…in a more profound and heartfelt way than most present-day “Christians” understand this all-but-superfluous holiday, and I’m bending over backwards in saying this.
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Still Standing
Another indication that woke terror ain’t what it used to be (i.e., back in ’19, ’20 and ’21) is that genius comic Anthony Jeselnik, whose material uses “ironic misdirection, non sequiturs, biting insults, low-key arrogance along with amoral or psychopathic stances,” is alive and well and un–cancelled.
Nobody pulls off the “icy but casual sociopath with a chuckle” thing better than Jeselnik.
His career started to really happen in his early 30s, or around the beginning of the Obama era. He had a nearly four-year relationship with Amy Schumer. I know the #MeToo brigade hates him, and that at the peak of their “cancelling careers and destroying lives” power in the late teens and early ’20s they would have loved to terminate Jeselnik with extreme prejudice, but somehow he’s still thriving.
“A Head Needs To Roll”
I know nothing and yes, this is two days old but…
Puck‘s Dylan Byers (3.29.24): “In the aftermath of the Ronna McDaniel hiring-and-firing scandal, the NBC News Group blame game has begun to point back toward chairman Cesar Conde, his hands-off leadership style, and his very transparent ambitions.”
“Ronna McDaniel fiasco reveals chaos in upper ranks at NBC: ‘A head needs to roll’“, by Alexandra Steigrad (3.29.24)
“Media executives and industry experts close to NBC said the Ronna McDaniel fiasco exposed the chaos in the upper ranks at the Peacock network — with one top honcho telling The Post that ‘a head needs to roll.’
“The hiring and abrupt firing of the former chair of the Republican National Committee under intense pressure from NBC and MSNBC talent, led by Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow, revealed the power vacuum at the network, multiple sources told The Post on Thursday.
“’Someone needs to pay for the clear lack of leadership on this issue,’ said one media bigwig, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity. ‘A head needs to roll.’
“NBC brass reversed their position on hiring Ronna McDaniel earlier this week, after pushback from talent. But the stunning reversal has exposed gaps in leadership at the network, sources said.
“’There are some serious conversations happening in Philadelphia,’ the source added, referring to the headquarters of NBC-parent Comcast. ‘If I’m [Comcast president] Mike Cavanagh, I’d be like what the fuck!’
“A possible fall guy could be NBC News Group Chairman Cesar Conde, who took ‘full responsibility’ for signing off on the reported two-year, $600,000 deal that landed McDaniel as an on-air contributor at NBC and MSNBC last Friday.
Who’s Afraid of a Political War Flick?
I recently invited a friend to a NYC screening of Alex Garland’s Civil War (A24, 4.12).
“Thanks but I don’t think I’m’interested,” he replied. “I’m just not in the mood for a Very Important Movie (read: explicitly political) right now.”
I was going to explain that the narrative backdrop, according to the reviews, isn’t explicitly political, at least in terms of reflecting the red-vs.-blue, Trump MAGA vs. woke libtard dynamic. But that’s okay…
Posted on 3.14 after the SXSW debut:
Son of Mad Cat Syndrome
Posted four years ago: Speaking as a life-long cat lover, I can say with authority that some cats are on the locoweed side. Inexplicable behavior. One out of several hundred, I mean.
If none-too-bright cats are unhappy or freaked about some kind of confining situation, for example, they’ll sometimes do anything they can to escape, even at their own peril. Or they’ll take revenge upon the person they think is responsible.
(1) A woman I knew was driving with an anguished male cat on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The weather was cold, a mild snowstorm was blowing, and her car was surrounded by a fair amount of traffic. She was going the usual highway speed. For some reason she leaned over and rolled down the driver-side window, and the cat immediately leapt out.
(2) My ex-wife Maggie and I had a calico cat who was accustomed to outdoor access, and who became extremely upset when we moved into an 8th floor high-rise apartment. The first night we moved in the cat climbed onto a waist-high balcony wall that overlooked the eight-story drop. I put him inside the apartment as this obviously seemed risky. Later that night he got out and jumped. We’d loved him, petted him, fed him, etc. Go figure.
(3) In the late ‘90s I was driving down Franklin Avenue with a cat who couldn’t handle being in moving cars. Jett and Dylan were with me. The cat was howling and freaking, and at one point jumped onto my shoulder and took a serious milkshake dump all over my neck and onto my blue workshirt. I remember the smell filling the car and the kids screaming with laughter.
(4) My sister and I knew that our excitable cat hated water, so we decided to take him with us on a short rowboat trip to the middle of a pond. As a training exercise. We waited until we were 30 or 40 feet out and then let him go. He looked around, assessed the situation, jumped into the pond and swam ashore.
(5) A girlfriend and I were sharing an apartment on Boston’s Park Drive. Her male cat, Tom, was bunking with us. I love cats but Tom was extremely hostile to me — the only cat I’ve run into who was this negative. One night we came back from a restaurant and found that Tom had peed on my sleeping pillow on our conjugal bed. That was it. Over the next day or two we found someone who was willing to take him.
