…at 15 mph on a Manhattan-bound 7 train. Grateful for the transportation and the a.c., of course, but otherwise a miserable environment to endure. I’ve ridden mass transit systems all over the world, and New York’s subway service is the absolute pits. Oldies, fatties and those burdened with heavy luggage forced to climb stairs half the time…it really sucks.

I’m “glad”, in a sense, for having visited the friendly but dull and desolate urban wasteland that is Detroit.

I spoke to a cabdriver who’s lived in Detroit for 65 years. “When was Detroit’s peak era?” I asked. “The late ‘50s,” he replied.

The Flixbus journey from Detroit to London, Ontario was visually pleasant — flat cornfield farmland with occasional silos and vast blue skies. It reminded me of southern Texas and the long agricultural and steer-grazing stretch between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, Argentina.

The flat, modest, sprawling village of Grand Bend, Ontario is fine as far as it goes. A well-tended place, friendly people, a nice library, most of the usual amenities.

Alas, many of the weekend tourists roaming around near the crowded Lake Huron shoreline were chubby or porcine and wearing, of course, the usual low-rent garb. I felt truly sorry for their full-of-beans, bright-eyed toddlers, knowing they’re almost certainly doomed to look and behave the same as they come into adulthood.

We are living through a period of a general lack of refinement, slovenliness and cultural decline, and all you can do is slowly shake your head like Jose Ferrer’s Turkish Bey in Lawrence of Arabia and mutter “I am surrounded by cattle.”

There are certainly no persons resembling Peter O’Toole, Claude Rains, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins or Anthony Quayle on the tree-lined streets of Grand Bend — I can tell you that for certain.

Okay, I’m partially taking that back. There was one exceptionally attractive and interesting person I ran into in Grand Bend — a young, slender and rather tall Vietnamese woman named Liz, a waitress at a disappointing Japanese restaurant and a resident of nearby Goderich. She wouldn’t have been cast in Lawrence but she was certainly genteel and well-spoken. David Lean would have given her a large tip.

Did the 20th Century realm that I knew as a New Jersey suburban kid and a young lad in Connecticut, Boston and NYC…maybe it never precisely existed as I recall it although I’m 100% certain that people were a lot thinner back then. Either way that era is gone for good now.

Obviously the Barbenheimer competition, but could it also be that the general expectations of movie fans have suddenly shifted or turned along with the zeitgeist, and that audiences suddenly want more than just action distractions? Out of the blue they’re suddenly hungry for more story, more artistry, more thematic heft, more feeling? I’m asking.

Tonight’s Spirit Airlines flight from Detroit to LaGuardia has been bumped three times. Latest projected LGA arrival time: 11:20 pm. Not much chance to catch a Connecticut or NJ train once I finally arrive at GCS or Penn Station, which will probably force me to fork over $200 for an LGA hotel room.

Will Spirit Airlines do the right thing? I think not.

Actual Spirit Airlines response: “It’s the weathah. Sorry ‘bout that.” Bullshit — the weather here and in NYC is completely mild and uneventful.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT 313 UPDATE DTW-LGA
Your estimated departure time is now Jul 31, 8:28 PM. We’re sorry for this delay.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT 313 UPDATE DTW-LGA
Your estimated departure time is now Jul 31, 8:48 PM. We’re sorry for this delay.

SPIRIT AIRLINES FLIGHT 313 UPDATE DTW-LGA
Your estimated departure time is now Jul 31, 9:22 PM. We’re sorry for this delay.

8:00 pm update: Team Spirit has suddenly decided to accelerate the departure time…maybe. The 8:01 departure is bunk, of course. (It’s now 8:21 pm.) They’re improvising, playing it by ear.

Announcement from female Spirit rep with a Detroit accent: “We’re gonna be boardin’ very shorely” (not a typo).

Posted at 8:58 pm:

Friendo sez…

39 years ago I was part of a unit publicity effort in support of Tim Burton’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure ‘85), which shot in the late summer and fall of ‘84. I never met Paul Reubens but I watched him behave and perform a lot. Funny, fascinating dude.

I’m sorry that he’s succumbed to cancer, but when your number’s up, it’s up. Hugs and condolences…life is way too short.

It’s been 43 years since I had my one and only viewing of William Richert’s Winter Kills (‘79). I didn’t just dislike this paranoid, overly-flamboyant fantasy fiction about the JFK assassination — I was infuriated by it. But I’ll give it another shot. What the hell. It’ll play the Film Forum and the New Beverly later this month.

