A pair of Oscar weekend dust-ups happened last Saturday night (3.9).

The first, reported by Puck‘s Matthew Belloni, occured at Chanel’s 15th pre-Oscar awards dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and involved director David O. Russell and Sanford Panitch, president of Sony Motion Picture Group.

Panitch reportedly tripped over Russell’s crouching or otherwise outstretched leg, which reportedly prompted the hot-tempered Russell to stand up and punch Panitch “hard” in the gut. Except Panitch’s response, according to Belloni, was to “laugh and move on” after realizing who his assailant was.

But how “hard” could that punch have been if Panitch basically shrugged it off? If someone had gone into Sonny Liston mode and slugged me in the solar plexus I would have said “whuoouhff!” and then “what the fuck, dude…it was an accident.” Panitch didn’t even do that — he went “hah-hah!” or maybe “hoo-hah!” and went on his way. Doesn’t add up. Belloni was almost certainly exaggerating.

I tried to get the skinny from one of the horse’s mouths before tapping this out…silencio.

Dust-up #2, reported by THR‘s Kim Masters and Lesley Goldberg, was about Bill Maher firing CAA, which had repped him for 20 years, when they failed to wangle Maher an invite to an elite Saturday night Oscar party thrown by CAA co-chairman Bryan Lourd.

Alas, few tasty details have been offered by Masters and Goldberg. Did Maher ask his CAA agent (Steven Lafferty) to get him into the Lourd party a day or two earlier, or did he get pissy about it after hearing about the party the next day? Did he show up at the party under an assumption that he was on the guest list, only to be turned down at the door? These are important things to pass along or at least clarify one way or the other. Maher canned CAA on Monday, or roughly 48 hours later.

…we’re all going to die. A lot of Democrats are going to “come home” on election day, agreed, but many others are going to stay home. Joe Bader Biden’s denial, obstinacy and arrogance will almost certainly do the trick (i.e., return a lying criminal sociopath to the White House), and God help us. It’s really the fault of the wokeys, whom just about everyone despises with a furious passion.

Chris Cillizza and Nate Silver are not fools or idiots. They’re wired in. They know whereof they speak.

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Variety Assistant Copy Editor: “Hey, chief! A guy named Ben Salami (@UglyXKorean) just tweeted about some louche lowlife masturbating during a suburban Detroit screening of Love Lies Bleeding!”

Variety Editor: “Jerking off in a movie theatre? Wasn’t the late Paul Reubens busted for that in the early ‘90s?”

Variety Assistant Copy Editor: “Yeah, but that was in a porn theatre. This happened in a legit multiplex in Southgate, a low-rent suburb of Detroit.”

Variety editor: “And the guy actually pulled out his gross animal member…?”

Variety Assistant Copy Editor: “And began spanking it…exactly!”

Variety editor: “This is obviously deserving of coverage in the showbiz bible. If I’m not mistaken Variety ran a story about a guy masturbating during a showing of Ben-Hur in Tampa back in ‘59 or ‘60.”

Variety Assistant Copy Editor: “Was that during a reserved seat showing?”

Variety editor: “Not sure but we definitely covered it. Plus this’ll help draw attention to Love Lies Bleeding, which needs all the help it can get. And out friends at A24 will appreciate it.”

Variety Assistant Copy Editor: “It’s a ballsy film, if that’s not an inappropriate term.”

Variety editor: “Tell William Earl to write it up, but first get confirmation from Southgate police, of course, as well as the management of the theatre. And make sure that Ben Salami is the tweeter’s actual name.”

Variety Assistant Copy Editor: “Should we run the photo?”

Variety editor: ‘Probably not, but let me check with Jay.”

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Because she was in a receptive erotic mood four-plus years ago, and because she gifted her former boyfriend Nathan Wade with a well-paid gig as a senior prosecutor on the Donald Trump election–racketeering case in Georgia, and because she recently decided to lie (i.e., commit perjury) about her romantic timeline with Wade, Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis has done an enormous favor for the foulest sociopath to ever threaten U.S. democracy in this country’s history. Brilliant! Take a bow!

I’m not saying Alex Garland’s Civil War (A24, 4.12) isn’t a first-rate film and I’m not saying it’s being over-praised, but I know one thing for sure and it’s this: Always regard South by Southwest hype askance.

