After coming out of MOMA’s Mike Nichols tribute last Saturday night, I came upon a long line of people at the corner of 53rd and 6th Avenue. 40 or 50, at least, waiting to buy $5 plates of chicken and rice from a food truck. I asked one of the guys in line what the big deal was. “It’s really delicious, man,” he answered. “You’ve gotta try it.” Can’t be that good, I said. “It is,” he said.

I didn’t want to be a lemming so I passed. Everyone in line looked youngish. I can’t think of any other place in Manhattan where can you get a good meal for five bills. A Depression 2.0 special.

This 4.17 Newsweek piece by Jesse Ellison actually argues that Earth, Disneynature’s watered-down feature version of BBC’s Planet Earth miniseries doc, is too unsettling for kids to be rated G. That’s because it contains sequences that imply (but don’t show) that a Caribou calf and a baby elephant are killed due to natural forces and circumstances. Coddle much?

When I was three years old I saw a neighbor chop a chicken’s head off, and then watched as the chicken’s body ran around a bit with the arterial blood spurting out. I was a little bit freaked by this, sure, but I didn’t faint and probably learned something from it also. What did I learn? Uhm…the meaning of the phrase “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”?

Not long after a little black cocker spaniel puppy who belonged to a little neighborhood girlfriend of mine was run over by a garbage truck. The poor thing had been flattened into a black puppy pancake with the guts splattered and the tongue sticking way out. I’ll never forget that tongue. The episode taught me that life can end in a blink of an eye. It was awful to see — traumatic is the word — but it also made me a little stronger, I think, or at least a little tougher.

As I wrote on 3.25, “Parents are realizing that they haven’t done their kids any favors by funding a cut-off, over-indulged fantasy realm for them to live in.

“Kids need to grow up and grim up and learn the realities and skills and disciplines that will allow them to survive. So enough with the Spielberg-aping films that portray a child’s world as a magical-fantastical kingdom in and of itself that adults might be able to learn something from.”

Carson Reeves‘ Script Shadow, which attempts to review the latest Hollywood scripts, is, at the very least, amusingly written. A conversational blunt style that reminds me of….uhm, well, me.

At the top of the Script Shadow pile right now is a relative oldie — Brad Inglesby‘s The Low Dweller, which reportedly sold for $650,000 and may/will star Leonardo DiCaprio with Ridley Scott directing. I found it a boringly pretentious effort that took me three tries to get through. Here’s what I said about it on 3.23.08….ready?

“I have an instant problem with scene descriptions of rottin’ dead dogs and mayflies and greasy spoons with good old truck drivers sayin’ where they’ve a’trucked to. I especially don’t like readin’ about some lowdown Robert Johnson tune playin’ as a title card says we’re in the southern Indiana lowlands in the year 1985. That was back when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and scratchy 78 rpms of Johnson’s Delta blues songs were heard almost everywhere, and were cherished in the hearts of the people.

“Hollywood sure loves the idea of rural Middle America bein’ a land where there ain’t no Walmart or Starbucks or nothin’ like that, and where workin’ men called Slim and Buck and Jethro sip from half-pint whiskey bottles and roll their own makins and order eggs, taters ‘n’ bacon as they wipe sweat from their brows with tattooed forearms.”

If Reeves want to get in touch I can provide him with some newer, better scripts.

There are 42 Rotten Tomato reviews of Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But The Truth, representing the big-city snoots who had a chance to see this sharp and tight journalism drama before distributor Bob Yari fell into Chapter 11 and Truth became instant road-kill. First-rate film, tough deal.

I understand there are some regional and hinterland film critics who plan to review the Nothing But The Truth DVD as a brand-new feature when it comes out on 4.28. That’s a good and gracious way to go, I feel. Lurie’s film deserves all the benefits of a theatrical opening, including reviews by top-tier critics.

And by the way, Truth isn’t being given a Bluray release after all. The Sony Home Video folks obviously don’t believe it warrants the extra expense. Too talky, not enough action, no tits-and-ass.

There is no spoon, there is no dress, and there is no Nickelodeon/Last Picture Show DVD. Or at least, not in the Manhattan video stores (quaint term!) I’ve been to today.

The kid at the downstairs video desk in the Union Square Virgin Megastore said the buyers never even ordered it. “Only the really big titles between now and closing,” he said. “But Dave Kehr reviewed it last week in the N.Y. Times and made kind of a big deal about it,” I stammered. “I thought you guys might at least have four or five copies.” Naahhh.

Even the guy at my favorite little video store, a place that sometimes sells Blurays ahead of their street dates, said “we never got it in. A friend who works at Sony has a copy but copies never came to us.”

