Originally posted on 11.26.11: Speaking of miserable, I was at one of my lowest ebbs in the late summer or early fall of ’78. I was living in a roach-infested Soho tenement on Sullivan Street and writing reviews for free, pitching freelance articles to people who thought I was marginally competent as a writer (if that), working at restaurants as a host for chump change, barely able to pay the rent at times, borrowing money from my father when it got really awful, occasionally taking a train to Connecticut to work as a tree surgeon on the weekends. Swamped by feelings of powerlessness, futility, despair.
But one fairly warm day I was walking near West Broadway and Prince and noticed some people clustered in front of an art gallery with generator trucks and cables leading upstairs. So without asking questions or making eye contact with anyone I walked right in and bounded up the staircase. Upstairs was a large, high-ceilinged space with many people milling about. A casual vibe. Nobody said “excuse me, can I help you?” I just walked over to craft services like I was part of the crew and helped myself to an apple and a cup of coffee. I figured I’d spot a recognizable someone — a director, an actor — and figure out what the “show” was.
And then I walked into the main gallery room and there, sitting in a canvas chair and reading something intently, was young Woody Allen. He was being left alone, nobody hovering. Glasses, dark brownish-red hair, green-plaid flannel shirt…and sitting absolutely still, like a Duane Hanson sculpture. He might have had a bit of makeup on, or so I recall.
But it was Woody, all right, and right away I said to myself, “I’m gonna get busted if I stand here and just stare at him.” So I walked around a bit more with a guarded expression and then went downstairs and asked somebody what the movie was called. “It’s a Woody Allen film….that’s all I know,” some guy said.
I’m not sure anyone knew the title at the time, but the following April, or about seven or eight months later, the movie opened with one — Manhattan.
My emotional and financial states were so precarious and I was so close to depression at the time of the Allen sighting that just glimpsing him sitting there gave me a real lift. For a minute or two I was part of a very elite and highly charged environment, if only as a secret visitor, and I felt good about myself for momentarily slipping inside and smelling the air of that set. The experience lasted for maybe three minutes, tops, but I’ve never forgotten it.
I was still living on Sullivan, still eeking out a living when Manhattan opened on 4.25.79. I knew relatively few people in the film-journo world, and some of the older ones I was vaguely acquainted with regarded me askance. I was working at restaurants to make ends meet and enjoying damn little comfort. And one of the reasons I loved every minute of Manhattan is that it provided a great fantasy trip into the kind of New York world I wanted to know and live in, but couldn’t afford.
Of course it was a smart Woody Allen uptown dream movie. Of course it bore little relation to the city I was confined to, or to the one that I imagined most New Yorkers knew. I wished time and again that year that I could live in a world that was at least akin to Manhattan‘s — cultured, clever, moneyed and buffed by Gordon Willis in black and white and a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The fakery was what everyone found so delightful about the film. Because it was very sharp and sophisticated and nicely burnished.
Life can be so miserable when you’re poor, especially when you’re unsure of your creative or professional abilities.
As noted yesterday, N.Y. Times film critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have authored a sprawling essay titled “The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far)“. The piece, I wrote, is “mainly an opportunity for Tony and Manohla to demonstrate how profoundly aroused and motivated they are by the woke political winds that are currently blowing through urban culture.”
They apparently picked their faves from a woke checklist perspective…much attention paid to women and a lot less to white males (and no gay ones)…mostly a multi-cultural celebration, many shades and ethnicities (including two Koreans) plus extra-special special tributes to Keanu Reeves and Melissa McCarthy. But no love for Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Casey Affleck, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and many others.
Friendo: “Even if America were 40% white (or 85%, or 20%), we shouldn’t be rating artistic achievement based on gender and skin color. It makes sense to do that for college admissions, but not for arts criticism. ‘You gave the best performance of the year…because you’re Chinese!'”
