Last Tuesday (7.25) I expressed interest in Mike White‘s Brad’s Status (Amazon/Annapurna, 9.15). The trailer suggested it would be a smart, bone-dry father-son comedy about an insecure, middle-aged dad (Ben Stiller) who’s more than a bit haunted by career underachievement and, worse, by the dawning success of his son (20-year-old Austin Abrams).

My first reaction was “aah, this’ll be good and I wanna see it, but is Stiller playing the same kind of anxious, insecure 40ish guy he was in Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young? If so, should he be doing another so soon?”

Well, the trailer misled. Okay, Stiller’s character slightly resembles the vaguely terrified would-be hipster he played in that 2014 Noah Baumbach film, but Brad Sloan, the nonprofit counselor he plays in White’s new film, is a different kind of bird. A Sacramento guy who’s constantly in the grip of suppressed envy and twitches of self-disappointment, but who never descends into foolery or self-mocking caricature. Far from rich and no one’s idea of assured or super-confident, but an honest, moderately mannered fellow who can’t help….well, frowning at the mirror. At times. But doing his best to cover this up.

I saw Brad’s Status last night, and I think it’s really exceptional. It’s basically a smallish dramedy about Brad taking son Troy to Boston to check out some colleges. It begins as another Stiller humiliation piece, but it turns into one of the best mid-level adult dramas of this type in a long, long time, and a truly exceptional (which is to say very wise) generation-gap flick.

I wasn’t expecting that much at first, but about a half-hour in I began to realize that White’s film is a winning meditation about self-worth, self-image, self-assessment, real vs. imagined happiness and empty envy. It’s honest and real and very, very well written. Fleet, subtle, unforced. Fairly complex but evened out by the end.

Brad Sloan is easily Stiller’s best-written role and finest performance since Greenberg, but with a more appealing (if ambiguous) tone. More solemn and self-aware. Not stalled or self-destructive but forlorn and nearly resigned.

Brad’s Status is a character-inspection thing that cuts it right down the middle, on one hand making Stiller’s character seem overly envious or even a bit pathetic, and on the other giving him a certain degree of self-awareness and dignity and grace in the third act. It’s a quiet adult movie in the best sense of that term. It lets you sort it out, choose sides, figure the angles.

If Woody Allen had directed and written this it would be much more on the nose, or it would feel first-drafty. This is easily White’s best script since School of Rock, and his direction is just so. He balances the ingredients just right. I adore the way he doesn’t come down on one side or the other of any given issue or dispute. And I love that White himself is 47, right along with Brad.

Brad’s envy is focused on three college friends who went on to become rich and super-successful — Michael Sheen‘s Craig Fisher (a best-selling author), Luke Wilson‘s Jason Hatfield (a hedge fund guy) and Jemaine Clement‘s Billy Wearsiter (a now-retired playboy).

Without giving too much away there are a couple of payoff scenes in which Wilson and especially Sheen interact with Stiller. One of the brilliant aspects of White’s script is that he doesn’t precisely tell you that this or that guy is a complete dick, or that Stiller is better or worse than either one. He just lets you listen and consider.

And there’s a great score by Mark Mothersbaugh.  And Stiller has an emotional scene during a third-act concert scene that really works, I think. I believed it, at least. I’ve been there, felt that.

And Austin Abrams is really great. He’s a brilliant under-player. I believed his every word and gesture. He looks and half-sounds like Bob Dylan might’ve sounded when he was 20 or 21.

Yes, Brad’s Status is heavily narrated. Voice-over explanations and fill-ins sometimes rub me the wrong way, but this time it works, partly, I suppose, because Stiller’s Brad is a thoughtful ex-journalist who knows how to explain things well, and so his narrative commentary (which is very well phrased) fits right in.

“Hey, Dad…are you having some kind of nervous breakdown or something?”

How do you assess the life, loves and triumphs of Jeanne Moreau in six or seven paragraphs? You don’t. You just type out the highlights, throw in an observation or two and then walk away, frustrated and irked.

