Sometime between last Saturday night and Sunday afternoon something happened to Zak, my one-year-old ragdoll. “Meow Mike”, my cat-feeder guy, said he last saw Zak on Saturday afternoon. If he’d been run over somebody would’ve probably read his name tag and called me but nobody has. Plus local authorities say they have no reports of any dead cats in my area. So the best guess is that (a) some malignant life form kidnapped him and drove off to Pico Rivera or Victorville or Gardena or Bellflower or (b) some thoughtless asshole within a two-block radius is “taking care” of him and not bothering with the fact that Zak has an owner. It’s a major heartbreaker on top of losing my mom a week and a half ago. No, I don’t believe in keeping cats prisoner inside a home or apartment. You can’t raise an animal and not let him/her feel the wind, walk on the grass, see the stars in the sky, feel the sun of his/her face, smell the flowers, etc. If it means a shorter life then that’s what it means. I am not a jailer. I do not work for the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. Last night I made up a bunch of “SEEN THIS GUY?” posters (catchy with color photos) at Kinkos and stapled them on a few local trees, taped them to juncture boxes, etc.

I saw A.D. Freese, Andrew Perez and Dillon Porter‘s Bastards y Diablos late Monday night after returning from my mother’s funeral back east. It’s about Ed and Dion (Andrew Perez, Dillon Porter), American-raised half-brothers in their late 20s, visiting Columbia to carry out the wishes of their recently-passed dad to scatter his ashes and connect with their roots and maybe absorb a thing or two….who knows? At first you’re thinking “uh-oh, a movie about a series of episodes but with no arc or climax,” but then you begin to realize that it’s doing all the things that good movies do, but in its own nativist, loose-shoe way. It gets there.

(l. to r.) Bastards y Diablos director-editor A.D. Freese (with the beard), producer/costar Dillon Porter (hat, glasses) and screenwriter/costar Andrew Perez, .

Bastards y Diablos premiered last weekend, reportedly to a standing ovation, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The second screening happens this evening.

I did a sitdown interview late yesterday morning with Peres, Freese, Porter (who also produced) and costars Constanza Marek Otto and Bruni Otto. Here’s the mp3.

Having just scattered my mom’s ashes, I was definitely in a Bastards frame of mind. But it struck me as more than just amiable or familial or atmospheric or immersive. Add it all up and you’re left with what feels like a soul, which I would simultaneously define as a certain kind of believable moisture and fragrance and mood mist. I found it authentic (Perez’s script is based on an actual real-life adventure) and engaging. Apart from Freese’s Terrence Malick-influenced direction, much of the credit for the languid, aromatic vibe goes to dp Peter Grigsby.

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I was born and raised in New Jersey, teenaged and 20somethinged in Connecticut, earned my professional footing in Manhattan and have been in Los Angeles since ’83, but I “identify” as a Parisian. Honestly. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t need a map, I have my favorite cafes and restaurants, I know where all the gas stations are, I know the Metro system like the back of my hand and I have a plan to keel over from a heart attack on the streets of Montmartre at age 97 or thereabouts. I also “identify” as an Irishman as I felt instantly at home there when I visited in the fall of ’88.

“Something important is happening, and in the long run it will matter a great deal,” N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman posted on 6.15. “Ever since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Democrats have been on the ideological defensive. Even when they won elections they seemed afraid to endorse clearly progressive positions, eager to demonstrate their centrism by supporting policies like cuts to Social Security that their base hated. But that era appears to be over. The Democratic Party is becoming more assertive about its traditional values. Why?

“Part of the answer is that Democrats, despite defeats in midterm elections, believe — rightly or wrongly — that the political wind is at their backs. Growing ethnic diversity is producing what should be a more favorable electorate; growing tolerance is turning social issues, once a source of Republican strength, into a Democratic advantage instead. Reagan was elected by a nation in which half the public still disapproved of interracial marriage; Hillary Clinton is running to lead a nation in which 60 percent support same-sex marriage.

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From a 5.30.15 post about Marlon Brando‘s death scene in Edward Dmytryk‘s The Young Lions, which I watched today on a Twilight Time Bluray: “[Brando’s] Christian Diestl is in a forest not far from a recently liberated concentration camp, sick of war and bashing his rifle against a tree in a mad rage. Then he runs down a hillside and right into Dean Martin‘s Michael Whiteacre and Montgomery Clift‘s Noah Ackerman. Ignoring the fact that Diestl is unarmed, Whiteacre fires several bullets and Diestl tumbles down the hill, landing head first in a shallow stream.