Deauville Dreamlovers
This Chanel Iconic Handbag spot is a tribute to Claude Lelouch‘s A Man and a Woman (’66). The dreamy mood, the black-and-white cinematography (although the original was shot in monochrome, sepia and color), Francis Lai‘s famous musical theme.
The stars of that 58-year-old romantic classic, Jean Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee, were in their early-to-mid 30s when it was shot in ’65. Today’s Chanel costars, Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz, are significantly older (60 and 49 respectively) and so the directors, Inez and Vinoodh, have digitally de-aged them.
I get the idea, of course, but Pitt doesn’t look like a 30something — he looks like a late 50something whose face has been almost totally erased, certainly of character. I like the slightly weathered, crinkly-eyed guy he played in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood better.
The tall waitress (5’10”) is Dutch fashion model Rianne Van Rompaey.
HE Disapproves of “Sex Positive”
A few days ago I twitched once again at the sight of the term “sex positive.” I’ve riffed about this once or twice before, but this time it was in a Zack Sharf Variety piece about The Idea of You (Amazon Prime, 5.2.24). It’s about an affair between Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway), a 40 year-old single mom, and Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the 24-year-old lead singer of August Moon, a super-hot boy band.
Sharf: “Hathaway was drawn to the film because it shows it’s never too late for a woman to come of age. The film is also sex positive.”
I wrote the following a couple of years ago: “‘Sex positive’ sounds a little too nice…a little too much like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Tame and tidy, not skanky enough. The best heteronormative sex is usually untidy and objectionable in some way — rude, hungry, raw, animalistic, runting, howling, pervy.
There’s an old Woody Allen line (probably from Annie Hall or Manhattan) that answers a question about whether sex is dirty or not. Reply: “It is if you’re doing it right.”
In the mid ’80s I was “seeing” a pretty British woman in her early 30s. She had apparently come from a conservative family, or had somehow gotten the idea from her mother that when it came to the possibility of sexual congress and the “yes or no” moment…she had been told that behaving in a cautious or conservative or even prudish manner was a safe, sensible way to go.
But I’m telling you that one of the hottest things I’ve ever heard a woman say at the moment of surrender came out of this lovely lady — “oh, God, I love it!”
It wasn’t so much the “I love it” (which was fine) as the “oh, God” part that got me. What that meant, I determined, was that deep down she was apologizing to God the Father for enjoying being harpooned. “Oh, God” meant “dear Lord, I’ve tried so hard to be a more virtuous woman and here I am failing again…I can’t help myself…send me to a nunnery.”
Derisive Laughter Worn As A Badge of Emptiness
I just read a 3.25.24 article titled “Stop Laughing at Old Movies — audiences behaving badly at the theater, concerts, and everywhere else.”
The author is Jessica Crispin, who runs a Substack blog called “The Culture We Deserve.”
It reminded me of a 2012 Toronto Film Festival screening of Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina. I was sitting in the seventh or eighth row, and during the third act some uncouth animals began chuckling at an emotional scene that wasn’t in the least bit funny. I distinctly recall whipping around and glaring.
I generally hate groups of people who laugh loudly in any context outside of watching comedies. I can tolerate laughter but only in short bursts, and that means no shrieking. I can be walking down a Manhattan street and if a group of younger people start to shriek-laugh at something, I’ll immediately flinch and snarl to myself “those fucking assholes,” etc.
The second-to-last paragraph in Crispin’s piece mentions that during a presumably recent screening of Blow-Up, people in the audience were cackling “at the mimed game of tennis, a group of people playing with an imaginary ball. It doesn’t get past me that [this is a] representation of atomization and isolation, the absolute inability to connect. The whoop of laughter is a signal to say ‘not me.’ And it’s pathetic because it suggests exactly the opposite.”
If I’d been at that Blow-Up screening I would’ve…okay, I wouldn’t have gotten up and thrown the remainder of my soft drink into the laps or faces of the chucklers — way too aggressive — but I definitely would’ve followed the chucklers into the lobby after it ended and politely asked, “Sorry to bother but if you don’t mind answering, what did you guys find funny about the silent tennis ball scene? I’m just curious because I’ve never heard a group of people laughing at it and I’ve seen Blow-Up several times. I mean, are you guys a new breed of some kind?”
Signature Lines of the Last 15 or 20 Years
Two and two-thirds years ago (8.14.21) I posted “Signature Dialogue Lines“, which got a lot of responses and then the day ended and everyone moved on.
It came back to me after I mentioned Louis Gossett, Jr.’s big signature line — “I want your D.O.R., Mayonnaise!” Most of the reader responses to the 8.14.21 mentioned classic lines from the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Naturally — movie dialogue is generally understood to have been better in the old days.
I might be overstating this, but we’re not exactly swimming in great signature lines these days. We haven’t been over the last 20 or 25 years. Okay, maybe I’m being too dismissive but off the top of my head I’m not coming up with a lot of 21st Century zingers. Let me dig around…
Margot Robbie: “We’re not gonna be friends” or “I’m here to see my gynecologist.” Leonardo DiCaprio: “Good!…pick up the phone and dial.” George Clooney: “I am Shiva, the god of death.” Joaquin Pheonix: “It’s so hard to just try and be happy all the time.” Javier Bardem: “You’ve been putting it up your whole life, you just didn’t know it…call it.” Daniel Day Lewis: “I drink your milkshake…I drink it up!” Tommy Lee Jones: “And then I woke up.” Brad Pitt: “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” Jonah Hill: “Are those my only two options?”
