I’m sorry but every time I listen to the brief conversation between James Cagney‘s “C.R. MacNamara” (inspired by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara?) and the painter guy, I bust out chuckling. It happens between 2:12 and 2:19.

“We had to go with Cagney because Cagney was the whole picture. He really had the rhythm, and that was very good. It was not funny, but the speed was funny…the general idea was, let’s make the fastest picture in the world…and yeah, we did not wait, for once, for the big laughs. — One Two Three director-writer Billy Wilder talking to Cameron Crowe.

Variety‘s Clayton Davis is reporting that Killers of the Flower Moon costar Lily Gladstone won’t campaign for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (a prize she would almost certainly win without breaking a sweat) but instead for Best Actress, which is not my idea of a smart move.

For one thing Gladstone will be going up against Maestro‘s Carey Mullligan and Poor Things‘ Emma Stone — definitely the top two frontrunners as we speak. Not to mention Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Huller, Priscilla‘s Cailee Spaeny (who won the Best Actress prize in Venice), Nyad‘s Annette Bening and The Color Purple‘s Fantasia Barrino.

Gladstone’s handlers know that her performance as Osage Nation victim Mollie Burkhart is good but unexceptional — the hard truth is that director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth didn’t give her all that much to perform. She mainly radiates suspicion and hostility at the white guys who are killing her fellow Osage tribespersons for their oil money.

Her performance is certainly less of a grabber than Stone’s, and the word on the street is that Mulligan, who’s been giving one knockout performance after another since breaking through 14 years ago with an acclaimed debut in An Education…the word is that Mulligan blows Maestro costar and director Bradley Cooper off the screen.

And let’s not belittle Huller, Spaeny, Barrino and Bening.

Gladstone’s attempt to land a Best Actress nomination is strictly an identity chessboard play.

The pitch: Gladstone’s performance may not be as powerhouse as Stone’s or Mulligan’s, but, as Davis explains in his article, this is a chance for the Academy to make history and set things right. “Don’t bother about quality of performance or the scope of her role,” Gladstone’s team is saying. “Identity is a much bigger deal.”

Davis: “Indigenous representation in the Academy has been virtually non-existent in the history of cinema. There have been three Indigenous women nominated for best actress — Merle Oberon for The Dark Angel (1935), Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider (’03) and Yalitza Aparicio for Roma (’18). Those women are British, Kiwi, and Mexican, respectively. Along with never winning an acting Oscar, an Indigenous actress from the U.S. has never won a SAG or Critics Choice prize, or even been nominated by those groups.”

Over the last six or seven years HE has noted repeatedly that woke flavors, sympathies and constitutions have been a ticket to Oscar glory by way of the New Academy Kidz. Movies about ethnic, non-white or outside-the-usual-mainstream characters and subject matter and/or films made by women or non-Anglos…good to go.

In the Best Picture category alone the winners have fit this paradigm…(1) the middle-class Asian family meets a Marvel-esque nerd sensibility in Everything Everywhere All at Once, (2) the hearing-challenged family in CODA, (3) the homeless woman saga, directed by a female Asian (Chloe Zhao), that was Nomadland, and (4) Parasite, the lacerating social drama directed by a South Korean genre nerd (Bong Joon ho). Green Book’s Best Picture triumph was an exception to this pattern (and was fiercely condemned by woke critics and columnists) but Moonlight (Black director-writer, focus on Black gay males) adhered to it.

Woke ideology has taken over, and everything (including Oscar campaigns in the acting categories) is measured by this.

Telluride flashback: On Thursday, 8.31, I was chatting with a couple of journo columnist acquaintances (i.e., not strictly critics) who, for political reasons or whatever, had seemingly bought into woke theology, or at least seem to have decided that siding with the wokesters is the safest way to go. The subject turned to Killers of the Flower Moon and my previously-stated view that Gladstone will not only be Oscar-nominated but may win, partly for the quiet intensity of her performance but largely, be honest, because of her Native American heritage. Because a Native American has never won an acting Oscar before.

I opined that in terms of her actual performance Gladstone delivers sufficiently but that’s all. Mostly she stares a hole into the camera lens…quietly enraged, guilt-trippy, “God will get you,” etc.