“The camera goes in tight, showing that Brando’s mouth and nose are submerged. A series of rapidly-popping air bubbles begin hitting the surface — pup-pup-pup-pup-pup-pup-pup — and then slower, slower and slower still. And then — this is the mad genius of Brando — two or three seconds after they’ve stopped altogether, a final tiny bubble pops through. There’s something about this that devastates all to hell.”

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I was underwhelmed by Oren Moverman and Richard Gere‘s Time Out of Mind when I saw it nine months ago in Toronto. The truth is that I was fighting an impulse to nod out. I didn’t succumb but it was touch-and-go for a while. Raw homeless-guy realism, honestly acted, all-but-absent narrative, meandering, non-judgmental….phhffft. “An eavesdropping observational camera style and a generalized sense of compassion prove no substitute for what’s missing from Time Out of Mind — any sense of drama. This longtime pet project of producer-actor Richard Gere and, eventually, for writer-director Oren Moverman, displays a certain kind of dedication for evoking the life of the homeless in New York City, but with Gere’s character so lacking in memory and mental clarity, the film provides very little for an audience to latch on to. Tedium quickly sets in and is only sporadically relieved in this labor of love that simply doesn’t reward even the patient attention of sympathetic viewers.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review, filed on 9.7.14.

Donald Trump believes Obamacare, which even its former opponents have grudgingly acknowledged is working out or is even a modest success, is a disaster because the deductibles are so high. No offense to Billy Friedkin but speaking-style-wise he and Trump sound alike. My hair is very fine so I use Crew Fiber to give it a little body — I’m astonished that Trump never seems to wise up to this simple remedy. “Our enemy is getting stronger and stronger by the day, and we are getting weaker” — an almost exact copy of Martin Sheen‘s line from Apocalypse Now about “every moment I stay in this hotel room I get weaker and every moment Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger.”

It’s hard enough to find a vital, crackling ’70s movie in the cinematic cultural bloodstream these days, but when a ’70s film is regarded by those who saw it enos ago as merely sturdy, sufficient, good enough and (the most damning of faint praisings) professionally made, it is typically forgotten. Hence Don Siegel‘s The Black Windmill (’74), a better-than-decent hardball kidnapping drama with Michael Caine, Donald Plesance, Janet Suzman and John Vernon. I don’t know if it’s been on the tube but purchasing-wise all you can get these days is a Universal Cinema Classics DVD. No Bluray and no streaming. I’ve only the foggiest memories, but I definitely remember The Black Windmill being an 8 or an 8.5.

“I’ve always identified as black,” she said. Rachel Dolezal made a decision years ago to “wear” a black identity, and then she began tanning up and curling her hair, etc. She’s a very calm, very intelligent, positive-minded sociopath. I’ve always “identified” as a gay, Jewish, subterranean samurai motorcycle-riding free man in Paris. But I’ve never pretended to be anything more than what I am, which is just another contrarian straight white WASP from the New Jersey and Connecticut suburbs. Be yourself. Be true to your blood. There’s no other way.

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Coen brothers movies…of course! The cure that I need right now for the “Jurassic World is completely wonderful because it made so much money” virus. Cheers to editor Steven Benedict (whose Citizen Kane/Wolf of Wall Street echo video is also worth pondering).  Question: “Is the cat dead…or not dead?” Answer: The cat is everywhere. The cat is the virus in the blood. The cat is…you tell me. Maybe I’m the cat. Maybe Steven Spielberg is the cat. Maybe, like Don Barzini in The Godfather, he’s been the cat all along.

Back from New York, unpacking in my West Hollywood home, just shy of 1 am. But a word before before collapsing. It would obviously be derelict of news orgs not to have reported that last weekend Jurassic World managed the highest opening-weekend tally in box-office history — $524.1 million, of which $208.8 million was spent in North America alone. This financial windfall for Universal Pictures and Thomas Tull‘s Legendary Pictures was reported by most news orgs as the emotional equivalent of the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945. They also failed to mention a very, very minor detail in the story, which is that Jurassic World might be the dumbest blockbuster ever made in the history of motion pictures. Any fair-minded assessment of what happened last weekend would have to acknowledge that the audiences who made Jurassic World the all-time box-office champ (for now) are to a great extent responsible for the tone of stupidity in big-studio escapist flicks. 98% of the reports didn’t even toss this out in passing, not even anecdotally. They were too busy jumping for joy with their white cheerleader sweaters on, going “wheeeee!’ and hugging each other and calling their parents, etc.

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