Hillbilly Elegy director Ron Howard has endorsed a Ben Shapiro tweet that says the film has been trashed primarily for political-cultural reasons. That’s largely true, but I also believe that Amy Adams‘ performance as J.D. Vance‘s drug-addicted, drama-queen mom is a tough element to hang with. It’s been on Netflix for over two weeks now — what’s the general verdict of the HE commentariat?
N.Y. Times film critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have authored a piece titled “The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far)“. My immediate impression was that it’s mainly an opportunity for Tony and Manohla to demonstrate how profoundly aroused and motivated they are by the woke political winds that are currently blowing through urban culture.
Leaving aside the half-smirking inclusion of Keanu Reeves and Melissa McCarthy, neither of whom are regarded as even semi-major actors by anyone (even though both are respected**), Tony and Manohla apparently picked their faves from a woke checklist perspective. A couple of seasoned critics making an honest effort to be as inclusive as possible or a pair of eloquent gladhanders sucking up to the p.c. vanguard?
Tony and Manohla kept their white cisgender male honorees down to four (five if you count Reeves). They named 12 women if you count McCarthy. They selected two South Korean actors and one from China. (Friendo: “Two Korean actors? You’d almost think this list was drawn up by LAFCA!”) They saluted four African American actors, but in the case of Mahershala Ali were careful to thoroughly trash Green Book. And they love the over-exposed Nicole Kidman, who’s listed fifth from the top. They included Wes Studi, a seasoned Native American whose coolest performance was in Michael Mann‘s Heat. And three with south-of-the-border origins — Oscar Isaac, Gael Garcia Bernal and Sonia Braga.
The honorees, in this order, are Denzel Washington, Isabelle Huppert, Daniel Day Lewis, Keanu Reeves, Nicole Kidman, Song Kang Ho, Toni Servillo, Zhao Tao, Viola Davis, Saoirse Ronan, Julianne Moore, Joaquin Phoenix, Tilda Swinton, Oscar Isaac, Michael B. Jordan, Kim Min-hee, Alfred Woodard, Willem Dafoe, Wes Studi, Rob Morgan, Catherine Deneuve, Melissa McCarthy, Mahershala Ali, Sonia Braga and Gael Garcia Bernal.
I seriously love the way Scott goes through pretzel contortions to praise Ali while hating on Green Book — i.e., “Mahershala was great despite Green Book being a piece of shit,” he basically says. Wrong — Mahershala’s Best Actor Oscar and GreenBook’s Best Picture win happened for the same reason — carefully applied, just-right burnishings of an emotionally poignant period piece.
Tony and Manohla definitely dropped the ball by ignoring Leonardo DiCaprio‘s 21st Century output, if only for his wowser-mythical Wolf of Wall Street performance. Not to mention his work in The Revenant and The Departed.
And what about Meryl Streep, for God’s sake? Her greatest 21st Century performances would minimally include seven — Adaptation, A Prairie Home Companion, The Devil Wears Prada, Doubt, The Iron Lady, August: Osage County and The Post…how could they have possibly blown her off?
Ditto Phillip Seymour Hoffman in all the well-buffed films he made this century…Almost Famous, The 25th Hour, Capote, Charlie Wilson’s War, Doubt, Moneyball, The Master, A Most Wanted Man. A friend says that PSH “seems to have been left off by dint of being dead, as apparently they limited the pool of candidates to living actors.” HE response: That’s not fair, is it? PSH was on the planet for the first 13 years of this century (or roughly two-thirds of the first two decades) so why should he be dismissed because he’s gone? Quality, not quantity…right?
Casey Affleck‘s Oscar-winning performance in Manchester By The Sea…this alone plus his fascinating turns in Gone Baby Gone, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Out of the Furnace and The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford earn him a place on this list. Oh, wait, sorry, I forgot…Casey was accused of boorish sexual behavior by a couple of female coworkers (resulting in a cash payout), which necessitates a #MeToo penalty.
And what about Adrien Brody‘s emotionally devastating, less-is-more performance in The Pianist? Naaah…Roman Polanski‘s regarded as a bad person so that cancels out Adrien.
