[Posted on 3.26.21]

Just so we’re clear, Carl Reiner‘s Where’s Poppa? and Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock delivered the one-two punch that made George Segal into a marquee brand.

Segal was a respected, well-liked, plugging-away actor throughout the ’60s, and he definitely elevated his stock rating with his lead performance in Irvin Kershner‘s Loving (’70 — 3.4.70).

But Reiner-Yates added the boldface, above-the-title stardom factor to Segal’s guilt-ridden, self-flagellating, Jewish-guy thing, and he was off to the races.

Poppa (a cult film, not a hit) was released on 11.10.70, and The Hot Rock (a silly ensemble caper comedy for guys) arrived on 1.26.72 or 14 months later.

Pre-Poppa and post-Hot Rock Segal were entirely different entities.

With these two in the bag, Segal landed the titular role in Paul Mazursky‘s Blume in Love (6.17.73), and thereafter he wasn’t just a star but a complex ’70s soul man — the highest rung of the realm.

And then, 14 months after Blume, came Segal’s Bill Denny in California Split (8.7.74) — another grand-slammer.

And then God lost interest and Segal’s hot streak ended, just like that. Segal kept working for another 40 years after that, and good for his spirit and tenacity. But what a rude jolt.

1970 through ‘74: “You’re finally really hot, George…you’re totally cool and everyone digs you.” 1975 and onward: “Okay, you’re still good but time to cool things down.”

I’m truly lucky to have a strong constitution and therefore good health. And I absolutely love doing the column and living this rat-a-tat life on a day-to-day basis, but the best part of my journalistic hot–shot life is over. 1991 to 2019 — 28 years when things were pretty good and often delicious and sometimes wonderful. I’m simply too poor these days. Savoring the joys and adventures of yore is out of reach —that’s the long and the short of it.

If you know George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty–Four”, you surely know the sinister character of “O’Brien,” a duplicitous double agent who pretends to be Winston Smith’s friend but is actually a member of the Thought Police. OBrien’s goal is to seek out and persecute thought criminals.

I’m not saying David Poland is a manifestation of a woke O’Brien but he is unmistakably projecting a false flag narrative when he posts bullshit like the tweets below. Poland is either completely self-deluding, which doesn’t square with the fact that he’s very sharp and socially aware, or he is simply an agent of smoke and propaganda who is spewing this crap in order to politically protect himself.

You know what’s a lot better than you might expect? Rollercoaster (’77), a Jennings Lang-produced disaster thriller, made near the end of the big-budget disaster-flick cycle.

Rollercoaster was promoted as a drop-your-socks Sensurround experience, and it was that to a certain extent. But it was mainly an intelligent, low-key, logic-driven chase thriller.

You’d figure with the disaster-flick promotion there would be at least two or three scenes of rollercoaster cars flying off the tracks and people being killed, etc. There’s only one such scene, however, and it happens during the first half-hour and that’s it.

The rest is all cat-and-mouse stuff with amusement park inspector George Segal on the trail of psycho yuppie bomber Timothy Bottoms.

I would’t necessarily call it Hitchcockian but it uses elements of suspense to engaging effect.

Rollercoaster was written by Richard Levinson and William Link, the guys who created Colombo. It’s nicely (as in carefully, patiently) directed by James Goldstone (The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight —-’71); Goldstone’s big-screen career was unfortunately killed when he directed When Time Ran Out… (’80).

Here’s a link to the whole film.

A little less than three years ago I posted a roster of HE’s top 20 Henry Fonda films. There was some pushback over my placing Sergio Leone‘s Once Upon A Time In The West, in which Fonda played a blackhearted villain named Frank, in 15th place.

I put it there because it wasn’t a “Henry Fonda” performance, but an aberration in the vein of Fort Apache. And yet even Fonda’s Fort Apache performance as Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday, a stiff-necked, emotionally constipated fanatic, represented an aspect of his own nature. (Peter Fonda once said this in an interview.) Frank was a bizarre showhorse role — completely divorced from Fonda the man and Fonda the legend.

In 19 of the 20 performances listed below Fonda was basically playing himself, which is how we’ve always preferred him.

1. 12 Angry Men
2 The Ox-Bow Incident
3. The Grapes of Wrath
4. The Lady Eve
5. The Best Man
6. The Wrong Man
7. Young Mr, Lincoln
8. Drums Along The Mohawk
9. My Darling Clementine
10. You Only Live Once
11. Fort Apache
12. On Golden Pond
13. The Boston Strangler
14. The Fugitive
15. Once Upon a Time in the West
16. Advise and Consent
17. Slim
18. Jezebel
19. The Tin Star
20. Jesse James

Arguably the worst stinkers of Fonda’s career were Mr. Roberts, Fail Safe (a technically good film that I’ve only rewatched once — that means something) and Sex and the Single Girl.

David Rothkopf to Steve Schmidt: “The irrationality of the degree of support for [The Beast]…despite his criminality, his control over the Republican party seems stronger than it’s ever been….even with all these trials, even with all we know about him….rational objections to this anti-democratic authoritarian don’t seem to hold.”

That’s because Trumpism isn’t rational — it’s emotional, primal, boiling in the blood. And Rothkopf doesn’t even allude to this.

Far-right Trump supporters believe that over the last several years U.S. culture has been under assault by the woke scourge (currently manifested by Biden’s kneejerk deference to diverse tribalism, equity favored over meritocracy, scolding white people for being white, trans values in elementary schools, Dylan Mulvaney, hordes of immigrants surging through the Mexican border), and they see him as the only hardcore bully-boy enemy of this scourge…the only guy who is saying “fuck this noise” without qualification.

Is there merit to this general thesis or analysis? To varying degrees, yes. Is it worth electing a fascist dictator in order to put a stop to this scourge, or at least to try and reverse or suppress it? Of course it wouldnt be worth it. Putting Trump back into the White House would be insanity. But like I just said, the Trump bonfire isn’t about rationality.