I love this quote from a 1.13.01 interview with Alan Riding: “The cliché is that life is a mountain,” she said. “You go up, reach the top and then go down. To me, life is going up until you are burned by flames.” In other words, no retirement, no rest homes…bop until you drop.

It’s not disrespectful to note that Moreau was the first older actress about whom I had erotic fantasies. Past her physical prime but serious in the sack. In my head she was a world-class MILF, long before the term had been invented.

This was entirely due to her brief performance in Bertrand Blier‘s Going Places (’74), in which she played a destitute middle-aged woman, just released from prison, who eats, smokes, hangs out, walks on the beach and makes love with Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere for a couple of days before…well, before committing suicide. (Which I always thought was a cruel and unimaginative way to arrange for her character to exit the narrative.)

I had seen Moreau in Viva Maria (I’m recalling another very hot scene with George Hamilton) before Going Places, but I was inspired by that magnificent Blier flick to search through all her classic performances, and I think it’s entirely fair to say that aside from her mature emotings and world-class chops, Moreau was one of the most openly carnal actresses of her time. In a subtle, understated, sophisticated way, I mean.

I haven’t written about Jeannot Szwarc‘s Somewhere in Time for 13 years, or since the sad passing of Christopher Reeve on 10.10.04. I’ve said before that Reeve gave one of his better performances in it. I’ve never called Somewhere In Time a great or even especially good film, but it did develop a cult following about a decade after it opened, and it has — or more accurately had — one of the most beautifully executed single-shot closing sequences in a romantic film that I’ve ever seen, and one that almost certainly influenced the dream-death finale in James Cameron’s Titanic.

I’m speaking of a longish, ambitiously choreographed, deeply moving tracking shot that’s meant to show the viewer what Reeve’s character, Richard Collier, is experiencing on his passage from life into death. I saw it at a long-lead Manhattan screening of Somewhere in Time 37 years ago, but no one has seen it since. 

That’s because some psychopathic or at the very least criminal-minded Universal exec (or execs) had the sequence cut down and re-edited with dissolves. The version I saw allegedly no longer exists. All that remains today is the abridged version.

The sequence was a single-take extravaganza accomplished with a combination crane and dolly. It happened as Collier is dying on a bed in a Mackinac Island Grand Hotel room. His spirit (i.e., the camera) rises up and above his body, and then turns and floats out the hotel-room window and into a long, brightly-lighted hallway and gradually into the waiting embrace of Collier’s yesteryear lover, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour).

I can’t tell who’s saying “they told me we could find a room here” (Domhnall Gleeson doing an American accent?) but that’s definitely Javier Bardem saying “we thought it was a bed and breakfast.”

I understand why newly installed White House chief of staff John Kelly demanded the firing of communications director Anthony Scaramucci. It was because Kelly regarded Mooch as a Type-A macho brawler and loose cannon who would draw media fire and create all kinds of trouble for the Trump administration. But for all his deplorable views and sickening loyalty to Orange Orangutan, Mooch was nonetheless great copy and a hugely colorful sonuvabitch.

Scaramucci, bless his pugnacious, finger-poking personality, was Joe Pesci‘s Tommy come back to life. And from this specific, limited and very selfish perspective I’m sorry to see him gone after only ten or eleven days.

Tensions are running high in the White House #MiniMooch

Kelly has presumably told President Trump that if he wants him to run things there’s not going to be any more crazy, hair-trigger bullshit and that things will have to settle down and that everyone will have to start behaving like semi-rational adults. Except for Trump, of course.

The N.Y. Times reported this morning that “the decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president, not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.”

The near-simultaneous deaths of Jeanne Moreau, arguably the greatest French screen actress of the 20th Century if not of all time, and Sam Shepard, the laconic, soft-spoken actor, onetime heartthrob and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, were revealed early today.

That’s quite a sock in the jaw for a Monday morning. Hugs and condolences to friends, family, colleagues and fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Two gaping holes in the cultural-legend fabric.

