his three-year-old son.

An 11.14 N.Y. Post story by By Lia Eustachewich reports that Shane Hallford “ordered the cake from a Woolworths store in Tamworth, New South Wales, [last] Sunday, three days before his son Mason’s big day. The sheet cake — which cost a whopping $49 — came with a special set of instructions. “I explained to them we wanted a frog theme, as my son loves frogs,” Hallford wrote on Facebook. “They told me it could be done, no worries at all.”

Look at this cake — some doofus actually calculated this would put a smile on some kid’s face. People can be so mediocre, so asinine. If David Lynch were to stage a kid’s birthday party, this is the cake he’d want to use.

Wimp

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Armie Hammer was spot-on when he tweeted a couple of days ago that he was (a) “so touched by all of the celebrities posting pictures of themselves with Stan Lee“, (b) that there’s “no better way to commemorate an absolute legend than putting up a picture of yourself” and (c) “posting a selfie makes his death about you and how cool you felt taking a picture with him.”

For a guy who always seems to say bland things during press junkets and whatnot, I was suddenly impressed by Hammer’s moxie. He was pointing a finger at relentless selfie narcissism, etc. Hear hear!

Then Jeffrey Dean Morgan disagreed and called Hammer an “asshat,” and the 32-year-old costar of On The Basis of Sex totally caved. He said he was wrong for “inadvertently” offending “many who were genuinely grieving the loss of a true icon,” and that he “want[s] to apologize from the bottom of my heart and will be working on my Twitter impulse control.”

No offense, but Hollywood Elsewhere is no longer impressed by Armie Hammer.

Head-Scratcher

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I just finished watching an 11.15 Young Turks report (live just recently) in which Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian were claiming there was and is something sketchy about TMZ’s report about Michael Avenatti being arrested for domestic violence. Avenatti was arrested, but Uygur and Kasparian appeared to be saying that a good part of the story was bogus, and that TMZ’s Harvey Levin, a rightie who’s presumedly in the tank for Donald Trump, had basically pushed an unsubstantiated hit piece on Avenatti and that TMZ’s cred is shot because of this. Kasparian also apologized for passing along the TMZ story yesterday without comment or questions.

I don’t have all the facts but consider the following post by Variety‘s Nate Nikolai, which appeared yesterday afternoon (11.14, 3:30 pm): “TMZ first reported that Avenatti’s estranged wife filed a report with the LAPD after the alleged incident occurred on Tuesday. However, in a statement to BuzzFeed News, attorneys for Avenatti’s estranged wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, contradicted TMZ’s report, asserting that she was not present in Avenatti’s apartment on the date of the alleged incident.

“My client and I have reviewed the TMZ article alleging that my client, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, has been injured and that Michael Avenatti has been arrested as a result of some incident that occurred between them. This article is not true as it pertains to my client,” the statement said. “Ms. Storie-Avenatti was not subject to any such incident on Tuesday night. Further, she was not at Mr. Avenatti’s apartment on the date that this alleged incident occurred. My client states that there has never been domestic violence in her relationship with Michael and that she has never known Michael to be physically violent toward anyone.”

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Except…

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“The thing about TV series that I don’t understand and I think is hard for both of us to get our minds around is, you know, feature films have a beginning, a middle and an end. But open-ended stories have a beginning and a middle…and then they’re beaten to death until they’re exhausted and die. They don’t actually have an end. And thinking about that in the context of a story is rather alien to the way we imagine these things.” — Joel Coen in a chat with L.A. Times‘ Josh Rottenberg.

But limited series don’t beat their stories or characters to death. The Sopranos was never beaten to death. Mad Men didn’t feel beaten to death — to me at least. Joel is mostly referring to series that keep going and going until they can reach that magic syndication figure.

Same Difference

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In Patti Cakes, Danielle Macdonald played an obese New Jersey girl who wanted to make it as a rapper, however unlikely this seemed to some (including her unsupportive mother, who was a lounge singer in her day). In the similar-sounding Dumplin’, McDonald plays an obese Texas girl who decides to compete in a beauty contest, however curious or ill-conceived this seems to some (including her mother, who runs the beauty pageant in question and is played by Jennifer Aniston).

H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Flurries”

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Thursday, 11.15, 1:40 pm — 57th Street and Seventh Ave. It took me a little while to recover from Mary, Queen of Scots. I ducked into a market/food bar joint a few doors down from Carnegie Hall. I scooped up some hot steaming vittles and waited in line to pay.

HE to cashier: “Where’s the cutlery?”
Cashier to HE: “Duh whah?”
HE to cashier: “Forks and spoons?”
Cashier to HE: “Sullabaugh.”
HE to cashier: “What?”
Cashier to HE: “Sullabaugh.”

I walked in the direction of where she was pointing, but I couldn’t imagine what a “sullabaugh” might be. I looked and looked…nothing. I turned and looked back at the cashier, and then caught her eye.

HE to cashier: “I still don’t see any knives and forks!”
Cashier to HE: “Sullabaugh!”

A light went on.

HE to cashier: “Oh, you mean salad bar? Fine, sorry, I’m stupid. Thank you!”