Critic friendo: “You see what happened, right? White men relegated to the sidelines (in an ‘Oooohhh, take that!’ way). And what about Brad Pitt?
“[The list is] presented as a mixed international bag, but it’s clearly conceived to be almost exclusively women and POC. It’s a game, a stunt, a woke conceit. It’s so patronizing: They’re handing out fake trophies to the ‘disenfranchised,’ and want a pat on the back for doing so. What could be more…white?”
** McCarthy is especially admired for CanYouEverForgiveMe?
There’s no disputing that Glenn Close‘s snippy and snarly performance as “Mamaw” in Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix, 11.11) will snag a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. It’ll happen. Definitely. And for three reasons.
One, because the conviction she brings to her character, the brillo-haired grandmother of main protagonist J.D. Vance — the real-life author of the 2016 book that the film is based upon, and who’s played as a young adult by Gabriel Basso and as a pudgy teenager by Owen Asztalos — feels raw and real.
Two, because “Mamaw” is pretty much the hero of the film — the blunt-spoken, tough-love butch boss who saves Vance from the horrific influence of his angry, drug-dependent mom (Amy Adams).
And three, because Close is now oh-for-seven in terms of Oscar wins (her first nomination happened 37 years ago for her Jenny performance in The World According to Garp), and everyone knows this narrative can’t be left hanging in the air.
As for the film itself, well…it’s well-crafted. And earnest. It has some good portions, some decent currents. If you’re fair-minded enough to ease up and cut it a little slack, you could give Hillbilly Elegy a passing grade. I certainly didn’t come away from it saying, “well, that stunk!” I came away saying “okay, it may not be a personal top-tenner, but it is what it is and does what it sets out to do.”
Several weeks ago I began hearing that Hillbilly Elegy was a problem, but when I finally saw it I couldn’t help but say “okay, it has issues and Adams’ downswirling mom is a terrible person to hang with, but the story is the story — how J.D. escaped from Southern Ohio and learned to walk his own path despite a dysfunctional family upbringing and dispiriting cultural influences…so at the end of the day it’s not that bad, or not by my standards.”
The other day I called it a “familiar-feeling people movie” — a personal-struggle thing that lets the audience know right away that things will work out for poor J.D. How do we know this? Because of Hans Zimmer and David Fleming‘s score. It tells you “this movie is going to behave in a certain way…it’s going to observe certain boundaries and deliver certain emotional satisfactions.” And that it does.
Said satisfactions are also rooted in the mellowish story-telling instincts of director Ron Howard. His films have always had a considerate, carefully measured quality. Despite the Hammer horror current generated by Adams’ Beverly Vance character (which drives and occupies most of the narrative) Hillbilly Elegy ends up in a place of assurance and stability.
I can’t think of anything more to say, to be honest. I’ll add to this if something comes to mind.
The vast majority of reasonable, fair-minded, non-psychotic humans out there understand that Donald Trump is a dangerous sociopath and a would-be totalitarian dictator who doesn’t give a damn for electoral fairness and Democratic procedure. But a significant portion of them, certainly those from the Great American Rural Region, voted for him anyway because they hate obnoxious progressives more than life itself.
They would rather live hand-to-mouth in a grubby trailer park than live under “socialism”, ridiculous as that equation may sound. Or to submit to the very real tyranny of cancel culture. They would rather tell “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo how much they despise her “anti-racism” message than vote for a better way of life in terms of wages, health care, affordable housing and fighting corporations. They would rather entertain a fantasy of jailing or at least baton-ing or fire-hosing the “Defund The Police” crowd…the BLM looters, Portland window smashers, store burners and the like rather than vote to incrementally better their own lives.
They hate you, wokesters…almost everyone does. It’s my honest belief that if not for your scintillating contributions to the national conversation over the last three or four years, Joe Biden would have probably won in a near-landslide last night.
You know how most wokesters are responding this morning? They’re shaking their heads and saying “wow, those toxic white rural racists just don’t get it, do they? Well, I guess we’re going to have to protest and condemn all the more until they wake up.”
