I saw Reservoir Dogs during my very first visit to the Cannes Film Festival, or in May 1992. I remember giving a “yo dude” to 29 year-old Quentin Tarantino a gathering for the film in the Majestic Hotel ballroom. Dogs played out of competition, not even under Un Certain Regard, which screened Abel Ferrara‘s Bad Lieutenant and Jonathan Demme‘s Cousin Bobby that year. The competition attractions included Basic Instinct, Howard’s End, Simple Men and The Player. I was on fire during the festival. Everything was new and exotic, but it all worked out perfectly. I figured it all out, brought a tuxedo with me, got into the right events. Billie August‘s The Best Intentions won the Palme d’Or.

“Jonathan Demme was a man for small towns and back roads. He liked those pockets of America where there was fun to be had, at a bargain price, and weakness to be gently laid bare. Hence his penchant for Melvin Dummar, a near-loser with a wish list of hopes, and for the tallness of Melvin’s tale. Whether the Howard he came across, that night in the desert, really was Howard Hughes, as legend insists, was not the sort of conundrum to bother Demme, and I doubt if he gave a damn whether the infamous ‘Mormon will’ — in which, years later, Hughes allegedly left more than a hundred and fifty million dollars to Melvin in gratitude for his Samaritan deed, like a mega-Magwitch rewarding Pip — was the genuine article or a fake.

“What Demme knew for certain, because his grip on our everyday fears and fancies was so secure, is that we want to believe Melvin, and that Melvin, the poor dope, wants to believe himself. The stories that we tell, in other words, may not always be true, and yet they are true of us, and that will have to do. The loss of Jonathan Demme is a sad surprise, for the films that he bequeaths to us remain, to an uncommon degree, the work of a good man.” — from Anthony Lane‘s “The Loss of Jonathan Demme,” 4.29.17, The New Yorker.

No Melvin and Howard Bluray as we speak, and no high-def streaming version either. Just a DVD, and who wants to watch a movie at 480p?

Yesterday’s Radio City Music Hall showing of the The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, produced by the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, was undoubtedly a moment. Not to mention the post-screening discussion with Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire and Robert De Niro. I’ve watched these films repeatedly over the decades, 15 or 20 viewings each. Yes, it would have been exciting to walk into the RCMH and feel the tingly excitement as that Godfather trumpet theme is heard in the dark, but after that it would just be The Godfather again. It opened 45 years ago. I own it on Bluray. I know the dialogue by heart. I know every shot, every cut. Ditto The Godfather, Part II. I am Senator Pat Geary. I am Moe Green. I am Hyman Roth. I am Turnbull.

The 30th anniversary of John Badham and Jim Kouf‘s Stakeout arrives on 8.5.17. “Honey, I’m home!” Just a lightweight popcorn flick, but one that really pushed the right buttons. Call me gullible but I believed that Richard Dreyfuss was really in love with Madeline Stowe, and I was invested in seeing things work out for them. One of Emilio Estevez‘s best-ever roles and performances. I remember feeling delighted after seeing it at the Century City Plitt on weekend #1, and deciding then and there that Mr. Mister‘s “Is It Love” was a perfect song to hear over the end credits. I heard it at Trader Joe’s yesterday…”Stakeout!”

Anybody wanna buy a pair of diamond-studded, white-gold wedding bands?

Throughout Hollywood Elsewhere’s 13-year history I’ve riffed about everything in my life except the personal. I’ve always left that stuff alone. Okay, there was an allusion or two to an earth-shaking seven-month affair that happened in 2013, and a riff about a two-and-a-half-year affair with a married People journalist that happened between January ’98 and October 2000. But otherwise I’ve kept a lid on it.

But as I’ve recently written about a whirlwind romance with the SRO — domestic serenity, trips, hiking journeys, a strong partnership, wedding bands, a marriage ceremony planned for last Friday on La Piedra State Beach — it would be flat-out dishonest and inconsistent to lie about the current reality. I won’t perpetuate a fiction in order to save myself from looking like a fool. And man, do I ever feel like one.

Love affairs aren’t easy. Sometimes they can dwindle or detonate at the drop of a hat. When you’re caught up in strong emotions, which are always tied to deep-seated longings about what you’ve always wanted and what might be if fortune smiles…well, anything can happen.

What happened is that the SRO and I decided to get married two or three weeks ago. I explained it all in a 4.24 piece called “High Dive,” but the idea was a basic trade-off — I, having fallen, would provide and protect and do what I could in terms of easing her transition into U.S. society (marriage, green card, immigration) and I in turn would get a feeling of hope and order and vibrancy that would counterbalance the reality of the calendar, and what felt to me like a profound partnership with someone who’s smart, loyal, disciplined and very practical. I know a top-grade partner when I meet one. The SRO is as good as my ex-wife Maggie in many respects. Solid values, sensible, focused, a good heart.

Four days ago we went downtown to buy our wedding rings. We were two days from tying the knot on the beach. Marriage wasn’t necessary for me, but I was okay with it. And it didn’t scare me in the least. It felt right. Plus I figured I had done so much for her that if we ever divorced she wouldn’t dream of asking for spousal support. I’d been too generous for that. Plus she’s a seasoned, well-referenced sales executive in the prime of her life (only 42) who would most likely find her professional footing after obtaining her green card, certainly within a year or two, and that she might even match my income within two or three years.

