I adored Maestro for the style and reach and flourish of it, and Carey Mulligan’s last-act demise was, for me, devastating.  But before I saw it and I mean throughout my whole life, Leonard Bernstein was the soul-stirring music man — composing, conducting, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood. Maestro didn’t exactly take issue with this, but it certainly sidestepped it. What it mostly seemed to do was whisper in my ear or poke me in the ribs as it said over and over, “O, I screw a lad.”  (That’s an anagram for “Oscar Wilde.”) And I don’t relate to that. There is so much more to life than the raptures of the phallus. And this nagging focus upon young men interferes with the sad French horn I hear in my head every time I think of Terry and Edie and that rooftop pigeon cage. Or, you know, what “Somewhere” does to me every time.

Friendo to HE: ” I still don’t get why the public was willing to embrace Oppenheimer but not Maestro. Neither J. Robert Oppenheimer nor Leonard Bernstein were well known to young audiences when the films arrived.”

HE to friendo: “The public detected that Maestro was mostly about the gay stuff and said ‘okay, yeah…nope.’ J. Robert Oppenheimer may have been a weird genius dweeb but he didn’t fuck pretty boys. Imagine if Oppenheimer had been mostly about the boys and just a little tiny bit about building the A-bomb in Los Alamos and then being politically persecuted in the 50s. I know this is an unpleasant realization for some, but 95% to 96% of the country is straight. Sorry.”

Francis Coppola‘s Megalopolis screened late Thursday morning (3.28) at the Universal Citywalk IMAX theatre, and a certain friendo says the response was quite positive, exciting and emotional…”roaring off the screen, roaring into your eyes and ears“…full powered engagement and then some…intense, experimental, dynamic, a happy ending and “nothing at all like The Godfather, Part II….nothing like it or like any other film.”

It played before a crowd of roughly 300 industry elites (distributors, studio execs, Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Roger Corman…a who’s who of heavy hitters)….”it was like Francis had 300 friends over [to this home]…he was extremely emotional when the lights came up, I can tell you…it was very moving to see him.”

Hollywood Elsewhere can’t make a smooth article out of these scrambled notes, but to understand what Megalopolis is or what it feels like you have to imagine a combination of a film by Francis Coppola and another by Ed Emshwiller, and then mesh them together.

Adam Driver‘s Ceasar, a driven visionary architect…Driver is playing a variation of the same character he played in House of Gucci and Ferrari…another tortured visionary.

Boilerplate: “Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) is divided between loyalties to her father, Frank (Forest Whitaker), who has a classical view of society, and her architect lover, Caesar, who is more progressive and engaged with his idea of the future. He wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster.”

Costar Lawrence Fishburne provides narration.

Friendo (and please forgive occasional repetitions): “It’s very engaging…doesn’t drag at all….constantly entertaining, visually arresting…you have to constantly work to keep up with it. You’ve got to follow it. You can’t help but want to follow it.”

The most extraordinary part of the viewing, says friendo, was when an act of live theatre blended with the film. Friendo: “The lights came on in the cinema, and an actor stood up and he started asking a question of Adam Driver’s Ceasar on the screen, and then Driver answered him as if he could hear the question. Theatre interacting with cinema.”

“There were so many luminaries,” friendo continues. “All the studio chiefs…so many faces……Al Pacino was there.

“It’s a startling film….a very enveloping film, but also highly visual in a ’60s experimental way. It felt like Francis’s youth was returning to him and pouring through his heart at age 84….the kind of independent cinema that he grew up on….it’s a wonderful, larger-than-life, jumps-off-the-screen movie and in a totally personal way….constantly entertaining….it’s not like any movie that’s out there, I can tell you that…avant garde experimental.

“It’s principally about a love affair between Driver and Natalie Emmanuel, the daughter of his rival and opponent (Whitaker)….a battle for her heart. Romeo and Juliet….a Shaekespearean battle between two families…a bit like Baz Lurhman’s Romeo + Juliet.

“The statement that I felt summed up the general response was from Andy Garcia: ‘This guy is the reason we’re all making movies.’

“The film is a huge inspiration. I couldn’t tell you what Joe Popcorn might say, but this was a wildly enthusiastic crowd. I thoroughly enjoyed it…a kind of IMAX underground movie from the late ‘60s.