10:55 pm [posted by a smart guy named Mike Vatis]: “Just a reminder for people losing their minds right now. Biden was not really expected to win, and does not need to win, Texas, Florida, Georgia or North Carolina. A landslide win by Biden that included some of those states would have been wonderful, a clear renunciation of Trumpism. But the greater likelihood has always been that the race would come down to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — again.
“Plus we’ve known for a long time now that the early vote counts (i.e., the ones you’re seeing now) in Michigan and Pennsylvania would comprise election-day votes, which would favor Trump, as many Democrats voted by mail or voted early, and those votes are tallied later. And we’ve also known that, because of the way different votes are counted in these key states, Trump’s strategy has been to (a) declare victory tonight or tomorrow morning based on the early vote counts, and (b) use the courts (and public disturbances) to stop the counting of any mail-in votes after tonight.
“DON’T PLAY INTO HIS STRATEGY BY WETTING YOUR PANTS, PEOPLE!
“All the votes must be counted, period. We won’t know the results for several days. That has always been the likely scenario, and that is what everyone should have been preparing for. Don’t let dashed hopes of a resounding early victory for Biden now drive you into Trump’s trap of believing that Trump somehow won.
“Also: Biden has an alternative path — if he does not win Pennsyltucky, but takes Wisco and Michigan, he can still get to 270 if he takes Arizona and the single electoral vote accorded to the Omaha congressional district. That alternative path is still very much alive, too. So there may still be some very good news tonight out of Arizona and Omaha. And there may be some very good news out of Wisconsin early tomorrow morning (once Milwaukee county votes are tallied). But Michigan and, especially, Pennsylvania, will take more time. So be patient, and don’t do Trump’s work for him.”
10:45 pm: A recent 538 poll (posted on 11.2) had Demicratic challenger Sarah Gideon leading Republican incumbent Susan Collins in the Maine Senatorial race. The latest AP tally of today’s Maine vote has Gideon well behind Collins. In short, the 538 poll bore very little relation to what was in the minds of Maine voters.
9:55 pm: Anyone who claims he/she knew that the Biden vs. Trump vote would come down to a cliffhanger is lying. Two or three (including Joe Biden) predicted it would be closer than expected, but almost everyone believed that a decisive Biden victory was in the cards. Some were predicting a possible landslide.
What’s unfolding may well turn into a variation of Bush vs. Gore. Who knows? But what a mess, what a shocker. And there’s definitely something wrong with the polling industry. It’s infuriating that they got it so wrong.
9:10 pm: James Carville to MSNBC viewers — “Come down off the ledge, put away the razor blades and the Ambien….hang in there, we’re gonna be fine. The [final] count is gonna be good for Biden. I don’t mind putting the champagne on ice. I’ve waited four years for this…I don’t mind waiting another four days.”
As of right now (9:20 pm) Biden has 213 electoral votes vs. 136 for Trump. It’s all going to come down to the final tallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona — a good portion of the remaining votes being mail-ins.
7:50 pm: The tight numbers are horrifying. I’m going through an out-of-body experience. I feel like mybrainismelting. I’m blaming the pandemic for his horrible evening, because we’re mainly talking about “live” voting and that means mostly Republican votes since righties don’t get Covid.
So yes, mail-in ballots could save Biden-Harris, but their stunning under-performance is mainly due to purported associations between Biden-Harris and hardcore p.c. lefty messaging….wokesters, cancel culture, looters, p.c. fanatics, Critical Race Theory, p.c. hatred of cisgender white guys, “Defund The Police” insteadof “Re–ThinkThePolice“, Robin DiAngelo‘s “White Fragility”, the Portland and Seattle marauders, the BLM ers and the Rosanna Arquette metaphor.
Yes, I know — there’s no rational reason to believe there’s strong linkage between the agendas of Joe Biden and odious wokesters, but how else to explain what’s happening?