I know it’s irrational and sort-of stupid to go to video stores when it’s obvious they’re no longer the providers they once were and with online ordering being so easy and simple. But I wanted to see Peter Bogdanovich‘s black-and-white version of Nickelodeon today, not next Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday.

This is the end of a world I’ve known and loved since the ’80s. The lazy camaraderie of movie mavens in a well-lit, library-like atmosphere, casually assessing some of the latest releases in terms of remastered visual quality and, strictly as a secondary consideration, how good they are in terms of story, theme, directorial chops and emotional penetration. Union Square Virgin is the last well-stocked DVD store in Manhattan and it’ll be closing in three or four weeks.

Hello, Amazon.com. Farewell, impulse buys and browsing through the stacks and getting lost in that world. No more, never again.

If it was okay and funny and even convincing in Broadcast News (1987) for Albert Brooks to present a half-serious case about super-smooth news anchor Bill Hurt being “the devil,” I should be allowed to express a similar view about Matthew McConaughey…no?

I saw the guy on a billboard this morning for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (New Line, 5.1), and I quickly said to myself, “That’s the devil…the devil walking amongst mortals.” Not that McConaughey is anything but average human. But if the Devil wanted to roam around and foster evil, he’d definitely pick McConaughey as a host. Because no actor on earth seems more vapid. (To me anyway.) And because vapidity, more than any other human quality, is what allows evil to succeed.

I explained some of my feelings about McConaughey two or three years ago in a piece called “King of the Empties.” The Brooks-Hurt analogy doesn’t fully work since Brooks was talking about Hurt personifying and hastening the lowering of journalistic standards in TV news and McConaughey isn’t lowering filmmaking standards, or at least not to my knowledge. He’s just cruising along on whatever current will carry him along. But some of what Brooks said could apply.

“What do you think the devil’s going to look like? He’s not gonna be a guy with a long grey pointy tail! What’s he going to sound like? Acchh-acch! He’ll be attractive, he’ll be nice and helpful, he’ll never do an evil thing, he’ll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He’ll just bit by little bit lower our standards where they’re important. He’ll just coaxe it along, just a little bit…flash over substance. And he’ll get all the great women.”

Soldier: Captain Willard of 505 battalion, 173rd Airborne, assigned SOG?

Willard: Hey buddy, y’gonna shut the door?

Soldier: We have orders to escort you to the airfield.

Willard: What are the charges ?”

Soldier: What?

Willard: What’d I do?

Centre Street just south of Canal — Tuesday, 4.21, 11:15 am.

Soldier: There’re no charges, Captain. You have orders to report to ComSec intelligence in Nha Trang.

Willard: Hmm, yuhn.

Solider: Captain?

Willard: (Muttering, sinking) Yup…Nha Trang for me.

Soldier: All right, Pete, we got a dead one here.

At last night’s post-premiere party at Strata for Tyson (Sony Classics, 4.24). Raining cats and dogs outside. A sociologically intriguing guest list, to say the least. Chris Walken showed up early, told Toback he loved the film, and left. My camera’s ostensibly rechargable batteries gave out on me. Proving that rechargable batteries are only good for a few charges, and then they’re worthless. A friend snapped this.

Author/critic/columnist Shawn Levy wrote today that one of the things he discovered while writing about Paul Newman for his book Paul Newman: A Life (Harmony, May 5) “was that he had a [nearly] 30-year feud with the New York Post.” Which has now come back around and bitten Levy’s book in the ass, albeit in a cheap and petty way.

The feud started “when Newman was filming Fort Apache: The Bronx> in New York. Newman came to feel that the Post had deliberately stirred up community animosity toward the film. A few years later, Newman and the Post were fighting about — of all things — how tall the actor was (the Post said he was no more than 5’7″, whereas Newman held he was 5′ 11″).

“During these battles, Newman was outspoken in his disgust with the paper: ‘I wish I could sue the Post,’ he told a rival publication, ‘but it’s awfully hard to sue a garbage can.’ And the Post gave as good as it got. For some years, Newman’s name could only appear in the pages of the tabloid in a negative light; this even extended to the TV listings, where Newman’s name was left out of descriptions of his films (The Hustler with Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Robert Redford and Katherine Ross, etc.).

“I found all this amusing and reckoned that the war of words would have died with Newman last fall, but I underestimated the pettiness and vindictiveness of Post publisher Rupert Murdoch and his “Page Six” hatchet man Richard Johnson. Over the weekend, the Post published a wildly sensational account of my book — representing it as a tale of multiple infidelities, non-stop drinking, profane outbursts and rivalries with other movie stars.