“Special care will be needed to sell it…it follows all of the standard dramatic rules that other films follow, but in an idiosyncratic way…there’s a sense of justice at the end….but this is nothing like The Godfather, Part II. Nothing whatsoever.

“We’re shown an overlaying of images like the beginning of Apocalypse Now, but in a more experimental way….roaring off the screen, roaring into your eyes and ears…more like One from the Heart. Taking place in an unreal world…a big metropolis….in the future but it doesn’t say exactly when….begins after a catastrophe….a city pulling itself together.

“Adam as Caesar, Natalie as his lover….one of the bad guys, the city’s mayor, is played by Giancarlo Esposito.

“Adam Driver is really playing Francis…very much of a visionary….Aubrey Plaza plays a rival love interest….bitchy, grasping.

“It just needs the right handling..Focus or Neon or Searchight…it needs expert handling….an adventuresome film….obviously it’s going to walk a tightrope. It’s probably better to go to Venice and Telluride as Cannes can be a make-or-break…some journalists tend to go there with an attitude.”

Yes, I’ll be watching Dan Reed‘s The Truth vs. Alex Jones sometime this evening. We all know the reprehensible facts and how Alex Jones ignored them and then fabricated his own bullshit scenario.

Nancy Lanza, a working-class NRA mom, indoctrinated her mentally wacko son, Adam, into gun culture, and bought the guns that led to the slaughter of those 20 Sandy Hook kids and those six school staffers on 12.14.12.

Let’s hear it for good old Nancy, whom Adam killed that morning before driving over to the school.

The film has only been streaming a couple of days. Has anyone seen it?

“Even though the legal battle between Sandy Hook families and the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been thoroughly covered, it is still hard to watch him in the documentary The Truth vs. Alex Jones without experiencing a wave of nausea.

“If there is value in seeing these events recapped, it is in the power of seeing the parents confront Jones in court. Over two trials, in Texas and Connecticut, the [paremnts] won more than $1 billion in damages.

“It is also in the horror of seeing just how confidently Jones deflects questions and tries to steer proceedings to his advantage — denying the families what Alissa Parker, Emilie’s mother, calls ‘a moment of reflection’ from him.

“The Truth vs. Alex Jones offers a lesson in just how vicious and pervasive conspiracy theories can become and a chilling portrait of how little they may trouble their purveyors.” — from Ben Kenigsberg‘s 3.26.24 N.Y. Times review.

RFK Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Ann Shanahan, is a Millennial — born 9.16.85.

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If I never see John Carpenter ‘s Starman (‘84) ever again, it’ll be too soon.

I hated hated HATED Jeff Bridges’ performance as a mentally handicapped, slow-on-the-pickup alien — the polar opposite of Michael Rennie’s “Klaatu” in The Day The Earth Stood Still. Plus I hated his hair. Less than a half-hour in I was fantasizing about ways Bridges might be murdered by the authorities.

I felt more affection for James Arness’s meowing vegetable in Howard Hawks’ The Thing (‘51) than I did for Bridges’ “Scott Hayden.”

Plus Karen Allen has always bothered me — she was the Sydney Sweeney of her time.

There’s a Starman 4K Bluray on the way…forget it.

Hugs and condolences to Katey Rich, who joined VF in 2013. Alas, old media is under intensive care. End of an era.

Steve Martin had a great ten-year run, early ’80s to early ’90s, although I didn’t love everything from that period. I never liked the overly broad stuff. The best were Pennies from Heaven, All of Me, Roxanne, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Parenthood, L.A. Story, Grand Canyon. I also liked The Spanish Prisoner and Bowfinger. What is that, ten?

I know certain Rome neighborhoods fairly well, but I’m no geographical scholar. (I’ve only visited in one-week-bursts.) I’m drawing a total blank on this photo. It’s apparently not too far from Piazza Navona but where exactly? Does anyone have a clue?

The kitten photo was taken sometime around 2011, give or take.

Martin Scorsese has committed to producing The Saints, an eight-part, faith-based docuseries about eight saints. The bad part is that he’s doing this for Fox Nation, the conservative streaming channel.

I’m not saying this is like Scorsese injecting political cancer cells into his veins, but it sorta kinda feels like he might be doing that. Am I wrong?

The episodes will be directed by Elizabeth Chomko (What They Had). They’re being written by Kent Jones (Letter to Elia, Hitchcock-Truffaut).