You can’t tell me anyone gives a damn about Hunter Biden‘s laptop. Are older white cisgender male voters (including Cuban-Americans) afraid of Kamala Harris being President, considering Biden’s advanced age? I believe it has to be the wokester factor. Two years ago an Atlantic article reported that a vast majority of Americans hate cancel culture. Tonight they registered their displeasure, or so I strongly suspect.
Yes, Virginia…the woke left may (I say “may”) have pulledofftheseeminglyimpossible — i.e., getting a compulsively lying, incompetent, sociopathic brute re-elected President of the United States. Maybe. Rank evil may actually triumph again. Trump supporters are voting for a form of socialsuicide and climatedestruction They actually voted to support recklessness, incompetency and stinking-to-high-heaven corruption.
If I was a pollster I would be thinking about ways to obscure or camoflauge my appearance…fake noses, fake beards, fat suits, Woody Allen-styled fishing hats. Mobs with clubs and ax handles will be out looking for them on Wednesday morning, and I wouldn’t altogether blame them.
All along the argument against Trump has been irrefutable, but somehow the radical left has managed to weaken or dilute the argument for Biden, which is ridiculous given that he’s never been and never will be in any kind of wokester pocket. He’s a sensible, practical old-school center-lefty.
I can’t believe this is happening. I’m almost having trouble breathing. This could still come down to mail-in ballots…right? Plus all the predictions about Democrats ending up flipping the Senate in their favor…even that isn’t happening. Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins have been re-elected! Good effing God!
6:55 pm: I don’t like all these close races. Same day voting is favoring Trumo; mail-ins will mostly help Biden. There are nonetheless millions of voters out there who are flat-out loose-screw nihilists…they want to give an incompetent, lying criminal another four years, if only to spite the wokesters.
North Carolina numbers are driving me crazy. Trump has taken the lead in Ohio. Once the Pennsylvania mail-in ballots are counted (probably by Friday), it’ll be okay. I’m nonetheless nervous, anxious, biting my nails. And I’m feeling really angry at the pollsters. I want to literally punch them out.
Friendo: “The polls are off like they were in 2016. There should be a total overhaul of the polling formula. I hope to God this doesn’t extend for weeks and weeks. There’d better not be recounts.” Journo pally: “I’m feeling some 2016 deja vu.”
5:25 pm: A mere Biden victory will not be emotionally satisfying. I want Biden to beat Trump badly, or at least fairly badly. Right now…who knows? And what’s with those Trump-supporting Latino males?
5 pm: Red and blue states are voting accordingly. Biden has 85 electoral votes vs. Trump’s 55. Many millions want the beast to stay in the White House, and many other millions not only disagree but are slapping their foreheads in disbelief.
4:30 pm: This is like Oscar night only much, much better, so I guess I’ll start timestamping with running commentary starting around…uh, now. Biden has taken Virginia and Vermont, and will probably win North Carolina. Oh, and Trump has won Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina and…uhm, Indiana. In the cards. Florida will probably go for Trump. (Panhandle rubes + an apparently sizable percentage of Miami-Dade Latino males.) And also Georgia, it seems.
So News of the World (Universal 12.25) is a Searchers-like tale (bookish 60ish beardo paid to deliver precocious, parentless, Kiowa-raised girl to relatives in old San Antonio) with a touch of True Grit. All kinds of adversity and prejudice slow their progress, including white slave traders looking to exploit the poor girl.
Paul Greengrass‘s western is some kind of allegory, he says, for our presently divided culture. You don’t have to reassure me — Tom Hanks will do the right thing.
Amazon synopsis of Paulette Jiles’ same-titled 2016 novel: “In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kidd (Hanks) travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.
“In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan, Johanna Loenberger (Helena Zengel), to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.
“Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.
“Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become — in the eyes of the law — a kidnapper himself.”
But there’s a quick insert shot in the trailer which gave me pause. Southern is shown pasting a sticker to a wall that says “it’s okay to be white.” Which means, given that Southern is being depicted as a non-liberal, discriminatory, less-than-compassionate person, that it’s definitely not okay to be white — that there’s something inherently flawed or diseased or poisonous about being a descendant of white Anglo Saxon or European Germanic tribes.
