An excerpt from a panel discussion about the views of the rural anti-Obama contingent expected to vote in the coming election. No, seriously — name the actor and the movie. No hints. Okay, one — the film is famous and respected.

I’ll always love Steven Soderbergh‘s Che. I’ll be seeing it again at the Toronto Film Festival, which starts eight days hence. I’ll be re-reviewing it when it opens theatrically. I’ll buy the DVD some day. But the people behind the 100% non-existent press reach-out for Che have an odd Toronto attitude. By any basic rulebook, producers Laura Bickford and Benicio del Toro and French financier/sales agent Wild Bunch should be pushing their movie in Toronto, and they’re really not doing that. Certainly not as we speak.

Benicio del Toro in Steven Soderbergh’s Che

Right now, every moderately-funded film going to Toronto has hired a p.r. outfit and is doing what it can right now to stir press interest and get some festival traction…except Che. It’s beyond bizarre. It’s like they have some kind of death wish.
Soderbergh’s fine, historic and domestically un-sold film is showing in Toronto at the end of next week and nobody, it seems, is repping it p.r.-wise, nobody can tell me anything about how to set up chats or even photo ops with del Toro or Soderbergh in Toronto, and nobody — not Benicio’s publicist Robin Baum, not the folks at 42 West, not the Toronto Film Festival press office — seems to know who’s minding the store or what the plan might be.
Every year dozens of mediocre movies go to Toronto with p.r. companies fully hired, interviews being scheduled, parties scheduled and so on. And yet Che, a brilliant, ahead-of-the-curve, thinking-person’s epic, is doing nothing along these lines.
I really love Che. I think it’s rich, wonderfully believable, profound. I’ve written about Peter Buchman‘s scripts early on, about the Cannes showings, etc. Trying to do what I can to spread the word because I believe and I care and I want to see it get at least a decent reception when it opens in whatever form or format. And yet Bickford and Wild Bunch and del Toro have shown all the approachability and reaching-out that one might expect from Columbian drug dealers looking to hide news of their latest shipment.
What’s going on, for God’s sake? 42 West may finally be signed, apparently, and a Canadian publicist may have been approached or hired for Canadian press but who waits until only a few days before the start of the Toronto Film Festival to hire a publicist?

It’s as if the Che team got together a few weeks ago and said, “Okay, what can we do to make it seem as if we have a serious leave-us-alone attitude problem? No p.r. reps hired — check. No reaching out to press — check. No scheduled one-on-ones, photos ops or round-tables — check. No parties — check. No communication to press through intermediaries of any kind — check.”
The Che gang pulled the same thing before Cannes — no p.r., no reach-outs, leave us alone, etc. Who operates like this? Who makes a near-great movie, submits it to a major festival and does everything they can to create a muted reception?
I hope Che wins more film-critic fans during the Toronto Film Festival. I hope it opens commercially some day. Or if not theatrically, I hope at least it will get shown on HBO. I’ll be seeing it a second time in Toronto because I want to re-immerse. But I’ve pretty much given up as far as trying to help. If the Che forces want to say “well, we were just about to make a Toronto move but Jeffrey Wells flew off the handle,” fine. Because I haven’t flown off the handle. I’ve called, e-mailed, reached out and waited for a reply with the patience of Job for many, many weeks.
I’ve had it. I quit. Life is short and I don’t care any more.

Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has slammed the Coen brothers‘ “arch and ungainly” Burn After Reading, which opened the Venice Film Festival this evening. (McCarthy saw it in L.A. yesterday.) You have to take reviews of comedies with a grain of salt, so this isn’t necessarily an indication of Big Trouble. Did McCarthy like Intolerable Cruelty? (I loved it.) I remember he didn’t care for the stoner humor in The Big Lebowski at all. I’ve spoken, however, to another critic who saw it and was asking himself as he watched the first two acts, “Why am I not laughing?”

McCarthy is calling it a reversion to “sophomoric snarky mode” — a fallback, he means. “A dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C., only some of whom work for the government, the short, snappy picture” — 95 minutes, all in — “tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results. Major star names might stoke some mild B.O. heat with older upscale viewers upon U.S. release Sept. 12, but no one should expect this reunion of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to remotely resemble an Ocean’s film commercially.
“A seriously talented cast has been asked to act like cartoon characters in this tale of desperation, mutual suspicion and vigorous musical beds, all in the name of laughs that only sporadically ensue. Everything here, from the thesps’ heavy mugging to the uncustomarily overbearing score by Carter Burwell and the artificially augmented vulgarities in the dialogue, has been dialed up to an almost grotesquely exaggerated extent, making for a film that feels misjudged from the opening scene and thereafter only occasionally hits the right note.
“The Coens’ script, which feels immature but was evidently written around the same time as that for No Country or Old Men, is just too fundamentally silly, without the grounding of a serious substructure that would make the sudden turn to violence catch the viewer up short. Nothing about the project’s execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one. As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up.
“Incidental niceties crop up, to be sure. The Coens’ economy of storytelling is in evidence, as is their unerring visual sense, this time in league with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki; a low-angle shot of Harry, knife in hand, lingers especially. The date montages are cute, and the facial reactions of JK Simmons, playing a CIA boss more dedicated to avoiding fuss and bother than to getting to the bottom of things, are once again priceless. But on any more substantive level, Burn After Reading is a flame-out.”