Every now and then the adoring tweets are legit (like with Trainwreck a decade ago) but mostly you can’t trust anyone or anything out of Austin. Just sayin’.

A movie about an American civil war that doesn’t lay the Orange Cancer reality on the line? I don’t like the sound of that.

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With Chris Pine‘s Poolman (Vertical) opting for a single-word title rather than Pool Man, why is Doug Liman‘s forthcoming Road House (Amazon, 3.21) not spelled as a one-word thing also (i.e., Roadhouse)?

Pine is Poolman’s star, director and co-writer, not to mention one of its four producers. His costars include Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Jennifer Jason Leigh, DeWanda Wise, Ray Wise, Juliet Mills, Stephen Tobolowsky and Clancy Brown.

I’m asking myself what dramatic scenario would give me greater discomfort than Todd Haynes‘ forthcoming gay period romance?

C’mon, be honest…what would make me squirm in my seat more than watching a 1930s period piece in which an older, somewhat volatile Los Angeles cop (Joaquin Phoenix) falls into a torrid affair with “a deeply assmilated Native American schoolteacher” (not yet cast but probably to be played by a cute 20something guy) in the jungles of Mexico?

How many thousands of straight guys like myself are waiting for a film like this to come along? Can the number even be quantified?

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported yesterday that Haynes’ untitled love story will begin shooting on 7.29.24.

Verbatim: “A brutal, passionate love affair that rearranges their perceptions of the past, the future, and themselves.”

DEI theology plus general progressive support for (or at least tolerance of) trans-gender procedures among minors appears to be weakening and perhaps even coming to a gradual end on various fronts. In HE’s view that’s not altogether a bad thing. One could argue it’s even reason for relief.

Six or seven years of anti-white-baddie thinking among lefties, an elite movement that more or less peaked with the George Floyd protests of May and June 2020, has had its effect. Ditto pro-trans-procedure sentiment among ardent progressives. But now, at long last, a pushback thing seems to be manifesting.

Yesterday 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah Jones lamented the negative effects of last summer’s Supreme Court decision that affirmative action is unconstitutional — a piece that basically conveys an “uh-oh, wait a minute, things are reversing” reaction to DEI wokeism.

Today (3.14) N.Y. Times columnist John McWhorter bravely argued that standardized SAT tests aren’t racist, and thus contradicted long-accepted woke dogma that standardized testing propagates injustice by enforcing white privelege.

A day earlier (3.13) Public‘s Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag posted an article titled “The End of the Transgender Craze Is Near.” The subhead reads “the backlash against ‘gender-affirming care’ and trans-identified males in women’s sports and prisons is accelerating.”

The same day (3.13) an NBC San Diego report about a retail theft ring seemed to indicate that a movement to amend or even eliminate Prop 47, approved by California voters a decade ago to reduce California’s prison population, might be gathering steam. Prop 47’s decriminalizing of retail theft has resulted in mass theft operations like the one recently busted in Bonsall. The bad guys aren’t just the Bonsall couple but the wokey legislators behind Prop 47, which basically said to communities of color and economic deprivation “we understand that it’s hard to survive out there so we won’t make it a felony if you guys want to occasionally rip off retailers.”

Four days ago the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced an astonishing decision to bestow a major-category Oscar (i.e., Best Actress) based upon — are you sitting down? — the merit of a nominated performance rather than celebrating the non-white identity of a competing actress. What could the world be coming to?

Eight months ago an HE piece titled “Dropping Like Flies” (7.1.23) reported that four Hollywood DEI execs had either resigned or been let go; three days later another ankling in this vein was reported.

Last August Deadline‘s Michael Cieply reported that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has quietly stepped back from the absolutism of the 2024 representation and inclusion standards — i.e., “The Maoist DEI virus is weakening and receding.”

What do HE readers think? Are poltical and cultural changes starting to take effect or what? Are the wokeys starting to search around for pockets of tall grass?

A spooky submarine voyage occuupies about a third of Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59). With most of the world covered in radioactive haze and hundreds of millions dead from this, the USS Sawfish, a nuclear sub based in Melbourne and commanded by Capt. Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), is ordered to explore the devastation in North America — specifically in Point Barrow, San Francisco and San Diego.

There’s something unsettling and even vaguely horrific about the telescopic periscope footage of the latter two locations. The smoggy-looking air, dead quiet, no humans and everything looking quite tidy and orderly…not even a random corpse or two lying on a sidewalk or a street, not a misparked or abandoned car or commuter bus…nothing amiss.

