I wrote a few hours ago that during the q & a portion of today’s SBIFF Directors Panel “three enterprising and obnoxious assholes (one wearing a black cowboy hat) took the mike together and basically asked the panel for help with their filmmaking careers.” They were booed and shouted down. Three hours later the same cowboy asshat tried the same routine during the Movers and Shakers panel. Watch the sudden reaction of moderator Patrick Goldstein as the guy goes into his schpiel.

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has posted a video except of a 9.18.70 Dick Cavett Show interview with Husbands costars John Cassevetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. Cavett is fine but his guests are all gone now, Gazzara’s death yesterday sealing the deal. Here is part #2 and #3.

The just-concluded Santa Barbara Film Festival directors’ panel discussion was a dud for the most part. The only directors I found likable and interesting were Bridesmaids‘ Paul Feig, a clever, well-spoken, fast-on-his feet fellow, and Terry George, helmer of a currently-playing short called The Shore. Moderator Peter Bart did what he could, but the panelists included three helmers of animated film (including the ogre-ish Gore Verbinski, the paycheck-driven director of Rango, two Pirates movies and the forthcoming Lone Ranger) so it was almost an animation panel, which are always boring if you’re not an animation fan.

Today’s Directors Panel at the 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

The exception to the boredom came during the q & a portion when three enterprising and obnoxious assholes (one wearing a cowboy hat) took the mike together and asked the panel for help with their filmmaking careers. This despite Bart having specifically stated that such questions were unwelcome and wouldn’t be allowed. Some people are shameless and some are unreachable — this trio was both. They were hissed and booed down and all but thrown out of the theatre.

During last night’s post-Virtuoso Awards after-party West of Memphis director Amy Berg showed me a mock magazine-cover illustration recently drawn by former West Memphis 3 defendant Damien Echols. It depicts himself and partner Lorri Davis. Echols and Davis arrived here last night to do interviews and take part in a post-screening q & a this evening.

Young Adult‘s Patton Oswalt was the absolute star and the life of the party during last night’s Virtuosos Awards presentation at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre. Rise of the Planet of the Apes‘ Andy Serkis took a close second for apperaring on-stage shirtless, and A Better Life‘s Demian Bichir was charming and affable. Dragon Tattoo‘s Rooney Mara seemed politely subdued. The Descendants‘ Shailene Woodley was fine. And moderator Dave Karger was typically smooth and engaging.

My favorite photo-editing app isn’t an app — it’s a website called Picnik. It’s clean and efficient and dumb enough for the likes of myself. Cropping, resizing, sharpening, tinting, contrasting and red-eye fixes are a snap. And yet Google, the fascist insect that bought Picnic a year or so ago, is closing it down on 4.19. I’m guessing it’ll still be available for Google Plus users, but many people are furious. I’m now looking for an app that’s comparable in terms of ease and simplicity.

At the very least Google should offer a purchasable Picnik app. I would happily shell out. It’s unconscionable to remove a popular photo-editing software without offering some kind of replacement option. Here’s a petition form protesting the Picnik shutdown.

A Criterion Bluray containing a slash-and-crop 1.85 to 1 version of Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder will be out on 2.21. DVD Beaver has posted a review with screen captures comparing Sony Home Video’s exquisitely boxy 1.33 to 1 DVD version to the Criterion Bluray. I’m not saying the Criterion (which I haven’t yet seen) won’t have value. A Bluray of an excellent courtroom drama that shows 2/3 of what dp Sam Leavitt originally shot is better than nothing.

A visually compressed, jail-cell cropping, captured from Criterion Bluray.

I’ll allow that the Criterion Bluray seems to offer more visual information on the sides than the Sony Home Video 2000 DVD version. This is a good thing, but there’s still no excuse for whacking off a third of the originally photographed version — one that was seen during who-knows-how-many hundreds of TV airings during the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and which was contained in the NTSC DVD version.

From the ample-head-space version provided by Sony Home Video in 2000.

I was walking up to the Arlington last night to catch the Virtuosos Tribute when I noticed a long line outside the Fiesta Five. “Is this for Chronicle?” I asked a woman near the end of it. “It’s a general line for everything,” she said. I asked what she was seeing. “The Woman in Black.” Something was obviously up. It was a cool Friday night and a certain hunger among a younger, less cultured Santa Barbara crowd (i.e., SBIFF-averse for whatever reason) had made itself known.

Chronicle and Woman in Black were neck-and-neck, as it turned out. At 10 pm last night Deadline had The Woman in Black earning $8.8 million in 2,855 theaters for a $3082 average, and Chronicle with $8.6 million in 2907 situations for a per-screen average of $2958.

I’m out of this personally. I missed last Tuesday night’s Chronicle screening at the Fox lot when I was down in LA and nobody invited me to a Woman in Black screening so I don’t know anything.

My only enthusiastically preferred Democratic Presidential candidate of 2016 is Elizabeth Warren…end of story. I’ll accept Hillary Clinton, yes, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. But a voice tells me it’s Warren’s to lose or fulfill. The Gods have picked her. Plus half the electorate, I sense, really wants to see a woman in the White House…finally.

The great Ben Gazzara has died at the age of 81. He had a long and rich life, and from the 1957 release of The Strange One (which is a very strange film) on he was “Ben Gazzara,” and that really meant something. But what? Gazzara was almost as much of a vibe as he was an actor. He was magnetic but also a bit of a hider. In film after film he was always some variation of a jaded, laconic, laid-back smartass with a very slight grin starting to emerge.