An ambitious, deeply felt, consummately crafted biopic…yes, agreed. But overpraise can hurt a film as much as negative reviews…calm down.

Description #1: A two-track Jeff and Sasha chat — first about the evolution of women’s #MyTurn complaint-and-identity culture of the last 30 or 40 years (mostly Sasha’s story), and a second about Barbie, box-office, various projected Best Picture contenders, etc. Again, the link.

Description #2: Jeff calls Sasha from Grand Bend, Ontario, and one of the big subjects is Barbie, of course — will the blowout box-office launch Greta Gerwig‘s film into the Best Picture race? And if so, how many Oscar nominations are we talking about?

Plus a rumination on happiness for women and how Isabella Rossellini has found it by running a farm in the Hamptons. We also discuss film festivals and the landscape of the awards race.

Hollywood Elsewhere began reading stories and essays by the great Charles Bukowski in the early ‘70s. And then, while working the Barfly press kit for Cannon in ‘86, I actually met and hung with the guy at his Long Beach home.

At a certain juncture in our chat he spoke of me and himself in the third person. “He admires Bukowski,” he said. “He’s influenced by Bukowski.”

HE Plus, 6.29.19: There’s a great Charles Bukowski line from one of his short story volumes, a line about how good it feels and how beautiful the world seems when you get out of jail.

I can personally confirm that. Not only does the world look and feel like the friendliest and gentlest place you could possibly experience, but it smells wonderful — food stands, car exhaust, sea air, asphalt, window cleaner, green lawns, garbage dumpsters. Compared to the well-scrubbed but nonetheless stinky aroma of the L.A. County Jail, I mean.

I did three or four days in L.A. County in the ’70s for unpaid parking tickets. Remember that Cary Grant line in North by Northwest about the cops chasing him for “seven parking tickets”? Well, I went to jail for not paying the fines on 27 of the damn things. That’s right — 27. I had a half-arrogant, half-cavalier attitude back then, to put it mildly. I didn’t agree with the idea of forking over hundreds in parking fines. The money they wanted was excessive, I felt, especially after the penalties increased after I didn’t pay in the first place.

One night after 9 pm I was driving west on Wilshire Boulevard, not too far from Bundy. I was pulled over for running a red light. They ran my plates and I was promptly cuffed and taken down to the West Los Angeles police station on Butler Avenue.

The desk cops discovered my multiple offenses after doing a search, of course, They printed out copies of each arrest warrant for each “failure to pay fine.” I remember some laughter as the printer kept printing and printing and printing.

I was taken down to L.A. County later that night. It was just like what Dustin Hoffman went through in Straight Time. A shower, orange fatigues, bedding. I was put into a cell with three other guys. Being in close proximity to bald naked winos who smelled horrible…memories!

Over the next three or four days I was driven around to the various municipalities where I’d failed to put quarters into the meter — Santa Monica, Van Nuys, Malibu, Central Los Angeles. In each courtroom I was brought before a judge, listened to my offenses, pled “guilty, your honor” and was given a sentence of “time served.” I was released at the end of the fourth day.

It was an awful thing to go through, but I managed to eliminate a total debt of at least $2K (it might have closer to $2500) so when I got out I didn’t owe a thing to anyone. So in a sense I earned or was “paid” at least $500 a day.

I know enough about mingling with other lawbreakers to recognize the truth of a line that Hoffman’s Max Denbo said in Straight Time: “Outside it’s what you have in your pockets — inside it’s who you are.”

I remember spending several hours in a common-area holding cell with nine or ten guys. One flamboyantly gay guy was jabbering with everyone and discussing his life and values and colorful adventures. He talked a lot about how much he loved hitting his favorite bars in “Glitterwood” (i.e., West Hollywood). At one point he came over to me and flirted a bit…sorry.

There’s nothing like getting out of jail to make you feel like Jesus’ son. It reminds you what a wonderful and blessed place the world outside is, and what a sublime thing it can be to walk around free and do whatever you want within the usual boundaries, and how serene it can be to be smiled at by strangers in stores and restaurants. People you wouldn’t give a second thought to suddenly seem like good samaritans because of some act of casual kindness.

Jail doesn’t just teach you about yourself but about your immediate circle. “If you want to know who your friends are,” Bukowski once wrote, “get yourself a jail sentence.” Or do some time in a hospital bed.

Yes, Barbie will be Best Picture-nominated, but not for what it is cinematically or certainly thematically, which boils down to pure misandry.

It will snag a nom because it became a unique thing — the theatrical explosion element plus the throngs of sartorial pinkie-winkies in theatre lobbies.