Last February the legendary columnist and author Cynthia Heimel died — here’s my obit. Six days ago Stephen Saban, Heimel’s nocturnal partner-in-crime and droll columnist for the Soho Weekly News and Details in the late ’70s and ’80s, died from pancreatic cancer. I don’t know what my deficiency is, but I only heard today.

Saban and Heimel were major Manhattan scenesters in that overlapping Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan era. They visited every hot Manhattan club, knew everyone, partied’ till the end. I knew and liked Stephen as far as it went; we were always trading notes in Manhattan screening rooms. He moved to Los Angeles sometime in the mid to late ’90s, but he wasn’t at all communicative when I reached out three or four years ago. I tried again after Heimel died…zip. Saban and Heimel were joined at the hip back in the day, but late in life they more or less dropped each other by mutual consent. People can be odd that way.

Details columnist Stephen Saban, Linda Evans in 1985.

Here’s a Saban tribute piece by Michael Musto, excerpted from his 1986 book “Downtown“:

“Stephen Saban, one of the founder/editors of Details and its nightlife columnist as well as a former club doorman, was actually the first to give the downtown scene credibility. (Some say he created the scene so he could write about it.) In 1985, as Details, the monthly New Testament of downtown, grew from a free mailout to a newsstand magazine that reaches over 40,000 readers (grossing in the neighborhood of a million dollars that year), Saban started to reap the rewards of his dedication to 14th Street and below. He became recognized as ‘the Boswell of the night‘ by New York magazine and ‘the Noel Coward of the ‘80s’ by Newsweek. Publicists started returning his calls, though he didn’t always return theirs, and people started recognizing the ‘nobodies’ he insisted on writing about as nobodies worth knowing.

“Saban goes out every night of the week, only rarely awarding himself a night off, which means going to only one or two parties instead of the usual three to five. He’s one of the few predictable facets of New York nightlife — you know that at every major event, no matter what else happens, you’ll find him there, skulking around and observing with a crisp understatement. Saban doesn’t need to make a spectacle of himself; the spectacle is all around him, and his job is to report it, drawing the line only when he feels the information might interfere with his readers’ future fun. Sometimes Saban seems like Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2: besieged by swooning and pleading people cooing his name as he calmly tries to figure his next creative move.

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Greta Gerwig‘s decision to direct a period-piece adaptation of Louisa May Alcott‘s Little Women strikes me as less than fully exciting, mainly because it seems as if too many others have gone down this path.

There was a recent TV adaptation of Little Women — a poorly-reviewed miniseries that debuted last month on PBS, having begun on the BBC last December. A faithful historical costumer, set in Massachusetts and New York between 1868 and 1871.

There’s also a forthcoming present-day indie version with Lea Thompson, opening in late September.

Add to these the Gillian Armstrong, Mervyn LeRoy and George Cukor versions (released in ’94, ’49 and ’33 respectively) and you have a total of five Little Women adaptations.

Gerwig’s version, reportedly to he produced by Sony/Columbia and costarring Emma Stone, Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh and Timothee Chalamet, will be the third recent effort and the sixth overall.

I’d be lying if I said the Gerwig project didn’t deflate me to some extent. A recent draft of her script, dated May 2018, is pure Alcott and pure period.

On one hand I’m presuming that the Lady Bird helmer, at the peak of her powers right now, will do well with the material. Her Little Women will naturally get much more attention and will easily dominate the other three in terms of likely critical respect, theatrical bookings, promotional backing, etc.

Early yesterday I had been given bad info that her version would be contemporary and set in Sacramento a la Lady Bird — another ensemble, a less singular story, broader scope. I liked that concept but it was quickly debunked.

A producer friend said this morning, “Why is Greta making a third version of Little Women on top of the other two?” A couple of HE commenters said the same thing.

You’re a famous, relatively flush industry bisexual, and you figure “why hide it?” So you mention it in an interview…done. Congrats to Tessa Thompson for laying her cards face up. Janelle Monae (who described herself two months ago as pansexual) is Thompson’s significant other…cool. But I’m trying to imagine making any kind of effort to explain my emotional feelings in this regard to a journalist. The scribe in this instance is Porter‘s Jane Mulkerrins. I wouldn’t hide what’s going on if asked, but I certainly wouldn’t share in any kind of detailed, deep-down way. If pressed I would cut my descriptions down to an absolute bare minimum, and even then I’d probably feel funny about it. I’m trying to think of the last time a fairly well-known actor or actress said to a top-tier journalist, “I’ve really flipped for this person and so here’s an attempt to describe how passionately I feel about him/her.”

