The three finest films in which the bad guy wins (i.e., totally outwits the good guys and demonstrates his absolute supreme dominance at the finale) are, of course, David Fincher‘s Se7en (’95), Gregory Hoblit‘s Primal Fear (’96) and Roman Polanski‘s Rosemary’s Baby (’68).

These three are top of the pops in this regard (okay, it’s not so much Satan but Team Satan that wins at the end of Polanski’s film), but perhaps I’m forgetting something?

Okay, Jonathan Demme‘s Silence of the Lambs counts to a large extent because of Hannibal Lecter‘s brilliant prison escape, but Lecter doesn’t “win” at the end — he’s just escapes to the Caribbean for a little rest and recreation.

The extremely clever Keyzer Soze gets away at the end of The Usual Suspects but he doesn’t “win” — he just eludes the grasp of the law.

Same with Anton Chigurh at the end of No Country for Old Men — he slips away with a fractured arm but hasn’t demonstrated that he’s better than Tommy Lee Jones‘ sheriff or that he’s the absolute king of wicked hill. He’s obviously fallible.

Alex De Large doesn’t “win” at the end of A Clockwork Orange — he’s simply restored to his original venal nature by the authorities.

Wealthy, play-frequenting London liberals will eat this shit right up.

Two months ago (2.5) I posted a few words about Barbara Rush, whom I had just seen for the first time in It Came From Outer Space (‘53) and then re-watched in When Worlds Collide (‘51). And now, as it must, death has placed a gentle hand upon her shoulder. She was 97. A rich, full life — and every time a movie fan watches Warren Beatty’s George Roundy try to get a bank loan in Shampoo, Rush will be re-remembered.

But I own a streaming 4K UHD Chinatown on Vudu and it looks quite beautiful. That’s right — because I don’t seem to know the difference between 4K streaming and a 4K disc, I am a total effing peon.

Despite the fact that Rod Lurie and Kyra Davis are first-rate people (seriously), they seem oblivious to the fact that frolicking in Las Vegas is tantamount to injecting poison into your soul.

HE would’ve loved to have partied in the Las Vegas of 65 years ago…Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin-Sammy Davis Jr. rat pack craps slots chickie baby booze broads bubbly “hold the Clyde” yong yong ring-a-ding-ding, etc. That’s all gone now.

I’m sorry but I have a problem with Adam Driver‘s hairstyle in Megalopolis. His character, Ceasar, is a visionary architect, and his haircut strikes me as a cross between the 1964 bowl cuts favored by the Dave Clark Five and James Mason‘s Brutus in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Julius Caesar (’53).

I think it’s fair to predict that Driver won’t be playing any more tortured, high-powered hotshots any time soon. Because Caesar makes it three in a row — Maurizio Gucci in House of Gucci (’21) and Enzo Ferrari in Ferrari (’23) being the first two.

Forget anyone seeing Jerry Lewis‘s The Day The Clown Cried (’72) later this year, which some seem to believe is in the cards. Just forget it.

On 1.13.24 or two and a half months ago, the belief that The Day The Clown Cried would be screened in June 2024 at the Library of Congress archive in Culpeper, Virginia (or at least sometime this year) was seemingly put to bed by Indiewire‘s Christian Zilko.

Zilko (rhymes with Sgt. Bilko) reported that an LoC representative had “confirmed to IndieWire that no public screenings are planned, as the archive does not possess a complete cut of the film.”

Oh, yeah? Then why did L.A. Times reporter Noah Bierman, after visiting the Culpeper campus nine years ago, quote the LoC’s head archivist Rob Stone saying “the library [has] agreed to not show the film for at least 10 years”? If the full version can’t be shown for lack of material why talk about screening it at all?

Two months later I inquired about also visiting the Library of Congress campus, and particularly about the possibility of viewing the metal cans containing The Day The Clown Cried.

On 10.14.15 I received an emailed reply from Mike Mashon, head of the LoC’s Moving Image section.

He said that the LoC’s agreement with Jerry Lewis places an embargo on The Day The Clown Cried “for ten years, including screenings and making any element associated with it to the public and researchers.” In other words, no can photos until 2025, and perhaps not even then.

Again: If a screening of the completed film is out of the question due to insufficient material, why mention showing it in 2025?

Even if only sections of the film are shown someday, it seems clear that the embargo will be in place until 2025 and not 2024, as some are assuming.

Yes, I’m guilty of having previously posted about a presumed June 2024 unveiling date, but I was lazy or distracted or had bees in my head.

Just to be extra double sure, early this morning I asked Mashon to confirm the embargo date. He’s no longer on the job — retired. Let’s just presume that Clown Revelation Day, if it happens at all, won’t be until the summer of ’25.