As a member of the ’50s generation that broke through in the age of Brando, Clift, Newman and Dean, Gazzara never really lucked out with that One Big Role that might have made him a star. I’m not sure he was really made of what you’d call “star material.” There was always something aloof and diffident about Gazzara. He was constantly urban and subterranean and coffeehouse and sometimes vaguely snarly and resentful, but at the same time smooth and cool and settled.

For me, Gazzara’s best performance was as Henry Chinaski in Marco Ferreri‘s Tales of Ordinary Madness (’83). There was also his volcanic work in John Cassevettes‘ Husbands (’70) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (’76), of course, and in Peter Bogdanovich‘s Saint Jack (’79) and They All Laughed (’81`). Not to mention his snippy, sharp-mouthed murder defendant in Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59) and Jackie Treehorn, of course, in the Coen Brothers‘ The Big Lebowski (’97).

He was married to Janice Rule from ’61 to ’79, and reportedly had an affair with Audrey Hepburn between ’79 and ’81.

Gazzara’s Wiki bio reports the following: “During filming of the big-budget war movie The Bridge at Remagen co-starring Gazzarra and his friend Robert Vaughn, the U.S.S.R. invaded Czechoslovakia. Filming was halted temporarily, and the cast and crew were detained before filming was completed in West Germany. During their departure from Czechoslovakia, Gazzara and Vaughn assisted with the escape of a Czech waitress whom they had befriended. They smuggled her to Austria in a car waved through a border crossing that had not yet been taken over by the Soviet army.”

This is a great story. I wish I could say that I smuggled someone out of a country that had just been taken over by the bad guys. The waitress was probably in her early 20s when this happened. She’s in her mid ’60s today, if alive. Whatever happened to her? How did her life work out?

A highly dubious source confided this morning that a secret high-level meeting of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bigwigs happened two nights ago at Kate Mantilini. I wasn’t able to verify if Academy president Tom Sherak, COO Ric Robertson, and CEO Dawn Hudson actually met at 10:30 pm in a rear booth. I’ve only been told that a conversation might have unfolded as follows:

Sherak: I know it’s late, but thanks for coming, guys. (To waiter) I’ll have a Chardonnay and a bowl of whatever the soup is. What’s the special?

Waiter: Split pea with ham chunks.

Sherak: Uggh! I hate split pea.

Waiter: And also tomato basil, chicken noodle and gazpacho.

Robertson: That sounds good.

Sherak: Tomato. I’ll have the tomato.

Hudson: And I’ll just have a Merlot, thanks. So what’s up, Tom?

Sherak: Well, first of all, this meeting isn’t happening because we really can’t discuss what I’m about to bring up. But I feel we need to at least broach the subject.

Hudson: Is this about the 2013 telecast date?

Sherak: That’s for later. I’m talking about the Academy’s reputation in general, and Jean Dujardin‘s Best Actor chances in particular. Dujardin’s SAG award win last Sunday means he’s got a pretty good shot at winning the Best Actor Oscar, and that means The Artist will have a three-Oscar sweep — Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

Robertson: That’s bad?

Hudson: I love The Artist. It’s perfect.

Sherak: Me too! I’m easy. It’s fine. But it’s a very soft movie, and this looks to me like another Oscar watershed year — a year in which the honorable Academy membership will affirm its shallowness like they did when they gave the Best Picture Oscar to Driving Miss Daisy in ’89 and The Greatest Show on Earth in ’52 and Around the Wrold in Eighty Days in ’56. Its one of “those years” that will leave a lasting mark, and I’m thinking that’s not good at this stage of the game. Younger audiences see the Academy as a bunch of dilletantes with laughably mediocre taste.

Robertson: People have been taking shots at the Oscars for years. Goes with the territory.

Sherak: Yeah, but it’s worse now. We’re under siege. We have to protect the brand and stand for something besides flabby emotional consensus choices among the Boomer and older GenX lightweights. I’m thinking 10 or 20 years down the road. It’s a matter of honor, of values and of organizational integrity. The Artist is nice movie, but this is embarassing.

Robertson: What can we do? You can’t mandate good taste.

Hudson: I love The Artist! And the dog…what’s his name? Poochie?

Robertson: Uggie.

Hudson: Huggie?

Robertson: Uggie, like the boots. (to Sherak) What are you thinking?

Sherak: What I’m thinking about is something I haven’t been thinking about, if you catch my drift. I know there’s no stopping The Artist or Michel Azzanavasheetos.

Hudson: Vasheetos?

Robertson: Pete Hammond says it rhymes with Dr. Seuss, but Sid Vicious is the safest way to go.

Sherak: So there’s no stopping Sid Vicious. But I’m not comfortable with Dujardin winning Best Actor. He just grins and tap dances and mugs and doesn’t shave in Act Three when his career goes south. We’re talking privately here, and I’m telling you there’s no honor in Dujardin winning. If it happens it’ll be seen as a concession to all the things I’m worried about…all the things that people seem to despise the Academy for. George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Gary Oldman winning, fine. I like Oldman, if you wanna know. Pitt is a happy man, and George is loved by everyone. He’ll be nominated again in a year or two.

Hudson: I love Jean’s moustache. And he’s so charming in person!

Robertson: What can we do about it, Tom?

Sherak: Nothing. Obviously. I guess I’m just venting. I want somebody else to win Best Actor and I wish I could do something to help bring that about.

Hudson: We’ll be fine. It’s going to be a great show.

Sherak: The show will be fine. I’m not talking about the show. I’m thinking about our brand, about our future.

Robertson: I’m afraid we can only do, absurdly, what has been given to us to do. Right to the end.

Explanation & apology: I don’t know what happened but somehow an earlier version of this post disappeared. I managed to find the coded version but the comments were lost.