Remember mumblecore? I’m kidding — of course we remember. But there’s an entire generation out there (Zoomers) that has never heard of it and certainly isn’t interested in knowing or asking questions or anything, and are content to just sit on their couches and inhale streaming content. I can’t believe the world has turned out as it has.

Does anyone remember Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, which is now 13 and 1/3 years old? Six years ago in Cannes I asked Baumbach about Greenberg and even he barely remembered it. Well, he remembered it but he didn’t really want to talk much about it because it was a huge bomb and because it pissed some people off.

I watched it again, and it’s still one of most daring, balls-to-the-wall, character-driven films I’ve ever seen or laughed with.

On 4.3.10 I posted a piece called “Big Greenberg Divide.” Key passage: “Greenberg is about what a lot of 30ish and 40ish X-factor people who wanted to achieve fame and fortune but didn’t quite make it or dropped the ball after a short burst…it’s about what these people are going through, or will go through. It’s dryly amusing at times, but it’s not kidding around.”

The second half of the article was a Greenberg defense written by HE correspondent “Famous Mortimer”:

“I think it is provoking such strong levels of resentment from viewers because it is a movie very much of these times but not made in the style of these times. It exposes the toxic levels of conceitedness and alienation today with the sincerity and empathy of ’70’s films by Ashby, Altman and Allen.

“First off, it’s a story about people. There is no high concept or shoehorned stake-raising set piece. Viewers either have the patience to connect with the human pain on display or they are lost. Unlike Sideways, there is no charming countryside setting or buddy comedy hijinks to punch up the mood.

“Second, the dialogue is the action. Only when the viewer is willing to think over the dialogue will characters’ seemingly ambiguous motivations and back-stories become clear. There’s no juicy monologue or nauseating flashback to convey these points. Instead, the viewer comes upon them over the course of the film in the form of passing references made by various characters. It is up to us to take these bits and pieces together and unlock the character revelations for ourselves. No more spoon-feeding cinema.

“Third, this film is a labor of love. That means idiosyncratic details are to be found at every level of its making. Only by thinking these details over and feeling the connections between them do we appreciate what the movie is trying to do. It’s a really thoughtful and heartfelt experience.”

Imagine if a straight white male had directed May December (Netflix, 11.17), a movie about a Savannah-residing, May-December couple (Julianne Moore, Charles Melton) and the arrival of a famous actress (Natalie Portman) who will soon be portraying Moore in a film about the couple’s scandalous history.

The couple is based, of course, upon the notorious Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, who began a sexual relationship in 1996 when Letourneau, a grade-school teacher, was 34, and Fualaau, one of her sixth-grade students, was 12. Letourneau did a seven-year stretch for the rape of a minor (1998 to 2004).

They were married in May 2005 when Letourneau was 43 and Fualaau was 22. The marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019. Letourneau died of cancer the following year, at age 58.

May December concerns the long-term outcome of a relationship that began under diseased circumstances — i.e., the sexual grooming of a lad by a woman 22 years his senior. Has anyone said boo about the icky aspects since the film premiered in Cannes last May? They have not.

Imagine if May December was about a gray-haired actor paying an extended visit with a Woody Allen-ish director in his mid 80s along with the director’s wife, a 50ish Asian woman. As with May December, the actor would have been signed to portray this Allen-like director in a film, and his goal would be to learn as much as he can about the beginnings of their relationship in the early ’90s and how they’ve dealt with the public condemnation that resulted from some quarters.

Do you think if Manohla Dargis were to review such a film that she would cream in her slacks like she did when she saw May December four months ago?

[Initially posted on 7.16.15] This may not pass muster with traditional Western devotees (i.e, readers of Cowboys & Indians) but arguably one of the most influential westerns ever made is Johnny Concho (’56), a stagey, all-but-forgotten little film that Frank Sinatra starred in and co-produced. For this modest black-and-white enterprise was the first morally revisionist western in which a big star played an ethically challenged lead character — i.e., a cowardly bad guy.

The conventional line is that Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks was the first western in which a major star played a gunslinging outlaw that the audience was invited to identify or sympathize with — a revenge-driven bank robber looking to even the score with an ex-partner (Karl Malden‘s “Dad” Longworth) who ran away and left Brando’s “Rio” to be arrested and sent to prison.

This opened the door, many have noted, to Paul Newman‘s rakishly charming but reprehensible Hud Bannon in Martin Ritt‘s Hud two years later, and then the Spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone (beginning with ’64’s A Fistful of Dollars) and particularly Clint Eastwood‘s “Man With No Name.”

But before One-Eyed Jacks audiences were presented with at least three morally flawed western leads portrayed by name-brand actors. First out of the gate was Sinatra’s’s arrogant younger brother of a notorious gunslinger in Concho. This was followed in ’57 by Glenn Ford‘s Ben Wade, a charmingly sociopathic gang-leader and thief, in Delmer Daves‘ 3:10 to Yuma. And then Paul Newman‘s Billy the Kid in Arthur Penn‘s The Left-Handed Gun (’58).

The Sirk “legend” obviously wasn’t regarded as a major selling point by the Universal International marketing team.

Oscar Poker urgency — Jeff and Sasha lamenting the Biden 2024 campaign situation & the suppression of Woody’s Coup de Chance, plus handicapping Hottest Best Actor & Actress Contenders, urging on Sunday’s Maher+ Carville kick–around, etc.

Here’s the link, man…go for it.

Go to the 49-minute mark…

Carville: “The last eight polls are all the same. 72%, 73% of the country…call it 75% of the country doesn’t want Biden to run again. That’s a big fuckin’ number, man.”

Maher: “That’s a very big number [for] something that is crucial…it’s ridiculous.”

Carville: “Biden vs. Nikki Haley. 49% to 43%. I have never seen an incumbent president at 43%. Do people actually know Nikki Haley’s position on anything? Naah.”

Maher: “Haley is another ‘this is as good as it gets’ Republican. It’s not going to get better than [Republican candidates like her]. There is no imaginary Alan Alda-from-The West Wing Republican. Am I right?”

Carville: “You’re right in that over recent years….[the Republicans] have stupid voters.”

Maher: “This is why they hate you. You just said ‘stupid voters’ and…I like to channel everybody’s side. They’re saying ‘yeah, okay maybe we’re stupid but do you think you’re doing stupid things in your own way? Like pregnant men?’ That’s what they say, and I get it.”

Carville: “About 10% or 11% of Democrats describe themselves as progressive liberals. Survey after survey, and these people are annoying, silly. And most people don’t know what they’re talking about. And the number of MAGA people among Republicans is 65%. So we pay a greater price for 10% of progressive wokesters than the Republican pay for 65% of their people. The identity people on the left are silly…they’re not evil…they’re just goofy. The original woke term came from a black jazz musician who was born in Shreveport and died in Houston. And then over-educated coastal white people got hold of the word, and they completely fucked it up and pissed everybody in the country off. If we could just get the faculty at Amherst to shut the fuck up, we’d be a lot better off.”

Carville: “Do you think that Joe Biden…if you tried to explain to Biden what woke is, do you think he could even understand it?”

Maher: “He’s like the dad who doesn’t really understand what the kids are into, but he doesn’t want to fight about it either. So when the wife is like ‘honey, the kids want to cut their dicks off and tear down statues of Lincoln’, he’s like ‘whatever, I’m watchin’ the game.'”

Carville: “Most of these older guys…they don’t even understand what [the kids] are talking about.”