On 1.21.72, right in the middle of the grandest, funkiest and most fabled era of auteurist glory, Dick Cavett asked four directors — Robert Altman, Mel Brooks, Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Capra — if Hollywood was dead. He didn’t mean L.A.-centric filmmaking but the big-studio system that reigned from the ’20s through the ’50s. He was also observing that corporations and corporate-think had taken over from old-school moguls like Harry Cohn and Daryl F. Zanuck and Louis B. Mayer. It’s interesting that Capra, an old-school conservative and a somewhat derided sentimentalist at the time, had the most prescient response: “This has been said many times before…Hollywood is down at the moment, yes…[but] film is not gonna die, I’ll tell you that. If not in Hollywood then someplace else. Maybe Hollywood is dying as a geographical point but…we haven’t really scratched the surface.”

One, producers and distributors have been editing critical review quotes for display ads for a long time. And two, anything you publish (including a tweet) can be re-quoted by anyone. So I don’t see what the big deal is about producer Scott Rudin having used an A.O. Scott tweet about Inside Llewyn Davis for a N.Y. Times full-page ad that ran last Saturday. CBS Films reportedly paid the Times $70 grand to run it. A Rudin rep courteously asked Scott for permission and he declined. They ran it anyway. They were within their rights. Isn ‘t it flattering to be ignored in such a manner?

It’s one thing to be a passionate film critic, and another to be a rude and boorish one. When 12 Years A Slave director Steve McQueen took the stage at Monday night’s New York Film Critics Circle award ceremony, City Arts critic Armond White heckled him from the rear of the room, according to Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh. “As soon as McQueen took the stage, White [shouted] ‘You’re an embarrassing doorman and garbage man. Fuck you. Kiss my ass.'” The headline of White’s City Arts review, posted on 10.16.13, claimed that 12 Years a Slave “uses sadistic art to patronize history.”

Dallas Buyer’s Club star Matthew McConaughey sold it at last Saturday night’s gala at the Palm Springs Film Festival. I’m not saying he didn’t speak from from the heart or tell it as honestly as he knew. But it was basically an audition for his Oscar acceptance speech. He could definitely take it. I’m more of a Leonardo DiCaprio/Wolf of Wall Street guy but McConaughey’s Ron Woodroof performance was tough and snarly and ballsy as hell. “I wasn’t that easy to live with at the time, but you never let me know it” — a message for his wife, Camila Alves, and his kids.

“Wow! I just embarrassed myself at CES,” Michael Bay wrote today on his blog. “I was about to speak for Samsung for this awesome Curved 105-inch UHD TV. I rarely lend my name to any products, but this one is just stellar. I got so excited to talk, that I skipped over the Exec VP’s intro line and then the teleprompter got lost. Then the prompter went up and down, [and] then I walked off. I guess live shows aren’t my thing.” Hey, it happens. I “went up” once during a performance of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at a small community theatre in Stamford, Connecticut. Your concentration slips, you start stammering…awful. Sidenote: No way am I buying an Ultra HD set from Samsung or anyone else. My 60″ Samsung Plasma is just fine.

Asked by Deadline‘s Michael Fleming what he was going for with The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese answers as follows: “I didn’t want [audiences] to be able to think ‘problem solved’ and forget about it. I wanted them to feel like they’d been slapped into recognizing that this behavior has been encouraged in this country, and that it affects business and the world, and everything down to our children and how they’re going to live, and their values in the future.

“It’s almost becoming like, these days in Hollywood, people misbehave, they have problems in their lives, drugs, alcohol, they go to rehab and come out again. And that means it’s okay, it’s an expected ritual you go through.

“You make a film about slavery, it’s important for young people to understand and see it vibrantly presented on the screen. And when you make a film” — not Wolf, he means — “that just points up and decries the terrible goings on in the financial world and the financial philosophy and the financial religion of America, we do that a certain way and it makes us feel okay, that we’ve done our duty, we’ve seen the film, given it some awards and it goes away and we put it out of our minds.

