It’s hard to think of any actress-celebrity who seemed to represent the vapidly self-absorbed, pre-progressive-social-consciousness era of the ’50s and early ’60s more profoundly than Annette Funicello, the ex-Mousketeer and AIP Beach Blanket Bingo queen who has died at age 70. I guess Shelley Fabares and Connie Francis were just as “bad” in this regard, and I guess you can’t really “blame” Funicello for projecting all that puerility and making all those AIP beach movies with Frankie Avalon.

I’m not talking about Ms. Funicello herself, of course, but what she performed and sold as a “brand.” Put on the headphones and listen to “Tall Paul“, and then marvel at how Funicello’s mentality co-existed in the ’50s and ’60s with that of, say, Joni Mitchell‘s. Funicello projected such naivete and a lack of any kind of fire. Francis, at least, could sing “and I like it fine” in the plastic-pop hit “Stupid Cupid“, but even that, I suspect, was beyond Funicello’s reach.

That aside I’m sorry for the sadness being felt right now by Funicello’s friends, family, loved ones.

This just in from Block-Korenbrot, passing along a note from her children Gina, Jacky and Jason: “We are so sorry to lose mother. She is no longer suffering anymore and is now dancing in heaven. We love and will miss her terribly.”

You can recite all those Iron Lady incantations until you’re blue in the face. For me one of the most revealing Margaret Thatcher quotes is her allusion to Francis Bacon as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures.” That, to me, almost says it all. Any person who has made it in a tough world has a little Maggie Thatcher in him/her, and on that level I feel a certain kinship and respect. But let’s not get carried away with that.

Where would Thatcher’s reputation be without Meryl Streep?

The Real McCoy brought a lot of pain into a lot of people’s lives. Ask the Brits who lived through her time at 10 Downing Street. Ask Elvis Costello. You can argue that pain is inevitable in life and that too many Brits were slacking off and throwing down pints at the pub before she came along. You can argue that what truly matters in life is mustering the toughness and discipline to meet the challenges. But the bottom line is that Ms. Thatcher was an essentially heartless social Darwinian who, like Ronald Reagan, believed in stroking the elite.

It’s not the clothing…well, yes, it’s the clothing, of course, but it’s the atmosphere inside Bergdorf Goodman‘s that people particularly love. It feels incredibly flush, pampered, protected, perfect. But I hate it when sales people grin almost lasciviously at me and say, “Can I help you?” Or, much worse, when they stand nearby as I try something on. I always turn to them and smile and say, “Sorry but I think this is between me and the jacket.”

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s opens via eOne on May 3rd.

You don’t have to be empty to love shopping or browsing at Bergdorf’s, but some of the worst wealthy people in the world can be found there every day. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — an ideal pairing at Quentin Tarantino‘s Beverly Cinema.

“If you clothes are not at that place, they have no future. There’s no future, those clothes. Sorry.” — Isaac Mizrahi.

“I had hoped that even on such a subject as [gay relationships and marriage], where passions run high, the internet was a forum where ideas could be freely discussed without descending into name-calling. I believe that is what it could be, but it depends on all of us behaving, even behind our aliases, in a humane, intelligent and open way.” — Final paragraph in Jeremy Irons’ mea culpa following his father-son incest comment during a recent Huffington Post interview.

Substitute “drive” for “live” and Ron Howard‘s Rush (Universal, 9.20) is saying you always need to go for the gusto even if it’s risky or dangerous. You have to accept that death is just around the corner. Presumably the film is a more varied smorgasbord but the trailer seems almost queer for death and wipe-outs as Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brough pursue their adrenalin highs.

Peter Morgan‘s script is about the 1976 Formula One season and the rivalry between drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda. “After a catastrophic crash[3] at the 1976 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring that could have killed him, Formula One driver Niki Lauda (Bruhl) returns to face his rival James Hunt (Hemsworth) in their pursuit of the 1976 World Championship at Fuji in Japan,” the synopsis says.

The word “rush” obviously sells itself but it lacks dynamic snap with Premium Rush out last year and that narco drama Rush from 20-odd years ago.

I’m presuming that sex with race-track groupies or girlfriends is probably intense and gasping and world-class. Every race-car film starting with Grand Prix and Le Mans has more or less told us that.

I’ve mentioned the “cavalcade of opening doors” metaphor sequence in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Spellbound before, but I’ve never found a clip until now. It’s not embarassing by today’s standards — it’s embarassing by the standards of 50 years ago. But there’s something about the on-the-nose emotionality of this almost insanely overwrought bit (which begins around 2:00 and starts the payoff around 2:45) that’s curiously “right.”

I saw Phillip Noyce‘s Newsfront at the 1978 New York Film Festival. I loved it, and somehow I got my hands on a special Newsfront pin made by the distributor. I lost it a couple of years later (naturally) but last night I was given an exact copy by a good friend. It’s now on the lapel of my best suit jacket.

