Since arriving in the thin-air Rockies I’ve been grappling with stabbing pain in my swollen right knee and gnawing pain in my left thigh. It hurts to walk anywhere, and walking around the Telluride Film Festival like Joe Biden feels profoundly humiliating, let me tell ya.

A day or two ago I was half-hobbling toward Telluride’s Palm theatre, and a pair of Type-A women with badges passed on my left. One of them turned and glanced at me and eyeballed my badge. She wanted to know who the gimp was.

I’ve had strong legs all my life, and while I’m fairly certain this current malady isn’t permanent, the idea of resembling a member of the shuffleboard set from an assisted living facility is shattering. It certainly delivers a blow to my own self-image.

I was honestly saying to myself yesterday that I should have brought my shiny black cane with me. (I bought it during my mid-teen bout with plantar fascitis.)

I’ll say it again — walking around like Biden is hugely depressing. I have my CBD gummies, my Advil tablets, my muscle-massage gun and my Nordic Goddess body balm, and nothing really seems to help. Okay, the gummies have modified the pain somewhat but the shooting knee ache has nearly brought me to tears.

Last night I was about to leave for a 9:30 pm Galaxy screening of Pablo Larrain‘s Maria — roughly a 10-minute uphill walk — and I was so intimidated and gloomed-out by the idea of each right-leg step delivering a twitch of pain…I was so bummed that something collapsed inside, and I decided to just crash on the couch. I slept until 4:30 am.

I’m hoping that an injection or two of cortisone when I get back home might make the knee pain subside. Thank God my life activities mostly revolve around sitting — writing, watching films, driving — but the idea of being less inclined to walk here or there because of acute discomfort…that’s the end, man. “When your legs go, so do your professional opportunities” — William Wyler.

Sasha tells me my leg troubles will be alleviated if I start wearing therapeutic ugly shoes. Sasha knows I’d rather die than wear ugly shoes so I don’t know why she mentioned it.

Nancy Pelosi has experienced true menace and stark physical fear — the Jan. 6 Capitol attack by Trump’s bumblefuck hordes, the subsequent invasion of her San Francisco home and the wounding of her husband by rightwing wacko David DePape. Awful stuff.

Yesterday I was gravely accused of having menaced THR film editor Rebecca Keegan. The menace was conveyed, I was told, by posting on 8.21 that I was very angry about Keegan having cheaply slandered me in that 8.14 Sasha Stone hit piece, and by my stating the following: “If I see you in Telluride, I’m going to give you a dirty look. Fair?”

That‘s being menacing? I’ve been the recipient of dirty looks for decades, and they’re nothing. You know what the dirtiest look is? When a person you know pretty well spots you and pretends you’re not there…that you’re vapor.

[Saturday, 9.1, 2:50 pm] I’m not able to share my thoughts about Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which I caught last night (7:15 pm) at the Palm. I felt more respect than affection — I can at least say that much. I’ll try to get into it later…sorry.

HE had an absolute blast watching Sean Baker’s Anora at 9 am this morning. My second viewing, having caught the world premiere in Cannes last May. It’s so hilarious during Act Two, and the finale is so sad and touching. Mikey Madison should take the Best Actress Oscar — no question about this.

Which is to say I’ve always felt a certain degree of distaste from all things Corbet, acting and directing.

I’m nonetheless looking very much forward to seeing Corbet’s The Brutalist, which has debuted to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival. But 215 minutes, bruh…

During this afternoon’s post-Apprentice screening q & a, which featured director Ali Abassi, costars Sebastian Stan (Donald Trump) and Jeremy Strong (Roy Cohn) and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman, Strong explained his approach to playing the demonic Cohn by quoting the opening passage from Joaquin Miller‘s “Byron“:

If I were Special Counsel Jack Smith, roaming around Telluride like an average T-shirted beardo (and with no special pass), I would have certainly attended this afternoon’s (12:30 pm) Chuck Jones screening of Ali Abassi‘s The Apprentice. I was there, you bet. [Photo Credit: Sasha Stone.]

Succession star Kieran Culkin is now a likely Best Supporting Actor nominee for his performance as a hyper-obsessive, emotionally out-there, semi-Asperger’s dude in Jessie Eisenberg’s A Real Pain.

Culkin did a post-screening q&a with Eisenberg yesterday at the Chuck Jones theatre.

It followed Saturday’s 12:15 pm showing, and was full of confessional stream-of-consciousness blather about this and that. Great minds, great entertainers. I loved the film. A fascinating, character-driven, anxiety-propelled road movie (i.e., the “road” being a journey through Poland).

I can’t not acknowledge that Culkin, who’s just shy of 42, has serious, moussed-up rasta hair. I’ve never seen this kind of hair on a noteworthy white actor in my entire life. Some of those strands are almost a half-foot long.

And consider Culkin’s bloodshot eyes. The man is obviously smoking a lot of weed and maybe doing a little drinking. It’s hard to pinpoint but he definitely has that baked and wasted look.

Which is fine with me. It comes with the genius thing. I’m just familiar with this kind of biological signage…I know what it means.

There’s a whole big herd of rich kids who attend Telluride’s high school. Yesterday afternoon I was shopping at Clark’s market (just across the street from the school) when at least 20 or 25 teens were swamping the place, all attractive with super-toned bods and great-looking hair. So white and almost Teutonic. “Superior” genes, heh-heh, except it’s hard not to really think that. They looked like kids you’d run into in wealthy Swiss or German suburbs. A certain glow of entitlement.

My vaguely aching calves and knee joints didn’t feel as badly last night after popping a CDB (non-THC) gummie. I bought them at Telluride’s Green Dragon, and at the urging of Roger Durling, whose 90-year-old mom swears by them.

I also bought some hemp massage cream.

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Early this morning I decided to blow off a 9:45 am screening of Malcolm Washington, Virgil Williams and August Wilson‘s The Piano Lesson. Being based on a venerated 1987 Wilson play, I’m certain it’ll be reasonably decent at the very least, but I’m also fairly sure it won’t blow anyone away. I’ll certainly see it before long (it screens again on Monday, 9.2 at 4 pm).

Four HE viewings today: (1) Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain at the Chuck Jones, 1:15 pm; (2) Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, also at the Chuck Jones, 4:15 pm; (3) Jason Reitman‘s Saturday Night, Palm Theatre, 7:15 pm; and (4) a pure-pleasure option of re-watching either Anora at the Palm or The Apprentice at the Galaxy, both screening at 10 pm.

Ali Agassi’s The Apprentice, a sturdy, HE-approved drama about Roy Cohn’s mentoring of the young Donald Trump in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Briarcliff’s Tom Ortenberg, a man among men, has finally locked in a theatrical release date — Friday, 10.11.

The film, which is critical of Trump but not a rabid, foam-at-the-mouth takedown, will have four weekends of play before the 11.5 Presidential election day.

Not that it’s likely to change anyone’s mind as far as the Trump-Harris battle is concerned, but at least the film will enjoy a full month’s worth of commercial relevancy, and it will always be a well-crafted character drama that features excellent performances by Sebastian Stan (Trump) and Jeremy Strong (Cohn).

The Apprentice will screen in Telluride this evening at the Galaxy (10 pm).