“I’ve been to a lot of conventions, but this [one] has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult with Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru. ‘What is that feeling in the air?’ I asked him. ‘Submerged hate,’ he promptly replied. Ah, yes…now I recognize that sulfurous aroma.” — from Maureen Dowd‘s 8.27 N.Y. Times column, “High Anxiety in the Mile-High City.”

Okay, I may have given in to excessive rancor and bitterness earlier today. Hillary Clinton‘s speech tonight was much better than I thought it might be — classy, tough, passionate, persuasive. When she asked Hillary supporters if their work during the primaries was (a) about her or (b) about the values she and they believed in….that was a closer. She did what she had to do, but she also delivered a great speech. Hats off.

Erica Gibson‘s Woodchipper, acrylic on panel, 17 x 13 inches, framed — $450.00. Interested parties can forget it because it’s been sold. The generally interested should e-mail the Crazy 4 2 Artwork guys at gallery1988@aol.com.

It is axiomatic that a major dramatic film about any ethnic group is going to draw the ire of some p.c. group claiming to defend the cultural-political interests of said group, blah blah, because of a perceived tribal slur, blah blah. Not interesting! I can feel the slumber instinct building inside as I write this. Fight it! Fight it!

So it really means nothing that the Council on American-Islamic Relations recently complained that Alan Ball‘s Towelhead (which I saw and reviewed at last year’s Toronto Film Festival) is using a “racial and religious slur [that is] commonly used in a derogatory manner against people of the Muslim faith or Arab origin,” blah blah.
The movie is a good sit, though. Intriguing, different, a head-turner. Based on Alicia Eran‘s period novel of the same name, Towelhead (Warner Independent, 9.12 in New York and LA) is “a sturdy, complex character drama that’s 100% deserving of respect,” I wrote last year when it was called Nothing Is Private. “It’s obviously one of the most original, daring films about adolescent sexuality ever delivered by a quasi-mainstreamer. It’s also a sharp look at racism (and not just the American-bred kind) and a sobering portrait of the rifts and tensions between American and Middle-Eastern mindsets.
“And all of this out of a fairly simple period drama, set in a Houston suburb around the time of the Gulf War, about a 13 year-old half-Lebanese, half-Irish girl named Jasira (Summer Bishil), and what happens as she gradually decides, under the fiercely oppressive watch of her Lebanese dad (Peter Macdissi), to explore/ indulge her budding sexuality with two older guys — a randy but nice-enough African-American high schooler in his mid teens (Eugene Jones) and a sleazy neighborhood dad in his early 40s (Aaron Eckhart).

Towelhead “is not exploitation…not even a little bit. It’s a smartly written thing with all kinds of intrigues and counterweights built into each character, and an earnest residue of humanity seeping through at the finish.
“Even Eckhart’s character, scumbag that he is, has tics and shadings that make him more than just a thoughtless statutory rapist. Even Jasira’s dad, a dictatorial racist thug of the first order, comes off as somewhat sympathetic at times. And each one is his own way cares for Jasira. And despite the dark sexual currents (and as odd as this sound), it’s also a fairly amusing film. Really. It’s really boils down to being a ‘neighborhood folks and their quirks’ movie that…okay, is a little bit icky in two or three scenes but isn’t nearly as icky in a general sense as you might expect.”

Speaking to Politico‘s John F. Harris about the rah-rah-Obama speeches being given by Bill and Hillary Clinton tonight and Wednesday night, a veteran of the Clinton White House who remains close to both of them said “they are both going to do what they have to do…that does not mean they will enjoy it.”
In other words, the words in their speeches aren’t in question; it’s the tone and the pizazz that Billary will put into the delivery that people will be examining tonight (and tomorrow night) with a fine tooth comb.
If Hillary feels she can deliver tonight’s speech with 80% passion levels without anyone accusing her of being a wee bit half-hearted, she’ll give it 80%. And if she senses on the podium tonight that she can give it 70% without anyone saying she’s half-hearted, she’ll give it 70%. But there’s no way in hell she’ll give it 100% or even 90% — no way. Because she’d be very much at peace with saying “I told you so” on 11.5.08 if and when Obama loses. She’d love to run again in 2012. All she has to do is play the Obama game in subtle cutthroat fashion. Put on the show and do just enough so people can’t accuse her (or her husband) of undermining, blah, blah. Make no mistake — she’s The Beast and always will be.

Jay Leno asked John McCain the other night about how many houses he owns, and McCain — boldly, absurdly — went into the prison-cell routine again. Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike that McCain’s Hanoi Hilton answers are hereby over, invalid, spent. McCain’s honorable history hasn’t been used up — it’s been vandalized.