Please come up with a few more, but none from the 20th Century!
I would argue that if an alleged movie star doesn’t have a signature line or two, he/she isn’t really a movie star.
Original article: Back in the 20th Century people used to ask actors for autographs instead of selfies. Eccentric as it may sound, fans would actually carry around autograph books for this purpose. It’s been suggested that now and then hardcore fans would ask for more than just a signature — they would ask the celebrity to write a quote he/she is famous for uttering in a film.
If you were an autograph hound and you ran into Gloria Swanson back in the day, you would ask her to write “I am big…it’s the pictures that got small.”
If you bumped into William Holden, you’d ask for “if they move, kill ’em.”
If you walked into an elevator and Warren Oates was standing there, you’d ask for “lighten up, Francis.”
If you ran into James Cagney, you’d ask for “made it, ma!…top of the world!” Or perhaps “I ain’t so tough.”
What’s Sandra Bullock‘s signature line? Margot Robbie‘s? Emma Stone‘s?
Nic Cage? I strangely can’t think of one off the top.
Meryl Streep: Drawing a blank.
Bette Davis: “Fasten your seatbelts — it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Harrison Ford: “I know.” (The Empire Strikes Back)
Jeremy Irons: “You have no idea.” (Reversal of Fortune)
Charles Grodin: “Pecan pie…they’ve got it back there!”
Warren Beatty (originally suggested by “filmklassik“): “Let’s face it, I fucked ‘em all. I go into that shop and they’re so great looking, you know. And I’m doing their hair and they feel great, and they smell great. Or I could be out on the street, you know, and I could just stop at a stoplight or go into an elevator, or I…there’s a beautiful girl. I don’t know, I mean, that’s it…it makes my day, it makes me feel like I’m gonna live forever. And as far as I’m concerned, with what I’d like to have done at this point in my life, I know I should have accomplished more, but I’ve got no regrets. Maybe that means I don’t love ’em, maybe it means I don’t love you, I don’t know. Nobody’s gonna tell me I don’t like ’em very much.”
Daily Beast contributor Tom Teodorczuk posted an interview with 45 Years costar Tom Courtenay, and about halfway through Courtenay mentions that he was recently approached by an autograph hunter asking him to sign a piece of paper underneath the words “the personal life is dead” — one of the utterances of Strelnikov, his character in Dr. Zhivago.
Back in the late ’70s I recalled running into In Cold Blood costar Scott Wilson in a West Hollywood bar. Wimp that I am, I stifled an instinct to ask for an autograph along with the words “hair on the walls” — a Dick Hickock line from Truman Capote‘s nonfiction novel.
If I could persuade Brad Pitt to write down a signature line, I’d ask him to write “don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.”
If I’d run into Marlon Brando in the ’70s, I would have asked him to write either “whatta ya got?” (a line from The Wild One) or “Don’t be doin’ her like that” (from One-Eyed Jacks).
If I’d enountered Montgomery Clift I’d ask him to write “nobody ever lies about being lonely” — a Robert E. Lee Prewitt/From Here To Eternity line.
Samuel L. Jackson: “I don’t remember askin’ you a goddam thing!”
Bruce Willis: “Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!” or “Welcome to the party, pal!”
Al Pacino: “You don’t get to watch my television, Ralph!”
All Hail The Towering Louis Gossett, Jr.
I pretty much worshipped Louis Gossett, Jr. all my life, and I really wish I could have somehow seen him play “George Murchison” in the 1959 Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” when he was 23.
Gossett was arguably one of the handsomest actors to ever punch through to the big time, and definitely the best-looking and glowing-est actor of color within the frame of the 20th Century. And man, I sat up and took notice when I saw him in The Landlord, Skin Game (costarring with James Garner), The Laughing Policeman, The White Dawn and Sadat, the 1983 four-hour miniseries. Not to mention “Fiddler”in Roots.
And I really felt badly for the poor guy when he put on that lizard-skin makeup and costarred with Dennis Quaid in Wolfgang Petersen‘s Enemy Mine. which many were making jokes about as they left the Los Angeles all-media screening in late ’85. I remember exiting through the crowded middle aisle and doing my imitation of Gossett’s reptilian, gurgly-ass speaking voice.
But let’s cut to the chase. Gossett’s career-defining role was Marine Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in Taylor Hackford‘s An Officer and a Gentleman (’82), which landed him a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Peter Fonda‘s most famous line was “we blew it.” Clark Gable‘s was “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Gossett’s was “I want your D.O.R….D.O.R.!” Foley is, was and always will be the greatest-of-all-time movie drill sergeant, and yes, that means he was better than Lee Ermey. Gossett was 45 or thereabouts when he gave that performance.
Gossett passed earlier today in Santa Monica at age 87.