So we’re talking about pious Marty here…the Marty who made Silence…the Marty who worships saints who went through all kinds of pain.

The eight saints are Joan of Arc (burned at the stake), Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist (head chopped off), Thomas Becket (head chopped off), Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Saint Sebastian (shot with arrows! clubbed to death!) and Maximillian Kolbe (starved nearly to death, injected with carbolic acid).

Scorsese: “I’ve lived with the stories of the saints for most of my life, thinking about their words and actions, imagining the worlds they inhabited, the choices they faced, the examples they set. These are stories of eight very different men and women, each of them living through vastly different periods of history and struggling to follow the way of love revealed to them and to us by Jesus’ words in the gospels. I’m so excited that this project is underway, and that I’m working with so many trusted and talented collaborators.”

The first four episodes of The Saints will debut on Sunday, 11.16.24, on Fox Nation. The other four will come out the following May.

Harry J. Sonneborn: “Land — that’s where the money is. And more than that — control. Control over the franchisee. Fail to uphold quality standard? You cancel their lease. And control over Dick and Mack.”

Ray Kroc: “If I were to do this….uhh, the brothers would effectively be…they, uh…effectively would be…”

Harry J. Sonneborn: “Yes. (beat, beat) So…whadaya say, Ray?”

Carter Burwell‘s somber music comes in right after the word “yes.”

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The question, of course, is whether or not Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Kinds of Kindness, which has called itself a “triptych fable” as well a boilerplate anthology film, will somehow weave these stories together…will they cross-pollinate the way the three Pulp Fiction stories did?

Wiki snopsis: “Kinds of Kindness is a triptych fable with segments following (a) a man without choice who tries to take control of his life; =(b) a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing at sea has returned and seems to be a different person; and (c)a woman who is determined to find a specific someone destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.”

Oh, God…the third storyline sounds deadly.

The costars include Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer.

I’m pretty certain this is the first film featuring the super-thin version of Plemons. He dropped a ton of weight between late ’22 and early ’23). Full HE respect — I wish I had Plemon’s discipline.

After all kinds of grief, delay and unexpected potholes (including a last-minute blowoff by Tatiana Antropova, who had agreed to participate in a “Misfits” Zoom session), Hollywood Elsewhere hosted a three-way, audio-only “Misfts” discussion between entertainment critic, on-air host, podcaster and movie maven Neil Rosen (“Talking Pictures with Neil Rosen“), comedian, podcaster and East Hampton go-to guy Bill McCuddy, and myself.

We got into Road House, of course, along with Immaculate (HE is not a huge fan of Sydney Sweeney), Michael Keaton‘s Knox Goes Away, Asphalt City and Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance, which I’ve seen but haven’t reviewed.

Toward the end I introduced a new “Misfits” sidelight called “Revival House,” a discussion of great or near-great films that most Millennials and Zoomers (who regard anything released before 1980 as ancient history and therefore irrelevant) probably haven’t seen or have little interest in seeing. I started by discussing Cameron Crowe‘s Vanilla Sky (’01) but Rosen and McCuddy weren’t enthused enough, so I switched over to Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63),and sudenly a great emotional switch was thrown because riffing on 20th Century films opens up a floodgate of passion, the kind that is barely felt (or felt infrequently) in today’s realm.

For roughly a half-hour the Wells-Rosen-McCuddy discussion (one hour, 11 minutes) was recorded from inside a soundproof booth at the Wilton Library. But it was interrupted when a Wilton Library staffer tapped on the recording booth door while pointing to her wristwatch and whispering that I can’t record a podcast of any length from inside it. I’ve noticed several people occupying the booth for longish periods (30 or 40 minutes), and I’ve recorded three or four Sasha Stone podcasts from within the same booth. But there’s no point in challenging a librarian.

While Rosen and McCuddy were chatting I picked up my phone and digicorder and strolled outside into a flagstone courtyard. My jacket asn’t warm enough for 40 degres, but I managed. Everything went well.

Except for the very beginning, that is, when I had trouble managing a three-way conversation. When I hit the “add” button it invited one person to join while un-inviting the other. I fiddled around and finally figured it out. If any HE reader-listener turdbrain says so much as one snarky word about this, they will be instantly terminated…fair warning. I’ve been an iPhone owner for 16 or 17 years — don’t even think about giving me shit about this.