Carroll vs. Trump Doc Hailed at Hamptons Film Fest

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A bulletin from Hamptons resident and HE friendo Bill McCuddy…

“After debuting at Telluride on 8.30, Ivy Meeropol‘s Ask E. Jean had a big hot-ticket screening at the Hamptons Film Festival on Saturday, 10.4.

Carroll to McCuddy: “This is a film about how to beat Donald Trump, and that’s basically what my director Ivy Meeropol has done…she reveals what it will take to stop what’s going on today.”

Will Carroll ever see a dime of the nearly $90 million smackers the President owes her? “Oh yeah…have you met Robbie Kaplan?” she asked, referring to her pitbull lawyer and one of the documentary’s headliners.

“FUCK, yeah,” chimed in pal Ellen Barkin, standing by Carroll’s side. “Look at her lawyer.”

Barkin’s not in the film — she was just there for support and said, jokingly, “I’m playing E. Jean in an afterschool special so I have to really embrace her.”

Barkin then got serious about the gravity of Carroll’s lawsuits, the admission that J.C. hasn’t had sex since the attack, and how the film has affected the women’s movement.

Barkin: “It’s only the most important thing that’s happened, for me, since civil rights. The 70’s riots. This comes next for me.”

A number of familiar scenes played well (i.e., Trump identifying Carroll as Marla Maples in a photo). It also reveals the two people E. Jean confided in after the attack — newscaster Carol Martin and ‘Preppy Handbook’ journalist Lisa Bernbach. Other talking heads in the 91-minute film include Bill Boggs, Geraldo Rivera, and the entire Carroll legal team.

Trump’s deposition, considered ‘fair use’ footage because it was part of the trial, was “ripped from YouTube” according to the director. When someone from the audience asked if the Trump appeals — he has one left, according to the film — will be settled while The Beast is still in office, Kaplan said “Yes, I believe so.”

McCuddy worked with the Elle magazine author during the time of the assault in the mid 90s. She and he were both picked by Roger Ailes to host television shows on the now defunct NBC channel “America’s Talking.” She had the advice show “Ask E. Jean” and McCuddy had the afternoon talk show right before hers called “Break A Leg.”

McCuddy: “Carroll and I have kept in touch with social media and via an off-Broadway show I did before COVID that she came to see. She gave me a big hug on the red carpet for the HFF premiere. Pic is still looking for a distributor and gets a second viewing on Sunday.”

“The Smashing Machine” Is Dead, Dead, Deader Than Dead

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As I posted from Venice on 9.1, Benny Safdie‘s The Smashing Machine (A24) is a reasonably decent, at times almost refreshingly offbeat film because it doesn’t deliver the usual formulaic cowflop that Dwayne Johnson movies have been shoveling for too many years.

On top of which Johnson’s lead performance as Mark Kerr is earnest, dug-in, totally respectable.

So why did Smashing make only a lousy $6M this weekend? My guess is that Joe and Jane Popcorn took one quick look at Johnson’s black curly wig and said “nope, no way.” Just a hunch.

Queer-Shaming in Bad Old Days

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William Wyler‘s The Children’s Hour (’61) is a thoroughly suffocating drama and, for my money, a stone drag to sit through. Eeeeeekk!…lesbians! The alarmed expressions in the trailer alone are borderline comical.

It began life as a 1934 Hellman play about the hounding of two schoolteachers over rumors of a suspected gay relationship.

In 1936 Wyler sheepishly adapted a watered-down screen version of Hellman’s play (Hellman herself wrote the screenplay), having scrubbed it of lesbian allusions and re-titled it as These Three.

Even Wyler’s 1961 version, which finally allowed allusions to a lesbian relationship between the schoolteachers (Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine), unfolds in overly timid terms. Hellman “adapted” it, although screenplay credit went to John Michael Hayes.

James Garner and Joel MacCrea played the same role in the ’61 and ’34 versions, an alarmed doctor named Joe Cardin who basically wants to mate with Audrey Hepburn and Merle Oberon, respectively.

Yes, Virginia — even in 1961 the notion of a possibly gay relationship between two women was quite an alarming thing, strange as this may sound today. Wyler’s Kennedy-era film was derided as being overly skittish and chicken-hearted.

This was the same year, mind, as Basil Dearden‘s much braver Victim, a low-budget British drama about a blackmailer making life miserable for a seemingly straight-and-married barrister (Dirk Bogarde) over allegations of a male homosexual relationship from the barrister’s past.