I reached out yesterday to author and 2001 costar Dan Richter, whom I hadn’t spoken to since profiling him in the L.A. Times “Calendar” section some 26 years ago. I wanted to know if he agreed with my concerns about the yellow-teal Chris Nolan version of 2001 that’s been playing in theatres. Writing from Provincetown, Dan said he hasn’t yet caught it theatrically but he did examine a YouTube comparison video that I sent him. “Nolan’s version seems to have a yellow cast to it,” he noted, “and lacks the cold, clear look of what I recall as the original.”

As I mentioned yesterday, my late father became friendly with Dan in the late ’80s. In July ’92 I visited Dan at his home near Pasadena, and then wrote that piece a couple of weeks later. Dan has written two books — “Moonwatcher’s Memoir” (’02) and “The Dream Is Over” (’12)

Dan Richter as “Moonwatcher” in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Following a limited 6.8 debut, Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor (Focus Features), a beloved doc about Fred Rogers, opened in 654 theatres this weekend, and took in nearly $3 million. As we speak the total gross is $7,488.082. It’ll crest the $10 million mark soon, probably within less than two weeks. Likewise Betsy West and Julie Cohen‘s RBG (Magnolia), their acclaimed doc about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has grossed $11,522,362 after 59 days in theatres.

My iPhone 6Plus wasn’t charging a few weeks ago, so I went to a West Hollywood guy on Melrose. He fiddled with the charging unit…simple. He also said that my blue-plastic charging cord (one of those knock-off types you can buy at CVS and car washes) would eventually be a problem for me, and that I’d be better off with a $19 Apple charging cord. Unfortunately those white cords always crack apart and have to be taped up after three or four weeks of use.

“I hate those white Apple cords,” I told the guy. “They never last and the Apple stores charge about ten times what they’re worth.” The guy nodded and said, “Yeah, I know, but they’re the only kind that seem to give a really good connection.”

A few days ago a Quora guy wrote that “the 16 pins on the iPhone lightning connector are not soldered in place…they’e simply kept in place by the surrounding soft plastic/rubber. This makes it easier for these pins to bend out of place if the cable is twisted more often.”

If Apple would just manufacture a tough cord that works as well as those $19 rubber whiteys but doesn’t crack open, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. I’ve bought pricey non-Apple cords at Apple stores (the kind that are covered with striped threaded insulation) but they always seem to crap out also. I’ve probably bought 30 or 40 charging cords over the last five years.

Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Howard Stern…they’re all saying it or running it up the flagpole: Donald Trump, the worst sociopathic criminal to occupy the White House in the history of this country, stands a decent chance of being re-elected in 2020.

Not because he isn’t a malignant crime boss (that’s quite obvious), but because the left hasn’t generated any kind of strong, clearly articulated alternative in the form of, say, a new Bobby Kennedy or a consistent populist message that connects with the dumbshits. An awareness of Trump’s sociopathic gangsterism is enough for me to vote for someone else, but there’s no sense of progressive spirituality, of any kind of hopeful redemptive energy from the left. Bernie Sanders had his chance and, at 76 but 79 in 2020, is too old. It would be great if the likable, humanistic Joe Biden could run the table and snag the nomination and the White House, but the metaphor of that huge neck wattle will gnaw away at him. He has to become a 21st Century, forward-looking tactician, but he’s mainly about a vibe. In 2006 progressives were talking about Barack Obama. Right now there’s no one in the wings with Obama’s charisma, excitement or sense of promised transformation.

All the left really has right now is “Trump is a monster.” Which he is, of course, but “authentic leftism is populist,” as Camille Paglia says below. “It is based in working-class style, emotion, language, and not the fancy, contorted jargon of the pseudo-leftists of academia.”

