I had a serious thing for Kathryn Harrold back in the day, particularly after she costarred with Albert Brooks in Modern Romance (’81).

Consequently there was no one in the known universe who was more bummed out than myself when Harrold played a doctor who becomes Luciano Pavarotti‘s lover in Yes, Giorgio (’82).

The images that flashed through my mind as I contemplated…I don’t need to elaborate here.

It was ridiculous, of course, that I, a mere journalist and movie hound with a full understanding of how and why various Hollywood films are thrown together, would feel actually upset, but I honestly felt like a jilted lover when Harrold did this. Jilted and appalled that she would…I can’t even think it, much less say it. I was pretty much groaning in pain.

Suffice to say that Yes, Giorgio single-handedly terminated the idea of a slender, drop-dead beautiful actress like Harrold indulging in breathless, around-the-world sexual activity with a gifted artist-elephant like Pavarotti…even now these images are injecting emotional pain into my system.

Harrold was 30 when Yes, Giorgio was shot. She is thankfully still with us and working as a Los Angeles-based Marriage and Family Therapist. Pavarotti was 45 during filming. He died from pancreatic cancer in 2007, at age 72.

I wasn’t the only one who suffered cardiac arrest when Yes, Giorgio opened, of course. Pretty much the entire world rejected it. It cost around $19 million to produce, and brought in $2.3 million. It was estimated to have lost $45 million and change.

Joe and Jane Popcorn to Hollywood slickos in the early ’80s: Don’t ever ask us to pay to see a fat bearded guy, however famous or charming or wealthy or gifted, boning Kathryn Harrold or for that matter anybody else in her physical attractiveness class. Never do this again…ever.

Life in the highly competitive film industry has always been unfair…sexist, racist…never a bed of roses…cronyism, boys club reciprocity, the usual rough-and-tumble.

But for a while there equity quotas and being guilt-tripped by Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative was definitely stirring the pot…culturally, politically.

Things are somewhat better for women (and also, I presume, directors of color and LGBTQ persuasion) than they were in 2007, when only 2.7% of working directors were female. It’s a rigged game, but less so as we currently speak. Changes for the better have come about over the last 18 years.

It’s probably also accurate to say that the USC Annenberg wokey card isn’t as big of an influencer as it was, say, starting in ’18 and peaking during Hollywod’s woke-terror chapter (’19 to ’22 or roughly a four-year period that was roughy analogous to China’s Great Cultural Revolution of the mid ’60s).

…is about judgment, bitter gruel, the wrong kind of karma, deflation. That said, I’ve never once read or researched the lyrics. It’s the chops, the punctuation, the garage-band guyness of it. It began playing on the Passat sound system of its own volition when I started the car around noon. I found this meaningful on some level, and I was never really a huge Guess Who fan.

Wiki excerpt: “[Guitarist and Co-writer Randy Bachman] was walking down a city street with several vinyl albums under his arm, when he saw three ‘tough-looking biker guys’ approaching. He felt threatened and was looking to cross the street when a little put-put car pulled up to the men.

“A five-foot-tall woman got out, shouting at one of them, asking where he’d been all day, that he’d left her alone with the kids, didn’t take out the trash, and now was down here sniffing around. The man’s grungy friendos walked away, and he was suddenly alone. Tail between his legs, he got into the car. The woman’s parting shot: ‘And you can forget about any sugar tonight.’”

How could the celebrated director of Platoon, JFK, Salvador, Born on the 4th of July, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Any Given Sunday and W.….how could Oliver Stone drop to his knees in praise of effing Wicked, of all the ‘24 films he could have singled out?

Wicked is a fine, well-produced musical but it obviously doesn’t represent the values that Oliver has put forth since the mid ’80s. Why then has he praised it above and beyond the obviously superior Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, A Real Pain, etc.?

The bottom line is that henceforth the idea of hiring or otherwise working with Blake “I Love Trouble” Lively and Justin “We Will Bury You” Baldoni on a movie or limited series…the mere thought of this is generating heebie–jeebie shockwaves among producers and studio execs worldwide.

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Seven months ago Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, 18, filed legal papers to change her name to a Pitt-less Shiloh Jolie. The basic idea was to publicly proclaim that she regards her dad, Brad Pitt, as some kind of living embodiment of Satan and therefore wanted the Pitt struck from her last name.

Angelina Jolie, Shiloh’s deeply neurotic mother, was the engine and the propellant behind that legal initiative, trust me.

6.1.24: “Why is the divorce initiated by Angelina Jolie against William Bradley Pitt still ongoing and unresolved eight years later? Sane exes don’t behave this way as a rule.

“I’m not the first person on planet earth to rhetorically ask ‘what exactly is Angelina’s basic psychological malfunction?’

Then again I may be thinking too narrowly. Perhaps Pitt is the devil incarnate, and therefore deserves to be hunted down with clubs and spears and burned like Joan of Arc or Oliver Reed’s Father Grandier from Ken Russell’s The Devils….right?

Flash forward to 12.31.24: It was announced at 1:08 am today that Pitt and Jolie have finally settled their divorce after eight ridiculous years of acrimony.

Statement to People magazine from Jolie’s attorney James Simon:

“More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt. She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family. This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago. Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”

I’ve travelled through the Pyrenees mountains twice. The first time (June of ‘76) I was hitchhiking with girlfriend Sophie; the second time was during a France-to-Spain journey in a rental car, sometime in the late aughts.

My “Bernstein on the Staten Island ferry” moment happened the first time around. We were strolling (or were we sitting in the back seat of a car?) along a narrow Pyrenees blacktop and looking up at a huge, very steep, grass-covered mountainous foothill and being struck by the sight of a distant herd of sheep about, oh, a third of a mile away but way up there…high, high, all the way to the sky.

They were so far off you couldn’t hear those little cowbells that shepherds loop around the baahers’ woolen necks. But it was such a magnificent sight…awed by the enormity of that emerald-green Pyrenees slope, and the serenity that came with that.

There were six media-eyeball events that hurt poor President Carter during his administration.

The first five inflicted different kinds of wounds. Most damaging was the failed, politically crushing attempt to rescue Iranian hostages. Then came Ted Kennedy’s 1980 primary challenge. Three, that silly story about the hissing rabbit allegedly attacking Carter’s fishing boat. Four, that “lust in my heart” quote from that Playboy interview. Five, being half–ignored by TV sports reporters when he visited the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse following their 1979 World Series triumph.

But the sixth was the most damaging of all — collapsing from heat exhaustion during a six-mile marathon on 9.15.79. If you’re going to compete in a marathon, do so like a serious athlete or not at all. And never, ever exhibit physical weakness.

Dylan and I caught a FSLC screening of Anora around 3 pm (he’d never had the pleasure) and then we took the B train down to Grand Street station, which is three or four blocks from Kiki’s, a smallish, crowded, very lively Greek restaurant with two separate bars. Luscious cuisine, cool staff, darkly lighted, not murderously expensive.