Immediately upon saying that Gladstone’s ethnicity will be a significant factor in landing a nomination, one of the journos said this was “insulting” and that “I won’t have it…I won’t tolerate this.” He was essentially saying that my opinion was racist, although he qualified this with the fact that we’ve known each other for decades and that he likes me personally but this kind of talk (harumph) will not be allowed in his presence.

Gladstone should go supporting. She would win in a walk.

“…who revelled in incessant womanizing.”

Over the last four days (including today), Russell Brand has gone from being the famously hyper comedian he’s been over the last 25 years or so to being…a dead man.

Is he, in fact, guilty of rape within the statute of limitations in Los Angeles or wherever? If so then he needs to face proper justice. But since last Saturday, he’s been tried and convicted and disembowled by social media, and that’s the bottom line.

Question #1: Why did none of his four accusers press charges with the authorities? Why did they wait 10 or 15 years to speak up? #MeToo made it a bit easier for victims to come forward five or six years ago. Some are persuaded that other accusers will come forward.

Question #2: What about that Tonia Buxton observation? — i.e., “Russell was horrid, but women were chucking themselves at him!”

Question #3: Brand has allegedly repented and, at age 48, is apparently no longer the ruthless sexual animal he apparently was in the ’90s, aughts and early 20teens. (Or so Tonia Buxton has said.) Should this be a consideration or should he be sent to the guillotine regardless?

In early 2003 (or was it late ’02?) I pitched a big Matrix story to Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers. With The Matrix Reloaded due to open on 5.15.03, I had gotten hold of a copy of the Wachowskis’ script and was looking to scoop the world with a few plot points (including the hair-raising freeway chase sequence) but without spoiling the whole thing. (Naturally.) I’d also picked up some odd domestic details about The Wachowskis, who were then called Larry and Andy and known for being extra-reclusive.

Travers was interested in running a scoop of this kind. We sat down and talked it over at a Manhattan eatery. I didn’t know for a fact that Travers had briefed Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, but it would have been odd if he hadn’t.

The Reloaded script had been passed to me by former Silver Pictures executive Dan Cracchiolo, who had worked for the company’s founder, Joel Silver, between the mid ’90s and early aughts. Dan had struck out on his own a year or so earlier, although I suspected that things may have soured between Silver and himself over possible drug issues — Dan’s, I mean.

I had been especially chummy with Silver between mid ’92 and early ’94, but then relations chilled. (The reasons are too complex to recite here.) The occasionally tempestuous Silver was the real-life model for Saul Rubinek‘s “Lee Donowitz” character in True Romance. (It’s also been said he was at least a partial model for Tom Cruise‘s “Les Grossman” in Tropic Thunder.)

In any event I met with Travers to discuss the shape and tone of the Reloaded article — a few Wachowski morsels, a few plot leaks but not too many, etc. I tapped it out and sent it along. The article definitely worked on its own terms but of course it had to be fact-checked and whatnot. Which meant calling Silver, of course. It was my understanding that Silver hit the roof and called Wenner to yell and scream.

The next thing I knew the piece had been killed. When I called and wrote Travers to ask what happened he wouldn’t respond…silencio. I presumed it had been killed by Wenner. I can’t recall if I was paid a kill fee. I only know that the Rolling Stone vibes were pretty good before I turned the piece in, but after it was killed I was Nowhere Man.

So I sold the article to Empire magazine, and it wound up running right around the time of the May opening of The Matrix Reloaded. Nobody liked the film that much, and everyone hated The Matrix Revolutions.

Dan died in a motorcycle accident the following year.

If the 66 or 67 year-old Joe Biden was in the White House today and preparing to run again next year, no one would be talking about age impairment at all.

Watch him in this 60 Minutes / Leslie Stahl profile, which ran sometime in the spring of ’09. Biden was pretty much at full strength back then, or 14 years ago…alert, mentally agile, vigorous, quick with a response. Obviously an older guy but nowhere close to today’s doddering version. Voters don’t want a shuffling slowpoke President who’s unable to speak a sentence without slurring or stumbling or muttering. There’s a huge difference between 2009 Joe and the 2023 version…this is what people don’t like.