That “fancy contorted jargon,” to continue her thought, is also manifested among the politically correct, offense-taking, finger-pointing left that seems much more invested in the mitigation of middle-class Anglo Saxon culture (“white male” is a total epithet these days) and the corresponding levelling of the playing field for the benefit of urban women, multiculturals and LGBTQs. I hate the anti-intellectual, know-nothing voting attitudes of rural bumblefucks but I also understand why they hate shrieking leftists, and unless something happens or someone comes along to bridge the gap between these poles I’m afraid that Trump might win again, God help us. Because the bumblefucks so despise the left, and because they feel their cultural survival — the idea of “serial immortality” or living in through your descendants — is at stake. We need a Bobby Kennedy, but there’s no one out there who appears to fit the paradigm.

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This “signing” scene is one of my favorite moments from Stefano Sollima‘s Sicario: Day of the Soldado. It demonstrates that the film, which is quite violent in some portions, has the character and maturity to downshift when the time is right. Sollima’s narration explains it all.

Two days ago I reported that Warner Home Entertainment’s forthcoming 4K Bluray of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey (streeting on 10.30) will apparently be adopting the yellowish-teal color scheme of Chris Nolan‘s 70mm un-restored “nostalgia” version of this classic 1968 film. The evidence is a WHE trailer for the 4K Bluray that was posted on 6.21.

I’ve been trying to find industry professionals who (a) share my disdain for the Nolan version and (b) might publicly challenge WHE and urge them to not go down this path. My first reach-out was to Leon Vitali, the dedicated keeper of the Kubrick flame who told me two months ago that there’s a distinct difference between the WHE 4K Bluray (i.e., the version that he had been color-timing, I mean) and the Nolan version of the film.

Vitali didn’t begin working for Kubrick until the late ’70s, but he’s presumably familiar with the original 2001 color scheme, having watched and examined many prints and many versions on various formats. Vitali may be making his thoughts known privately, but so far he hasn’t responded to me or to another party who shares my concern.

Today I reached out to Douglas Trumbull, who engineered many of the visual effects for 2001. He would surely have a good memory of how 2001 looked in ’68 and a clear grasp of how it should look today. On top of which Trumbull is a tough guy who’s always spoken his mind.

I’m also in the process of reaching out to Dan Richter, who played “Moonwatcher” in 2001. Dan doesn’t have the technical background, of course, but he was there at the creation and has presumably watched 2001 many times over the decades. My late father knew Dan from AA. I visited him 26 years ago at his home near Pasadena, and then wrote a piece about him for the L.A. Times “Calendar” section. Dan has written two books — “Moonwatcher’s Memoir” (’02) and “The Dream Is Over” (’12)

Somebody with the right kind of history and authority has to man up and say something.

Yesterday morning Deadline‘s Amanda N’Duka reported that Greta Gerwig has written and will direct an adaptation of Louis May Alcott‘s “Little Women“, and that the project will costar Emma Stone, Saoirse Ronan, Meryl Streep (presumably playing the mother or “Marmee” character), British actress Florence Pugh and Timothee Chalamet.

I immediately recoiled at the thought of yet another period adaptation of this tale of the March sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy — on their journey to womanhood.

There have been four adaptations so far. A George Cukor-directed version in 1933 with Katharine Hepburn, a 1949 Mervyn LeRoy version with June Allyson, and then a Gillian Armstrong adaptation released in 1994. In April 2017 a Deadline piece reported that Lea Thompson would star in a modern adaptation of the Alcott book. The Thompson film is finished — the trailer says it’ll open on 9.28.

Then I heard this morning that Gerwig’s version will be contemporary and set in Sacramento a la Lady Bird. (A person who allegedly read coverage of Gerwig’s script passed this along.) That changes everything, I thought. Now I’m into it. Then I was told “nope, that’s wrong” — a friend has a May 2018 draft of Gerwig’s script, and says it’s definitely set in in Concord, Massachusetts between 1868 and 1871, right in line with the Alcott novel. The latter is the correct report — Gerwig’s is a period piece.

The sisters in Alcott’s novel are teenagers, and Marmee is in her 40s. Gerwig’s cast runs the 20something gamut — Ronan is 24, Stone is 29, Pugh and Chalamet are 22. Streep is 69 but would need to attempt to look 50ish, I would think. That or write Streep’s Marmee as a woman who came to motherhood very late in life. That would work in a contemporary context, but not so much for a film set 150 years ago.