“Clown Cried In A Cosmic Blink Of An Eyelash,” posted on 4.2.23:

Although the LoC apparently intends to eventually screen some kind of celluloid representation of The Day The Clown Cried at its Audio Visual Conservation campus in Culpeper, Virginia, curator Rob Stone has stated the LoC does not have a complete print of the film.

Posted on 6.15.16: I’m hardly an authority when it comes to Jerry Lewis‘s never-seen The Day The Clown Cried (’72), but…

I’ve read all the articles, I’ve read the script, I’ve seen that BBC documentary that popped last January, and I’d love to view it when the embargo is lifted ten years hence (i.e., in 2025). But I’ve never watched actual scenes.

This morning a friend passed along a 31-minute Vimeo file (posted two months ago but yanked on Thursday morning…sorry) that provides the first real taste of Clown, or at least the first I’ve ever sat through.

Jeffrey Wells, Bill McCuddy and Ed Douglas vigorously examining new films, Cannes ’24, likely Best Picture contenders, the new King-Godzilla flick, the new Woody, “Sasquatch Sunset”, etc.

This is a Misfits “halfer” — a 30-minute freebie. For the full 65-minute-podcast, click here.

Audio Player

If you’re looking to make a left turn at a stop-light intersection that doesn’t have a special left-turn lane and there are three or four cars with the same goal in mind, you know that only three cars will make the turn.

Four cars never make it — three at the most and sometimes only two.

But the only way three can get through is for car #1 to drive into the middle of the intersection with its left-signal flashing, and also for car #2 to be right behind car #1 with its nose just ahead of the foot-traffic crosswalk, and car #3 right behind #2, usually behind the crosswalk.

When the light turns yellow and opposing traffic is coming to a halt is when everyone makes their move — cars #1 and #2 without breaking a sweat with car #3 barely making it through after the light has turned red.

But the whole system collapses if car #1 doesn’t nudge into the center of the intersection, and this is what today’s traffic rant is about — candy-asses who are afraid to move into the middle.

There are some who will only creep two or three or four feet beyond the white line as if they’re afraid of something bad will happen, and there are others who won’t move forward at all — who just stay in the left lane with their left signal blinking.

Meep meep…will you move ahead, please? Are you aware that if you hang back like a coward you’ll be condemning the third guy to wait for another light change? Show a little consideration and get out there.

“Bugsy would not have been the densely detailed and complexly imagined film that it is without the pooled-together contributions of producer-star Warren Beatty, screenwriter James Toback and director Barry Levinson.

“But one wonders what might have resulted had the authorial strands been pulled apart and had Mr. Beatty been able to make another of his studies of an American naïf (following Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde, George the hairstylist of Shampoo and John Reed, the radical journalist of Reds) blundering as best he can through the social upheavals of an era; or had Mr. Toback, with his fascination with sex, power and the romantic fatalism of the gambler; or had Mr. Levinson fully indulged his nostalgia for a lost era of sartorial elegance and tastefully lighted interiors.

“Levinson was the dominant force on the set, and the film duly reflects his fundamentally comic sensibility (even when the material dips into darkness) and affection for attention-grabbing period detail.” — from Dave Kehr’s 12.12.06 review of the Bugsy extended-cut DVD.

Two more observations about Francis Coppola‘s Megalopolis, which was seen last Thursday morning by an elite crowd of 300 or so at Universal City IMAX:

Observer #1: “Megalopoplis is about as non-Joe Popcorn a movie as one can imagine. But it is so startling, so original and sometimes downright confounding that there is a certain strata of moviegoer who will see it out of raw curiosity…especially if critics get behind it and if there is a major PR campaign.

“I don’t know if the print we saw [last Thursday] is finished or not. I hope Francis clarifies the story so audiences have something to hang onto. The first approximately 50 to 60 per cent of the film is much better than the last part because you lose track of the story and become bored.

“It is nonetheless a bold and utterly original film, and for that Francis will get tons of credit from some quarters.”

Observer #2: “There will be many and varied responses to this film. Those who love it for its boldness will be right. and those who dismiss it for the same reason will, if you insist, also be correct. And perhaps the film’s natural, eventual home will be in art museums.

“Megalopolis will require careful and loving handling, which may turn out to be an impossible task in today’s market. But here’s hoping otherwise.”

I haven’t written anything by hand in literally decades. Maybe an occasional sentence or two but I haven’t hand-penned so much as a paragraph, much less a personal letter, since the mid ‘70s. Professionally-speaking from the Jimmy Carter era onward it was all typewriting until word processing (Wordstar) began in the mid ‘80s.

Yesterday I bought a note pad and a couple of pens. It’ll take a while but I’m going to force myself into the practice of occasional hand jottings. The idea, I suppose, is that writing by hand is somehow more pure or direct or something. I only know that I want to re-learn or recreate the skill of what used to be called half-assed cursive.

Maybe I’ll branch out into occasional drawing — I used to draw faces and figures lot in my tween years. I took a drawing class at Silvermine when I was 16 or 17.