Victim‘s Wiki page says it was filmed in only 10 days.

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Integrated Theme Songs

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As far as I can recall there are only two films with a strong, recognizable musical theme or theme song…Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (’55) and Robert Altman‘s The Long Goodbye (’73)…these two may be the only films in which the musical theme is sung or hummed by characters within the film itself.

Which means, obviously, that the theme was composed and performed before principal photography on these films began.

In Eden, Julie Harris hums Leonard Rosenman‘s main theme (which begins at the :40 mark in the below video), and in The Long Goodbye, a lounge singer croaks or croons John Williams and Johnny Mercer‘s “Long Goodbye” tune in the Hollywood bar in which Marlowe retrieves his messages.

There are probably other films that have operated this way, theme-song-wise — I just can’t remember them.

Apologies For Falling Behind on “The Lost Bus”

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On a certain level I feel nearly ashamed for having this far failed to see Paul Greengrass‘s The Lost Bus, which began streaming yestetrday (10.3) on Apple TV Plus.

Back in the day not catching a new Greengrass film as early as possible would have been unthinkable. When I say “back in the day” I mean 2002 to 2007, or the time of Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy (the birth of shakycam), United 93 (a truly masterful 9/11 nightmare flick) and The Bourne Ultimatum.

For me the Greengrass brand weakened slightly with the arrival of Green Zone (2010), Captain Phillips (2013) and Jason Bourne(2016). It weakened a bit more when 2018’s 22 July came out, and then was damn near broken by 2020’s News of the World.

I was in Venice when The Lost Bus premiered at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival on 9.5.25. It was released in select NYC theaters on 9.19.23 (15 days ago). Decent reviews, favorable reactions, not even a slight burn. But Greengrass needs to deliver another United 93. He could have easily directed A House of Dynamite if Kathryn Bigelow hadn’t grabbed it first.

I’ll see Lost Bus tonight or early tomorrow. Reactions?

Woke Lefties Belong In The Forest

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Progressives began to flee into the forest when Kamala Harris lost last November, and for now they need to stay there. Live in tents, wear animal hides for warmth, bathe in rivers, eat raw game and wild berries

From Andrew Sullivan‘s “How Utterly Lost Is The Left?” (10.3.25):

Ezra Klein to Ta-Nehisi Coates: “In losing as badly as we have, we have imperiled trans people terribly…we’ve just begun to lose that argument terribly…and that has put people in real danger”

“‘[Because] a huge amount of the country, a majority of the country, believes things about trans people, about what policy should be toward trans people, about what language is acceptable to trans people, that we would see as fundamentally and morally wrong.’

Sullivan: “Bingo. Behind the rhetoric, the woke mindset still reigns.

“And let’s look at what Americans actually believe ‘about what policy should be toward trans people’: there are big majorities for allowing trans adults to transition to the sex they want, and for banning discrimination against them, which is now the law of the land, thanks to a Trump nominee. How is that ‘fundamentally and morally wrong’?

“According to Klein, it’s because even bigger majorities (a) oppose sex changes for children, (b) don’t want biological men competing against women in sports, and (c) believe that being male or female is a function of biology, not something entirely in your head.

“Disagree if you want, but why is this ‘fundamentally and morally wrong’? It just isn’t. Nor is it ‘fundamentally and morally wrong’ to undo the unprecedentedly reckless immigration policies of Biden and Boris.

“We’re not stupid. No amount of fake rhetorical moves to the center will work. When very basic things that most human beings take for granted — that foreigners are not citizens and citizens come first, that men are not women, that children are not adults — are deemed fundamentally immoral in one political party, that party deserves to lose.

“And they will.”

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Soderbergh’s Commanding Dozen…Actually, Make It 13

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A couple of days ago World or Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy asked for my three favorite Steven Soderbergh films, as part of a generaL critics poll he was preparing.

My top trio, I replied, amounted to four: (1) The Limey, (2) Traffic, and (3) a tie between Contagion and Erin Brockovich.

Out of Sight won the Ruimy poll.