After the Sawfish arrives in San Francisco a crewman named Ralph Swain (John Meillon) jumps ship and swims ashore. The radiation will kill him within a few days, but Swain is from the San Francisco area and wants to die near his family rather than Down Under.

A few hours later Swain is fishing off a bayside pier, and out of nowhere and right nearby Sawfish surfaces and an unseen Peck, his voice amplified and metallic-sounding, asks Swain how he feels and what’s it like in the city, etc. Swain says it’s quiet and bleak, but imagine the horrific smell of all those hundreds of thousands of bodies…how could anyone stand it? But On The Beach is determined to avoid the gruesome and emphasize the stillness, and something about this strategy gets to you. An eerie feeling.

I’m an especially ardent fan of Giuseppe_Rotunno‘s black-and-white cinematography, which is constantly handsome and well-balanced and curiously soothing for that. Rotunno’s credits include Fellini Satyricon, Five Days One Summer, Carnal Knowledge, Wolf and All That Jazz.

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Upon hearing of Alissa Wilkinson’s hiring as a N.Y Times film critic on 11.8.23, I immediately skimmed through 20 or 25 of her reviews.

The following day I wrote that Wilkinson “leans toward circumspect analysis rather than yea-nay verdicts, I certainly wouldn’t say that Wilkinson is looking to preemptively strike blows or tear down, not if she can avoid it. She’d rather analyze, understand and reflect upon.”

On the Times website Wilkinson describes her approach thusly: “I’m not trying to tell readers whether they should like a movie. Instead, I aim to expand my readers’ understanding of the movies, exploring what a movie is trying to do, what makes it interesting or revealing, and how it connects to the broader culture.”

In short, Wilkinson is a circumspect sidestepper. Senior critic Manohla Dargis is the one who praises or naysays.

A new 4K restoration of Jean Pierre Melville‘s Le Samourai will have its premiere showing at Manhattan’s Film Forum (3.29 through 4.11). It will open elsewhere on April 5. Who knows when the 4K Bluray will pop?

Jeff is a derivative of Jeffrey, of course, and is not spelled “Jef” by anyone in any country or any planet in the galaxy. So why is the first name of Alain Delon‘s hitman character, whose last name is Costello, spelled with only one “f”? A sickening decision. I hate it.

25 minutes into Some Like It Hot, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis suddenly appear in skirts, wigs and high heels, and somehow it’s not a stopper. They’re dead broke, remember, so how did they manage the transformation? Easy — they borrowed the apparel from one or two of the showgirls they knew.

Months before Tootsie opened on 12.17.82, I did a lot of making-of research for two stories I was writing, and I heard a lot about how difficult it was to create Dustin Hoffman‘s “Dorothy” look. Weeks and weeks of makeup and wardrobe tests, trying on different wigs, trial and error. And yet in Tootsie, Hoffman’s Michael Dorsey manages to create “Dorothy Michaels” within a few hours or at least overnight.

And I didn’t buy this, Right away I was asking myself, “Where did he get the garb and makeup and whatnot?” All director Sydney Pollack had to do was insert a mention of Bill Murray‘s “Jeff Slater”, Dorsey’s roommate, having acquired a closetful of women’s clothing from an upstate theatre company that’s gone bust. Then I would have bought the makeover.

Also: I read a couple of drafts of Tootsie early on, and there was a perfect Act One scene. Michael and Jeff are working as waiters in a swanky Manhattan eatery, and Dorsey is horrified to discover an ex-girlfriend and some rich guy being seated in his section of tables. Dorsey begs Slater to wait on them, but Slater is too busy or hassled about something else. Dorsey has no choice. The shocked ex-girlfriend is embarassed for him but tries to be as polite and supportive as possible — and it’s mortifying.

A great moment, I said to myself when I read it. Excruciating and relatable. And it wasn’t used.

Plus Pollack decided to shoot Tootsie in widescreen Panavision (2.39:1), and that didn’t seem to fit Tootsie, which at heart is an intimate indoor comedy about quirky showbiz types. Why the panaromic aspect ratio? Wrong call, I decided.

Because of these three issues I wasn’t completely in love with Tootsie, I would never argue that it’s not funny or not good enough (it’s fine), but in my mind it’s a 7.5 or at most an 8 — a B-plus effort.