Shepard and Moreau are definite, rock-solid inclusions in the death reel during next February’s Oscar telecast. And I think their passings are enough for today, thank you. Nobody else in the Great Movie Realm is allowed to die for the next 14 hours.

Shepard was 73, an apparent victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease. In his day Shepard was iconic, an epic figure, a playwright, a poet and a chronicler of bitter, fucked-up heartland types with all kinds of shit buried inside. Curse of the Starving Class, True West, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, Fool for Love, etc. I love that he called his last play A Particle of Dread. My life is nothing if not filled with those particles. My bloodstream is filled with them.

Most people know Shepard for his low-key, craggy-mannered, no-bullshit screen performances, particularly during his sexy period from the late ’70s to early ’90s. Days of Heaven (his big breakout), The Right Stuff (Oscar nominated for playing legendary flying ace Chuck Yeager), Crimes of the Heart, Steel Magnolias, Baby Boom, Black Hawk Down, August: Osage County, Bloodline, et. al.

In the ’70s Shepard was a kind of drawling Lancelot of the cool vanguard. He was a total peer and a collaborator with Bob Dylan (he did some writing on the completely deplorable Renaldo and Clara) and especially Patti Smith, with whom he co-authored a minor surrealist play called Cowboy Mouth.

I last spoke to Shepard during a promotional luncheon for Wim Wenders‘ Don’t Come Knocking at the ’05 Cannes Film Festival. During a brief discussion of his plays Shepard reacted somewhat adversely when I mentioned Cowboy Mouth, which was based on his relationship with Smith. “Why’d you mention that one?” he said. “I don’t know…I always liked the title,” I replied. After only one performance Shepard, in which he and Smith more or less played themselves, Shepard blew out of town without explanation.

“How we conduct ourselves around strangers every day — at shops, restaurants, on public transport, in theaters and cinemas, on the street — is a test of the social contract. When we sit down somewhere to watch something, that refines the contract. Someone is about to perform for us. Our job is to drink it in, to experience whatever it is.

“We do that together. We’re no longer in the domestic hive. We’re not at home. We’re out. We’re among others. We actually have to turn off the stuff and distraction of life — our phones, our babble with our buddies — and focus on the astonishing fact of the thing that has been written and is being performed or screened in front of us.

“The cinema and theater are civilizing tests for groups of strangers, and currently we have a collective fail.

“Every rustle, every whisper or word, every kick on the seat, slurp, burp, interruption, ping of a phone, or barging person, is yet another sign of what a selfish, stupid society we have become.

“At this weary point it feels far too late for a return to peace in the stalls. So, instead, from and for those of us who like to go to the theater and cinema to actually watch something, here is the simplest, easiest instruction to follow: Sit down, shut your phones down, shut the hell up, respect the space of others around you, and watch the damn play or film.

“Or do the rest of us a favor — it will be most appreciated — and stay at home.” — from “Please Just Shut the Hell Up at the Theater & the Cinema,” posted by Daily Beast‘s Tim Teeman on 7.29.

If I had written this, I would have ended it thusly: “Or do the rest of us a favor — it will be most appreciated — and stay the fuck home.”

“HELP WANTED: Possible attorney general opening. Must quash Russia investigation into president of the United States. Also, must go after leakers. Willingness to endure criminal prosecution for obstruction of justice a plus.” — from 7.27 HuffPost piece, “Making Obstruction Of Justice Normal Again. Er, Actually, For The First Time,” by S.V. Date.

Christopher Reeve did well by critics when Richard Donner‘s Superman popped in December of ’78. This was partly due to the fact that by late ’70s standards Reeve was quite the hunk. “Reeve’s entire performance is a delight,” wrote Newsweek‘s Joe Morgenstern. “Ridiculously good-looking, with a face as sharp and strong as an ax blade, his bumbling, fumbling Clark Kent and omnipotent Superman are simply two styles of gallantry and innocence.”