I used to wear this pin everywhere. I was always given special treatment as people assumed I was some news syndicate hotshot. Hosts and waiters where always obliging when I visited a nice restaurant, which rarely happened as I was dirt poor and living hand-to-mouth back then. Six months before the 1978 NYFF I’d moved into my very first Manhattan apartment, a reasonably-priced, cockroach-infested dump at 138 Sullivan Street — bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. On the fourth or fifth floor.

Another example of a relatively mediocre or underwhelming film that nonetheless looked really exciting as a one-sheet. Here’s the dope on the real guy. Here’s the trailer. Nobody remembers. Dust bin.

This TV ad is something like 53 years old. I’d never seen it before this morning. I found it among several commercials and print ads in a 4.7 Buzzfeed article called “The Very Best Ads From the Mad Men Era.” Here’s a little background.

The legendary documentarian Les Blank has passed away. I’m not much of an authority as I’ve only seen three or four of his films, and because I’m partial to his early to late ’80s period (i.e., Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers, Burden of Dreams, In Heaven There Is No Beer?, Huey Lewis And The News: Be-Fore!, Ry Cooder And The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces). But I’m not the only one who feels that Burden of Dreams is his masterpiece.

From a Werner Herzog riff in Burden of Dreams: “Nature is much stronger than we are. [It’s been said] that nature is full of erotic elements. I don’t see so much erotic. I see it full of obscenities. Nature is vile and base. I see fornicaton and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there is a lot of misery. The trees here are in misery. I think the birds are in misery. They just screech in pain.”

Here’s the last thing I wrote about Blank, which posted in August 2010:

“A little more than six years ago filmmaker Les Blank, best known for his legendary Burden of Dreams (1982), a doc about the making of Werner Herzog‘s Fitzcarraldo, took part in a 2004 Santa Barbara Film Festival panel discussion about documentary filmmaking. I don’t remember what Blank said (a video of the discussion sits below), but I do recall his decision to lay out DVDs of his films on a blanket outside the theatre and offer them for sale.

“The fact that Burden of Dreams is now free on Hulu indicates that it’s not exactly a hot-selling Criterion Collection title. It is nonetheless one of the most stirring making-of-a movie docs ever made. It is arguably equal to Fitzcarraldo itself, as both films deal with a white man’s manic obsession and borderline lunacy in a remote South American jungle, and how it impacts a native culture. Klaus Kinski‘s Fitzcarraldo = Werner Herzog = Fitzcarraldo and back again.

“In my book BOD is in the same realm as George Hickenlooper‘s Hearts of Darkness, Laurent Bouzereau‘s two-hour-long ‘making of Jaws‘ doc (i.e., originally included on a Jaws special edition laser disc in the ’90s, re-appeared on a 30th anniversary Jaws DVD that came out in ’05) and Charles Lauzarika‘s Tricks of the Trade, an innovative 71-minute doc about the making of Ridley Scott‘s Matchstick Men.

In a 4.7 N.Y. Times interview with Dave Itzkof, Louis C.K. is asked to compare his surging career (his “Oh, My God” HBO special, the digital-download success of “Live at the Beacon Theatre,” a role in David O. Russell‘s ABSCAM film) with the opportunities and accomplishments of lesser-known performers. And he says something about the difficulty of making it that hits home.

Itzkoff: “Does it matter that what you’ve achieved with your online special and your tour…[that this] can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?

Louis C.K.: “Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?”

Itzkoff: “You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.”

Louis C.K.: “So why do I have the platform and the recognition?”

Itzkoff: “At this point you’ve put in the time.”

Louis C.K.: “There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say ‘it’s not fair, you have all that stuff.’ I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by ‘new at it’ I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction.”

I’ve been doing an online column for almost 15 years now (the Mr. Showbiz column started in ’98), and the online adventure has been a step-by-step, brick-by-brick process. It only really started to get good and semi-fulfilling about seven or eight years ago. But the print days of the ’80s and ’90s were sometimes horrible. I remember being so miserable around ’94 or ’95 that I used to dream about ways of moving to Australia or Asia and never coming back and maybe even changing my name. I wanted to move to Europe and never return in ’03. (I wound up moving to Paris for the entire summer that year.)

I wouldn’t say that making it has taken “my whole life,” as Louis declares, but it was anything but easy. In the ’80s and ’90s it sometimes felt like I was hauling Fitzcarraldo’s boat over the muddy mountain.

In Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation, a professional-class married couple (Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi) with a bright and perceptive teenage daughter (Sarina Farhadi) was shown going through a breakup, which was largely about whether or not to live in a repressive Iran. In Farhadi’s The Past, a Parisian couple (Berenice Bejo, Ali Mosaffa) with two kids (including Pauline Burlet‘s teenaged daughter) is divorcing over the husband’s decision to return to Iran.

Except when Mosaffa returns to Paris to sign divorce papers, he finds Bejo and the kids living with a younger French-Middle Eastern guy (A Prophet‘s Tahar Rahim). Duhn-duhhhn! Duhn-duhn-duhn-duhhhn!