From Owen Gleiberman’s “Drive, He Said” Variety essay: Quentin Tarantino “certainly needs to address the Kill Bill car scandal in a far more detailed and confessional manner. Because he’s in the murky middle of it, obviously, but also because Tarantino is in a position to shed light on how the vertiginous power dynamics of Hollywood operate, and how they might now change.

“There’s no denying that the car incident didn’t just happen out of ‘negligence.’ It was the result of a recklessness, an arrogance, a so-ingrained-it’s-taken-for-granted pattern of unchecked aggressive male dominion in the film business. Seen against the backdrop of #MeToo, against the pileup of accusations and a landscape that’s shifted, overnight, to a policy of zero tolerance, the Kill Bill incident looks, perhaps, like a second cousin of harassment: the cold exploitation of talent by those who surely knew better.”

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“My dream is to retire. That’s not a one-liner; it’s true. To spend every year of your life with the abstraction of making a film, with a crew of 200 people and their passions and their stupid priorities, the pressure of having to deliver, the pressure of spending other people’s money and having to be nasty because you don’t want to give up your integrity? And then to show your film to the world and to have to talk about it and repeat your answer to the same questions again and again…? I used to see making films as a kind of paradise and I now realize it’s kind of a hell, to be honest.” — Luca Guadagnino in the fall/winter 2017 edition of Fantasticman.

I don’t know how many other directors share Guadagnino’s attitude, but he’s one of the very few with the balls to share it in a public forum. He’s said before that he could be happy doing something other than directing. I don’t entirely believe him. Being a hotshot, world-class director opens up so many doors and opportunities, after all. And Gudagnino is one of the few directors I would describe as genuinely happy and even joyful about his life, despite all the alleged negatives.

I say this as one who could never be where Luca is. I see life in terms of struggle and duty and working your fingers to the bone. “I went to sleep dreaming life is beauty / I woke and found that life is duty.”

It all boils down to that Robert E. Lee Pruitt line: “A man should be what he can do.” Whether it makes you happy or not is beside the point. A gift or a special ability has to be nurtured, developed and applied. Failing to do this is not only shameful but tragic.

SNL‘s “First Lady” sketch was, at best, mildly amusing, or not actually funny. To laugh “with” Cecily Strong‘s Melania Trump you need to have at least a measure of sympathy or compassion for the actual “Slovenian sphinx,” as Maureen Dowd described her on 1.27. The woman is a scruple-free opportunist, matrimonial arm candy for hire. I’ll respect Melania when she walks and sues for divorce sometime before 2020. As Kate Mckinnon‘s Hillary Clinton reminds her, “You married him.”

Natalie Portman‘s Jackie Kennedy: “Jack cheated on me with Marilyn Monroe.” Strong’s Melania: “Oh please. She was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Donald’s girl was in Guys Like it Shaved.”

Every year the Santa Barbara Film Festival presents a panel discussion among screenwriters. It always happens on the festival’s first Saturday at the historic Lobero theatre. Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has been hosting this event for the last several years, and the sense of deja vu is very pronounced because it’s always the same softball session.

The screenwriters are given a chance to tell their stories in an amusing or colorful way and everyone has a nice easy time, and sometimes questions from the audience are allowed. But nobody ever pokes or prods.

Nobody asked Shape of Water screenwriter Vanessa Taylor why she and Guillermo del Toro decided against defining Doug Jones‘ Aquaman in any way you’d remember — no personality, longings, traits. Nobody asked The Post‘s Liz Hannah about the major Oscar-bait headwind that her film enjoyed before it was screened, and how it all collapsed when Steven Spielberg‘s film was quickly elbowed aside by the critics group and the guilds. Nobody asked Baby Driver maestro Edgar Wright about why he folded his campaign after the Kevin Spacey scandal. Nobody asked The Disaster Artist‘s Michael Weber about the sudden torpedoing of director-star James Franco over alleged sexual misconduct.

Every side-angle or hot-button question was avoided like the plague. But that’s why we enjoy this panel each and every year.

In Andrew Wagner‘s Breakable You, Holly Hunter (The Big Sick) is a newly divorced therapist who becomes romantically involved with her plagiarizing playwright ex-husband’s brother. I’m okay with Tony Shalhoub as the ex (as long as he keeps his shirt on), but Alfred Molina is a no-go as the amorous brother. There are actors you never want to consider or imagine in an intimate context, and Molina, no offense and God bless him, is one of them. Just as audiences of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s never wanted to contemplate Charles Coburn in a sexual light. Brian Morton’s source novel was published in 2006.

I had a traumatic birth, which gives you a certain antsy outlook on things. By the time I was six or seven I was feeling very angry at God for giving me such a miserable life in suburban New Jersey, and especially for giving me such strict, hard-nosed parents, particularly a mother who made me go to church every damn Sunday. In my tweens and teens I went through a period of mocking and taunting Him. Then I embraced and worshipped Him as a result of my mystical LSD trips in my early 20s. Then I came to an understanding that God is, depending on how lucky or unlucky you are in terms of parental or tribal lineage and birth location, at best impartial about whether you’re living a happy or miserable life. It’s up to you. If you want happiness and you’re not living under a horrible dictatorship, orchestrate your own version of happiness or fulfillment, being careful not to make things worse for others.

Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin‘s old-hat hostility is still funny, but I doubt this kind of material would ever re-occur on Saturday Night Live, especially these days.

23 and 1/3 years ago David Mamet‘s Oleanna, a filmed version of his 1992 stage play, opened theatrically. A guarded relationship between a married university professor and one of his female students, who accuses him in Act Two of sexual exploitation and thereby ruins his chances of being accorded tenure.

Now comes Richard Levine‘s Submission, about another married college professor (Stanley Tucci) whose life turns into a raging sea when he’s accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior with a female student (Addison Timlin). Pic is based on “Blue Angel“, a 2006 novel by Francine Prose.

From Stephen Farber’s 6.25.17 Hollywood Reporter review: “Despite many script problems, Levine has kept the film tightly coiled and engrossing throughout. [And] the best performance comes from Kyra Sedgwick, who, as Tucci’s wife, conveys intelligence, sensuality and just the right dose of moral outrage. Her big scene, when she learns of Ted’s adultery and lashes out scathingly, ranks alongside two of the other great scenes of fury expressed by deceived wives: a monologue by Beatrice Straight in Network and another by Miranda Richardson in Damage.”

Submission will open in New York City on 3.2, and in Los Angeles and other markets on 3.9.