What upper-echelon actors in today’s realm are ax-blade handsome in that tall, broad-shouldered, WASP-ian way? Two guys I can think of — Armie Hammer and (when he’s not summoning memories of Ernest Borgnine) Henry Cavill. But that’s about it.

Because ax-blade handsomeness isn’t trusted, much less admired. It’s even despised in certain quarters. Because it’s now synonymous with callow opportunism or to-the-manor-born arrogance. Men regarded as “too” good-looking are presumed to be tainted on some level — perhaps even in league with the one-percenters and up to no good. It’s been this way since Wall Street types and bankers began to go wild in the mid ’80s.

I was thinking this morning about how Reeve and Robin Williams were the best of friends for 30-plus years (they bonded at Juilliard in the early ’70s), and now they’re both dead. And they didn’t go peacefully into that good night either.

After his 1995 horse-riding accident, which turned him into a quadraplegic, Reeve became a kind of never-say-die spiritual hero. There’s no question that his becoming an impassioned stem-cell-research advocate left a more profound impression on the world than his performances ever did. But he was a fine, appealing actor.

Reeve had a ten-year run (’78 to ’88) as a marquee name. Superman launched him; Switching Channels finished him off. His best film performances were in Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere in Time (’80), Sidney Lumet’s Deathtrap (’82) and James Ivory’s The Bostonians.

His best performance ever was in the Broadway stage production of Lanford Wilson’s The Fifth of July, in which he played a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran. It ran in the late summer or fall of 1980. Jeff Daniels and Swoozie Kurtz co-starred.

In these DVD Beaver captures from the Silkwood Bluray, Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher look so young, and they’re not even “young” but around 35. Well, I guess that’s kind of young.

What kind of dork uses the term “aeroplane“? They’re called airplanes or better yet planes, flights or jets. Aeroplane? It’s actually not a dork thing but a British thing. For whatever reason the English are hung up on this spelling, which sounds like it hails from the World War I era if not earlier.

Here’s an oldie-but-goodie about the worst on-the-job mistake of my life. Nothing to do with politics, but I posted it four days after Barack Obama’s election (11.8.08). The incident happened when I was working for a chain-link fence company in Fairfield, Connecticut, when I was in my early 20s. It’s a good story because I wasn’t just “fired” but kicked to the curb for an error of classic proportions. A lulu.

I worked with two other guys for the company. Every day we loaded big coiled-up bundles of chain-link fence and schlepped them around to this and that job site. We would dig several holes, pour cement into each one and then insert metal poles. We would then return to the job a couple of days later to put up the fence, unspooling it yard by yard and fastening each length to the poles with hard metal coils or “ties.”

It was agony moving the chain-link rolls off the flatbed truck and then lifting them up with sheer brawn every time a section had to be unspooled. Especially in the horrid winter with the cold metal freezing your fingers and the tips of the fences making scratches and cuts on your hands every time you manhandled them. My job attitude was half-hearted at best. It was awful, awful work.

I was the guy who would back the truck up and get it into position before the fence rolls were unloaded in front of the poles.

One time we were putting up a fence near a large dirt lot. The road was a couple of hundred feet away from the location of the poles, and for whatever reason it was decided not to park the company’s flatbed truck right next to the poles but up near the road.

In any event it got to be 4:30 pm one day — time to get the truck and bring it back to where the un-mounted fence sections were lying on the ground. The rear of the truck was facing the far side of the road. The obvious plan was to back it into the road and then whip it leftward and drive across the lot.

I started the truck and checked the two rearview mirrors. The coast seemed clear although there was a bit of a blind spot. My coworkers were collecting tools and whatnot, so it was just me and my wits.

The truck was parked on an incline, however, and there was a lot of mud under the tires and I couldn’t get any traction when I hit the gas. So I tried rocking it back and forth — no luck. I then decided to put a couple of pieces of scrap lumber under the rear tires for traction. I again put it in reverse, hit the gas and finally the truck lurched backwards.