In other words if you’re a WASP you’re not only in league with Southern and her ilk but you have a real genetic problem, and so you need to pick up a copy of “White Fragility” and go through anti-racism training and gather some birch branches and self-flagellate, etc.
I’m sorry but I don’t buy that.
From “Rosanna Arquette Oversteps,” an HE post from 8.7.19: “Speaking as an X-factor white guy from a middle-class New Jersey and Connecticut upbringing, I don’t feel repelled or disgusted by my Anglo-Saxon heritage and family history. I deeply regret the cruelty visited upon immigrants and various cultures of color by whites, but the fact that racist attitudes were common throughout most of the 20th Century and certainly the 19th Century doesn’t mean that white people (more particularly my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, reaching back to the mid 1800s) were inherently evil.
“By current standards the people I came from may seem insufficiently evolved, of course, but they were born into a certain culture and were dealt certain cards, and most carried the weight as best they could. They weren’t born with horns on their heads.
“Nor do I feel that elemental decency is absent in the majority of white people today. I feel profoundly repelled by the attitudes of your backwater Trump supporters, of course, but they are not me. I come from a family of ‘good’, well-educated, imperfect people who believed in hard work, discipline and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoons, and who exuded decency and compassion for the most part. I am not the devil’s spawn, and neither is my Russian-born wife or my two sons. I’ve witnessed and dealt with ignorant behavior all my life, but I’ve never bought into the idea of Anglo-Saxon culture being inherently evil. Please.”
Herewith a five-part Showtime docuseries on L.A.s The Comedy Store, directed by none other than HE’s own Mike Binder (Black and White, Reign Over Me, The Upside of Anger) and launching on 10.4. Boilerplate: “…brings to life the legends, heartbreak and history created at The Comedy Store, which opened in 1972 in West Hollywood and operated by Mitzi Shore until her death in 2018. TCS was an early breakout forum for dozens of big-time comics (Jay Leno, David Letterman, Garry Shandling, Jim Carrey). As a Comedy Store alum and former stand-up comic, Binder spotlights one of pop culture’s great laboratories with never-before-seen footage and incisive, emotional interviews with Whoopi Goldberg, Howie Mandel, Michael Keaton, Andrew Dice Clay, Whitney Cummings, etc.
David Fincher‘s Mank is obviously something else. Consider the rapier wit, the pedigree, the Erik Messerschmidt cinematography, the yesteryearness. I’ve read an early draft of the script, and I know it’ll be brilliant. And I can’t adequately express how the prospect of spending two-plus hours with the God-like Herman Mankiewicz delights me to the core.
Even merged with the physicality of the puffy-faced, pot-bellied Gary Oldman in those 1940s baggy suits, tent-like dress shirts and fat ties, I tingle like Peter Ustinov‘s Lentulus Batiatus. Seriously.
This might turn out to be one of the greatest “head” movies of the 21st Century, although in a 1960s Bob Rafelson sense. Seeing it stoned may be a requirement.
What I don’t understand is why Fincher didn’t cast Mank with a Hamilton attitude or…you know, with the liberated, cast-off-the-old-ways, rethink-the-musty-past mindset of Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood or Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Wokesterfield. Where in this old time Hollywood-white-guy realm of are the African Americans, Latinos and Asians, Mr. Fincher? How can we hope to move forward as a culture if we don’t cast period films according to our own present-tense values and determinations?
If there’s a Bluray or an HD-streaming version of Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergey Urusevsky‘s Soy Cuba (’64), I can’t find it. A Russian-funded documentary intended to be pro-Cuban propaganda, Soy Cuba emerged as a sensual celebration of cinema (the long shots are brilliant) in the vein of Sergei Eisenstein‘s Que Viva Mexico!. An ambivalent exploration of Cuban culture, Soy Cuba half-revelled in hotel luxury, swimming pools and bikini-clad hotties — not what the Soviets were looking for.