Here are HE’s top 15, more or less in this order:

1. The Limey

2. Traffic

3. Erin Brockovich and Contagion (tie)

4. Che (parts 1 and 2…excellent duo)

5. Out of Sight

6. Sex, Lies and Videotape

7. Ocean’s Eleven

8. Magic Mike

9. The Informant

10. Haywire

11. Magic Mike’s Last Dance

12. Behind the Candelabra

13. Ocean’s Twelve

Didn’t particularly care for these Soderbergh trifles: King of the Hill, Solaris, Logan Lucky, Black Bag, Kafka, Let Them All Talk, The Girlfriend Experience, Bubble, Presence, No Sudden Move, Full Frontal, Bubble, The Good German, Side Effects, Unsane, The Laundromat, Let Them All Talk, Kimi. (17)

The absolute worst show, movie or presentation that Soderbergh has ever directed (or ever will direct for the rest of his life) was the 2021 Woke Oscars from Union Station.

For This Take-It-Or-Leave-It Review I Was Accused of Racism

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My Sundance pan of Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation was posted nine and three-quarter years ago — 1.25.16.

Within an hour or so many confidantes wrote me or pulled me aside and said “why are you opening yourself up to charges or racism? Nate Parker is an industry hero and you post this? Do you have a death wish? Don’t you want advertising income from Fox Searchlight?”

I basically said that Parker’s film is decent here and there and definitely impassioned, etc., but it’s finally a mediocre effort that strives to “sell” and “act” misery rather than simply being or exuding it. It’s basically an ambitious Starz movie.

1.25.16: One of the biggest self-congratulatory circle jerks and politically correct wank-offs in the history of the Sundance Film Festival happened late this afternoon when Nate Parker‘s heartfelt but sentimental and oppressively sanctimonious The Birth of a Nation ended and the entire audience rose to its feet and began cheering wildly, even ecstatically.

This is a sentimental, briefly stirring, Braveheart-like attempt to deify a brave African-American hero — Nat Turner, the leader of a Virginia slave rebellion in August 1831. But a black Braveheart or Spartacus this is not. Nor is it, by my sights, an award-quality thing.

The Birth of a Nation delivers a myth that many out there will want to see and cheer, but don’t kid yourself about how good and satisfying this film is. It’s mostly a mediocre exercise in deification and sanctimony. I loved the rebellion as much as the next guy but it takes way too long to arrive — 90 minutes.

Parker, the director, writer and star, sank seven years of his life into this film, and invested as much heart, love and spiritual light into the narrative as he could. But the bottom line is that he’s more into making sure that the audience reveres the halo around Turner’s head and less into crafting a movie that really grabs and gets you, or at least pulls you in with the harsh realism, riveting performances and narrative, atmospheric discipline that made Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave an undisputed masterpiece.

As noted, Parker doesn’t seem to even respect the fact that he needs to deliver the historic rebellion (i.e., horribly oppressed African-Americans hatcheting white slave-owners to our considerable satisfaction) within a reasonable time frame, which would be 45 minutes to an hour, tops. Kirk Douglas and his fellows broke out of Peter Ustinov‘s gladiator training school around the 45-minute mark.

I realize that the Turner-led slave rebellion was suppressed within two days, but in Parker’s movie it’s over before you know it. I’ve been waiting 90 minutes for the rancid whiteys to get their comeuppance, and Turner’s small army is surrounded and defeated within 15 minutes? That’s not satisfying, dude. No way would Douglas and Stanley Kubrick have kept their gladiators in Capua for 90 minutes and then had Laurence Olivier‘s Crassus defeat them within a quarter of an hour.

You can call me a whitey for referencing Spartacus but The Birth of a Nation has been cut from the same basic cloth.

In HE’s version Turner doesn’t wear a halo and is given qualities that make him less of a saint and more of a tough, flesh-and-blood, hard-knocks guy. The land owner injustices and atrocities simmer for about an hour, and then the rebellion kicks in with Turner and his army getting their bloody revenge and doing their best to fight the law and the white militias for the second hour, and then the capture, execution and wrap-up for the last 10 or 15 minutes. And no religious ceremonies, no angels, no choir music and no apparitions….just stark realism.

If you ask me the Sundance hipster smooch brigade went to The Birth of a Nation determined to celebrate it as much as possible. The idea, trust me, was to demonstrate to the world and particularly to the slow-to-get-it crowd in Los Angeles how much hipper, cooler and sensitive they are regarding the 21st Century African-American experience and particularly how much wiser they are than the unfortunate Academy attitudes that resulted in OscarsSoWhite.

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