Scorsese: “By the way, Jordan [Belfort] and a bunch of guys went to jail, and even though they served sentences in very nice jails, the reality is jail is nice and a light sentence is still a sentence. The lingering reality is, if you look at the last disaster this world created, who went to jail?” Fleming: “Nobody.”
Scorsese: “That’s right.”

My last 2014 Highlights update posted on 1.3. This morning I reviewed Hitfix’s “Most Anticipated Prestige Films of 2014” piece (which I avoided because it’s one of those photo cavalcade page-view pieces) and have added 9 of their picks along with 4 wait-and-see maybes. So my previous total of 46 is now 55 or 59 with the maybes. I wasn’t sure about 2014 before — now I’m thinking it might be another banner year.

The Hitfix additions in order of presumed quality: Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, Noah Baumbach‘s Untitled Public School Project, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special, Craig Johnson‘s The Skeleton Twins (a 2014 Sundance selection), Hossein Amini‘s The Two Faces of January, Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth, Jon Stewart‘s Rosewater, Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, Todd Haynes‘ Carol.

Probationary/Concerned/Lack of Trust/Wait-and-See: David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups (IF it even comes out this year — you know Malick). Ryan Gosling‘s How To Catch A Monster (judgment in question after The Place Beyond The Pines, Only God Forgives), Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd.

Last night the legendary Forest Whitaker was presented with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s 8th annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence. The idea was to raise money and to push Whitaker’s Butler performance as Best Actor-worthy. An Oscar nomination seems like a safe bet, no? The event was posh, man. Tuxedos and gowns and waiters and black-suited goons with their arms folded behind them. It happened at Goleta’s Bacara Resort, which has never been easy to find without GPS. I was there along with Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and In Contention‘s Kris Tapley (accompanied by his wife April).

One of several underwhelming photos I took last night — (l. to r.) Forrest Whitaker, Angela Basset, Michael Jordan.

Forrest Whitaker and wife Keisha Nash prior to last night’s ballroom event at Goleta’s Bacara Resort.

Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan, Santa Barbara Film festival director Roger Durling.

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has landed Wolf of Wall Street‘s Martin Scorsese for a nice webcam chat — nothing crazy, loose and easy but, as always with Scorsese, nothing but the truth. How can you not love this guy? At 71, Scorsese is probably as alive and hungry and ready to roll as he ever was, and perhaps a bit more so in the heat of the Wolf “controversy.” I hate using that word in general (it sounds like a local TV news term) but especially in this context. When an angry debate is due to a vocal minority either unable or unwilling to get where a film is coming from, it’s not controversial — it’s perceptional or remedial.

Thanks to the gracious Steven Gaydos for ushering me into today’s Variety brunch (11 am to 12:45 pm) at the Parker Palm Springs. Tasty omelettes, fresh fruit, good coffee, agreeable sunshine. The main honorees were Wolf of Wall Street costar Jonah Hill (introduced by Hill’s Cyrus costar Marisa Tomei) and Saving Mr. Banks director John Lee Hancock (introduced by Colin Farrell). Among the ten upcoming directors honored were Ben Falcone (the upcoming Tammy which stars his wife Melissa McCarthy) and Belle helmer Ama Asante.

Around 6:30 pm I drove over to the Rennaissance hotel to pick up my Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival press pass. I didn’t want to park in their main lot because they slap you with a $12 parking fee if you stay more than 30 minutes so I parked at some little office building next door and then climbed through some bushes to get to the Rennaissance. I got the pass, came back out and went back into the bushes again. Except I came out at a different area and had to stumble over a dirt patch and around a wall to get to the parking area. But I didn’t see that a curb with a steep drop was just beyond the wall, and so I went tumbling and crashing down upon the hard rocky pavement. No broken camera or torn jacket, but I bruised my right elbow, bloodied my right hand (vino dripping on the iPhone 5), slightly bruised my right hip and banged my left knee. I should have used the flashlight app on the phone. My fault, not the curb’s.