Had I thought about some kind of pre-nup? Yes, but I kept putting it off because I sensed trouble. Earlier this week I was telling myself, “C’mon, you have to face up to this.” So I devised a dumb plan. Clueless as this sounds, I was thinking we could tap out a few terms and conditions a few hours before the wedding, and then get it notarized, sign it and be done. If Rock Hudson can marry Doris Day as she’s about to give birth in Lover Come Back (“Man, that’s what I call cutting it close“), why couldn’t we do the same with a pre-nup?

Yes, I live in my own realm. Most of the time it intersects with reality and things are fine, but sometimes it doesn’t.

I wanted to attend the People’s Climate March (starting at 11 am), but my attitude soured when I realized it would be happening in Banning Park, which is mired in the ugly, godforsaken town of Wilmington, just north of San Pedro. I realize, yes, that Wilmington was chosen because it harbors the third-largest oil field in the U.S., but…okay, I get it. I just don’t want to go down there. I hate the smell.

It’s not oil production per se that I’m against as much as the Trump administration’s blindness to scientific fact, heavy investment in fossil fuel industries and less than ardent interest in clean energy.

On top of which I have to drive out to Burbank IKEA and buy some velour curtains and curtain rods. Seven sections, 94.5″ tall and 46 inches wide. Olive drab. A guy is coming over to do most of the work. I’m fairly handy with carpentry and whatnot, but hanging curtains is a two-man job.

This newly released image shows Peter Parker (Tom Holland) channelling Leopold Stokowski or Seiji Ozawa — leaning back, arms outstretched, revelling in it. Looking up and giving thanks: “Bless you, Kevin Feige, Amy Pascal and Columbia Pictures…not just for rebooting the franchise for a second time but for allowing me to romp and fly through this formulaic, cool-as-shit Marvel realm. To be a shrimp but at the same a figure of great power!” The only thing Holland needs is a baton. 

For the 117th time: why is it spelled Spider-Man with a hyphen instead of just plain old Spiderman? Because Marvel believes in hyphens and the D.C. Comics guys don’t. No Bat-Man or Super-Man for them. If I had Feige’s job, I would obliterate those Marvel hyphens so fast your head would spin.

In her new book “This Fight Is Our Fight,” Sen Elizabeth Warren repeats an assessment that Robert Reich and Jacob Kornbluth made in their 2013 doc, Inequality For All. She explains that economically speaking, the American middle-class was in a steadily improving, much better place from 1935 through 1980, and has been in a gradually worsening condition ever since.

In short, as N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman explained in a legendary 5.31.09 column, “Reagan Did It.”

“The more one looks into the origins of the current disaster,” Krugman wrote, “the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

“Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

Trump Nation has always been about cultural animus (i.e., a dream of halting or even turning back the influence of the lefty multiculturals and the LGBTQs) and general despair about the gradual fraying of the traditional American fabric. They’re behind Trump because he seems (emphasis on the “s” word) to understand their concerns along these lines. Some simply aren’t bright enough to realize they’re being played. Others probably suspect the truth but can’t face it — they voted for this animal, and feel they’ve no choice but to keep applauding the narrative.

Okay, that’s a write-down or a “nope” for Bong Joon-ho’s Okja. It’ll play in competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, so I’ll be obliged to sit through it and all. Okja “is about a kind monster who is pursued by the Mirando Corporation for research, or likely something more nefarious, and a girl who works to protect her beastly buddy.” Costarring Ahn Seo-hyun, Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, Devon Bostick, Byun Hee-bong and Shirley Henderson. It pops on Nextflix on 6.28.17.

From Joseph McBride‘s just-released “Two Cheers For Hollywood,” and more particularly an introductory essay titled “I Loved Movies But…”:

“In recent decades we’ve had to deal with the generally awful state American mainstream movies have fallen into, and with the overall collapse of film culture and what used to be called cinephilia. This has led to widespread discussion by film critics and others about whether or not cinema is dead, merely moribund, or in the process of evolution into something innovative but as yet uncertain. We have to face the fact that we longer live in an age of cinephilia. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that makes me terribly sad, [but] I haven’t yet reached the final stage of the grieving process — acceptance.

“Yet we who write about film history and have done so for decades persist in our quixotic quest. We go on because the love of film has become so ingrained in us that it can never be eradicated by time or circumstance. You make your choices early in life, and you do so because of what you need most early in life. Some of these needs linger forever.

“Writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag wrote in a much-discussed 1995-96 essay, ‘The Decay of Cinema,’ that the cinema had become ‘a decadent art’ mired in “an ignominious, irreversible decline. It’s not that you can’t look forward anymore to new films that you can admire. But such films not only have to be exceptions — that’s true of great achievements in any art. They have to be violations of the norms and practices that now govern movie-making everywhere in the capitalist and would-be capitalist word — which is to say everywhere.’

Invitation sent by mail on 10.12.56: “Please join Allied Artists, filmmakers and cast for a cocktail party in celebration of Don Siegel‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers — ‘A triumph…a terrifying reflection of Eisenhower-era conformity and complacency’ — Manny Farber.” Invitation sent by mail on 11.24.88: “Please join Universal Pictures, filmmakers and cast for a buffet luncheon celebrating John Carpenter‘s They Live — “The horror of rampant yuppie greed and materialism delivered within the realm of a sci-fi thriller…social-exposure dramas are rarely this gripping or penetrating.” — Peter Rainer, American Film.