“All of those things are in there, yes, but to declare that the book — which is rather square and includes 22 pages of notes and bibliography — is about all those things is like saying that The Godfather is a movie about killing horses or Austin Powers is a film about Burt Bacharach.”

I read teh Post piece last weekend, immediately recognized the tawdry and salacious tone and decided not to write about it for fear of giving credence to any suspicion that Levy’s book, which has been carefully sourced and written in a brisk, clean style, might be some kind of icky Hollywood-star bio, which it absolutely isn’t. But as long as Levy’s run his piece, whatever.

Newman was 5’11”?

Not bad but…what is this, 15 months late? That’s excessive. Photo from failblog.org.

Responding to this morning’s riff about Russell Crowe‘s Maximus haircut in Robin Hood, a guy who gets around and hears things wrote the following: “Apparently everything you’ll be witnessing in Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood — the hairstyles, the music and the aesthetics — will make it play like an unofficial sequel to Gladiator. This is no accident. It’s a commercial mandate and was part of the scripting delay. Expect a lot of mano y mano duels.”

N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has written a who-cares? piece about the Marlon Brando trustees — movie producer Mike Medavoy, accountant Larry Dressler and Avra Douglas, Brando’s former personal assistant — doing what they can to keep the Brando name from being inappropriately commercialized.

(l.) Approaching Brando-owned atoll of Tetiaroa; (r.) 45 year-old Teihotu Brando, the late actor’s third-born son.

The article does, however, mention the ongoing development of the Brando, an “ecologically friendly” resort on the Brando-owned atoll of Tetiaroa, in the South Pacific. But the complex, according to Medavoy, is unlikely to open before 2012. It will include 40 or more bungalows designed with a “masculine quality,” according to developer Ramez Toubassy , and will cost between $50 million and $100 million after all is said and done.

If you know anything about construction an estimate of $50 to $100 million will ultimately cost at least $150 million if not $175 million. Just watch Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

At least Cieply’s article reminded me of a fascinating Maxim piece about Tetiora by Julian Sancton, who normally presides over the daily postings at vanityfair.com. Called “Last Tango on Brando Island,” it was researched last summer and appeared sometime last fall. Here’s a taste:

“Overrun with tropical weeds, the airstrip on Tetiaroa — Marlon Brando’s private island in the South Pacific — is barely detectable from the sky. It was shut down in 2004, the year the actor died. Now it can only accommodate a helicopter. From above, the atoll, which consists of 13 white-sand islets encircled by a coral reef, shimmers like a turquoise amulet. Once the retreat of Tahitian royalty, it became the island kingdom of one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic figures.

“On the ground a Polynesian man dressed like an L.A. gangbanger waits for us to land. He is sitting in a wheelbarrow, a peculiar but fitting throne for the new king of Tetiaroa. At 45, Teihotu Brando, Marlon’s third-born son, has his father’s noble profile and a hint of his generous waistline. Teihotu lives on the remote island alone with his wife and the youngest of their three children, surviving on the fish he spears, the fruit he picks, and whatever pro¬≠visions his occasional visitors can bring from Tahiti, 30 miles away.”

And while we’re at it, here’s a fascinating recent column by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy about a visit to Easter Island and Tahiti, and featuring a discussion with longtime local journalist Alex du Prel.

“A fabulous character who might have walked out of the pages of Graham Greene,” McCarthy writes, “du Prel arrived in Tahiti 35 years ago, after having sailed solo from his native Virgin Islands through the Panama Canal to Hawaii, then on to Tahiti, where he lives high up in the mountains of Moorea.

“Du Prel has seen it all. Arriving as the post-Bounty enthusiasm for the islands peaked and with experience developing resorts in the Caribbean, he worked for Brando, trying to guide him in properly nurturing his private island before quitting in exasperation.

“While running the Bora Bora Lodge, he became very close to, and fond of, David Lean and Robert Bolt during the six months they spent there plotting their unrealized Bounty double feature.

McCarthy visiting Rapa Nui

“He then dealt, successively, with Roman Polanski, Dino De Laurentiis and Jan Troell during the shooting of Hurricane (he was even given a speaking role as a villainous American naval officer).

“When Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins came to Moorea to shoot The Bounty in the early ’80s, the ceremonial sequences were practically shot in du Prel’s front yard.

“In each case, du Prel — while gazing over Cook’s Bay, named after the great English navigator who became the first white man to visit the island 235 years ago — recalled that these productions had a gigantic effect on their locales, at first for the good, long term perhaps not so much.”