Jerry Lewis has long been regarded as a difficult man, but listen to him at this recent Tribeca Film Festival appearance. He’s 87 and yet he seems more engaged and feisty and crackling than the vast majority of his contemporaries. Last week I was listening to 91 year-old producer Walter Mirisch talk at the TCM Classic Film Festival, and he was also sharp as a tack. There’s something about old show-business buzzards. The scrappy survival instincts that helped them make it when young are the same qualities that keep them sharp in their doddering years.

I’ve visited my mom’s assisted living facility many times and spoken to more than a few of the residents, and it hasn’t been altogether pleasant. If your brain isn’t at least 75% alert and engaged then what’s the point? You don’t have to be a prick to be intellectually focused and alert (the elegant Norman Lloyd is in his late 90s and a beautiful man to speak with) but if given a choice between a state of advanced vegetation and being a Jerry Lewis type of old guy, I’d definitely go with the latter. I suspect that Lewis biographer Shawn Levy will go “hmmm” when he reads this.

Here’s Lewis trashing Sandra Bernhard.

I hate whoever those San Francisco Film Festival dicks were who said no video or audio recording of Steven Soderbergh‘s “State of Cinema” speech last Saturday EXCEPT FOR US and then took…what, two or three days to put it on Vimeo? I hate entitled people who sit back and sip their soy lattes and can’t be bothered to hustle, and who basically don’t get the pace of things today. “It’s okay, we’ll get around to it. We have a conference call at 11 and then a business lunch but hang tight…”

Soderbergh: “In 2003, 455 films were released, 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released, so you’re not imagining things — there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet ten years ago [the] studio market share 69%, [and] last year [it was] 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie.”

I would say that God cares about me as much as I care about this or that granule of sand as I walk on the beach in Santa Monica or Florida or Barbados. Do I care about the granule? Not particularly but I value it in a certain context. I respect the place it has in the universe. Do I hate the granule of sand? Of course not. Do I feel affection for it? No, but who would? A microscopic component in the grandest of schemes is hardly worth “caring” about. That’s pretty much how “God” feels about me, no offense.

Tuesday was one of the most glorious New York City days ever — dry, sunny, blue skies, perfect temps. LAX flight landed at JFK around 8 am, dumped bags at Lex and 51st just before 10 am, had late breakfast with friends at Grammercy Park hotel, moved my stuff over to an Airbnb rental in Fort Greene…and promptly encountered the mother of all dead-zone wifi problems. Agony. I caught a 6 pm screening of What Maisie Knew and then met Jett in F.G. Tomorrow is another day.

Temporary HE headquarters at 128 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

I only just saw this tonight. Happened yesterday. I’ve had nightmares about this. Imagine what the pilots were going through those last few seconds.

Last Friday night N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott essentially said that high-quality, large-screen viewing experiences are always desirable, but what matters most is that viewers have a chance to see the good smaller films (like Jeff Nichols‘ Mud) even if it means seeing them under diminished or even semi-crappy conditions — on a 42-inch screen in your living room, say, or on an iPad3. And he’s right. But boy, am I glad I live in a realm that allows me a chance to see films as they’re really meant to be seen.

Seeing new films under the finest technical circumstances has always been a gimme for the industry elite and urban swells. But today the New Diminshment is small screens. iPad3, Macbook Pro and iPhone viewings drain the wonder out of films, but at least films — the smaller ones particularly — are accessible via new technologies in outlying areas. It’s not exactly a shit-and-lettuce sandwich for movie lovers who live in the sticks, but the situation flirts with that. If you’ve never left the farm, the farm is fine. But once you’ve been to Paris…

Have you noticed that almost every hotshot entertainment website these days has the same damn look? That look can be described as follows: Acres of white space with large-point-size type with huge boldfaced headlines. All the hip web designers got together on a video conference call about 18 months ago and decided on this. The apparent consensus us that GenY readers don’t want density. They want their websites to look like pre-school children’s books, like The Adventures of Babar and Celeste.

For serious liberal-minded Hollywood filmmakers of the ’50s and early ’60s, Gen. Curtis LeMay was the gift that kept on giving. Gen. Ennis C. Hawkes in Strategic Air Command, Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, Gen. James Matoon Scott in Seven Days in May…okay, LeMay gave three times. Am I forgetting another characterization? (Video stolen from Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet, who stole it from someone else.)

I’ve decided to try for standby seating on an LAX-to-JFK red-eye tonight (leaving at 11:30 pm) rather than wait for tomorrow’s ticketed 10:40 am flight. I’ll be able to get more out of Tuesday as well as catch a 6 pm Manhattan screening. There’s no guarantee I’ll get on, of course, but if I check in at 9 or 9:30 pm I’ll have a decent chance. If I wanted to lock in tonight’s flight it would cost me over $400 bills but standby will cost only a nominal fee. If I don’t get on tonight it won’t be the end of the world and tomorrow’s reservation will still stand. So I’m going to be bold and go for it.

11:05 pm update: I’m on the flight.

I felt mezzo-mezzo about Eric Rochand‘s Mobius, which played a few days ago at the Tribeca Film Festival as well as L.A.’s COLCOA fest. Set largely in gauche Monaco, it’s partly a financial espionage drama and partly…actually mostly a romantic relationship drama between Jean Dujardin and Cecile de France as a non-governmental Russian spook and a French-English financial trader. The two twains don’t really blend or cross-pollinate, but Mobius is not a boring or listless film — it’s reasonably engrossing.

The obvious template is Alfred Hitchcock‘s Notorious, but what happens between the lovers isn’t about “love” as much as intense chemistry and gratifying orgasms and comforting hugs.

I’ll give it this much — it ends with one of those nice hugs, and in a way that feels more or less satisfying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spy drama that lets the plot stuff go at the end and just zeroes in on the heart. So it’s different, at least.

But the first sex scene is very…odd. They go back to his hotel room and they do it gently and slowly — Rochand mainly stays on facial closeups although he offers a shot or two of De France’s lower anatomy — and she comes, twice. But I was in my seat going “what is this?…we’re just going to sit here and watch two attractive, well-lighted people fuck? I mean, I guess it’s okay but why?”

I was having this reaction because the movie just stops during this scene. It brings nothing significant to the table. And it’s not really necessary as the thing that really matters in Mobius, as noted, is the warm embrace of a man with strong arms. So watching Cecile de France quietly gasp and moan is kind of a “what?” moment.

Sex scenes were fairly common in the late ’60s and ’70s but those days are long gone. The ones that go one for more than 15 or 20 or 30 seconds (i.e., with the lovers in more or less the same location and sexual position) always stop things cold. You have to cut, cut, cut and make it all seem brief. You obviously have to imply more than show. You can do the steamy sweaty thing but you have to do it…I was going to say like Adrian Lyne but that’s an old reference. It’s nonetheless a good idea to always use all kinds of hot angles and humor and snazzy back-lighting and whatnot and get it over with sooner rather than later. You sure as hell don’t want to dwell on sex scenes, that’s for sure.

For whatever reason I can’t copy the embed code on this audio file of Steven Soderbergh‘s “State of Cinema” talk last Saturday at the San Francisco Film Festival. So just go to Anne Thompson‘s Indiewire column and give it a listen. Update: Has Thompson’s mp3 been taken down? If so, whoever’s responsible is a dick. And those who insisted on no recordings of any kind last Saturday are dicks also.

Update: Deadline has posted a transcript: http://m.deadline.com/2013/04/steven-soderbergh-state-of-cinema-address/

I’m going to read William Faulkner‘s As I Lay Dying on my 5.3 NYC-to-Berlin flight as preparation for James Franco‘s filmed adaptation, which will play in the Un Certain Regard section. The story is about an ailing family matriarch, Addie Bundren (Beth Grant), on her way out and efforts by her sons and others to honor her request to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Franco has cast Danny McBride in a supporting role, which strikes me as curious given that McBride is renowned for playing brute, snorting, slovenly beasts in comedies. Jim Parrack (True Blood) plays Cash, Addie’s oldest son, and Franco plays Darl, the second oldest. Logan Marshall-Green, Ahna O’Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson also costar.