Joseph Costigan, a political director for a union based in Dearborn, Michigan, called Unite Here, has told N.Y. Times columnist Bob Herbert that “we’ve been talking with staff in different parts of the Midwest, and we’re all struggling to some extent with the problem of white workers who will not vote for Barack Obama because of his color. There’s no question about it. It’s a very powerful thing to get over for some folks.”

We’ve all wondered and worried about the Undercurrent of Ugliness that lives in the hearts of lunchbucket Americans out there when it comes to race, and Tuesday, November 4th — Election Day — may, I fear, show statistically just how ugly this country really and truly is.
Think of that episode on Boris Karloff‘s Thriller called “The Cheaters” — a pair of magic glasses that shows what people are really thinking and feeling inside — and how it ended with the lead actor putting them on and then looking at his own reflection in a mirror, and screaming and clawing his face over what he saw. His screams, I fear, will be America’s screams on the evening of Tuesday, 11.4.
The right wing talk-backers on HE can spew their usual diseased crap, but when people say they prefer this or that candidate because of any number of factors, fine. Voting records, loyalties, character issues, intellectual capacity, whatever. But when it all boils down to one thing — when they say “I won’t vote for candidate A because of the tint of his skin and the shape of his nose and the suspected allegiances that we associate with people of his sort”…that’s simply evil.
As Chris Matthews said last night, Barack and Michelle worked hard and played by the rules and built their lives into a kind of American Dream, and for people out there to just wave it away and say “naaah, he’s a Muslim and not one of us so I’m not voting for him” — that is just flat-out sickening.
Costigan’s statement points again to the increasing likelihood that the 11.4 vote will be a squeaker, and that Obama has a decent chance of losing if the Generation of Shame (i.e., the under 25s) doesn’t vote for the Illinois Senator in sufficient numbers to counter-balance the 55-and-over racists.
Aaah, but will they? The youth vote is supposed to be energized this year like never before, with a good 75% or 80% favoring Obama….something like that. But we all know what happens when you place your bets on the youth vote, right? We certainly found out what the youth vote is worth in ’04. That’s why we call them the Generation of Shame ’round these parts.
“Talk for more than a few minutes with an Obama supporter in a white middle-class or working-class area and you’ll hear about a friend or relative or co-worker who has a real problem with the candidate. When Jack Davis‘s wife, Joan, who also plans to vote for Senator Obama, was asked about Democrats that she knew who would not vote for him, she replied, “My mother! She’s 85 years old. I’m sorry to say, but she will not vote for him.”
“Costigan believes — hopes — that the number of people holding [racially negative] views is relatively small, and that Mr. Obama, now with the help of Senator Biden, can surmount that obstacle.
“Surmounting it will be tough. Not only do the polls show this to be a close race, but the polls, when it comes to Senator Obama, cannot be trusted. It is frequently the case that a statistically significant percentage of white voters will lie to pollsters — or decline to state their preference — in races in which one candidate is black and the other white.
“After many years of watching black candidates run for public office, and paying especially close attention to this year’s Democratic primary race, I’ve developed my own (very arbitrary) rule of thumb regarding the polls in this election:
“Take at least two to three points off of Senator Obama’s poll numbers, and assume a substantial edge for Senator McCain in the breakdown of the undecided vote. Using that formula, Barack Obama is behind in the national election right now.”

It is probably inevitable that Sally Hawkins, the cheerful and indefatigable Poppy in Mike Leigh‘s Happy-Go-Lucky (Miramax, 10.10), will be talked up as a Best Actress nominee once the film starts showing around. (It opened in England last April and came out last week on DVD over there.) An elementary-school teacher who happy-vibes just about everything and everyone, Polly is an unstoppable alpha dispenser — spirited, effervescent — and Hawkins certainly inhabits her whole-hog.

Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky

She carries Happy-Go-Lucky, she carries its spirit, and she does handle herself well in the sad-shock scenes at the end of the film with Eddie Marsan, the driving instructor with the correct manner and ferociously uptight, anti-immigrant attitude. In fact, the last 15 to 20 minutes contain the best stuff in the film, and I throughly respect Hawkins for her performance in this section. She handles her scenes with quiet maturity and resigned grace.
But her Poppy character epitomizes a sort of person I’ve never been able to tolerate — the emotional fascist who’s relentless about being happy, smiling and sparkly, but who also insists — here’s the problem — on forcing her bubbliness upon others (acquaintances, strangers, anyone) with the ultimate idea of converting them to their way of looking at life, or at least giving them a contact high to take home.
What’s especially oppressive and dictatorial about smiley-faced brownshirts like Poppy is their determination to gently bully you into submission. If you don’t get on board with the mutual-alpha, they’ll interrogate you like Laurence Olivier‘s Zell (the Nazi character in Marathon Man), looking at you with a quizzical grin and asking, “Are you happy?” or “Having a bad day?” Speaking from experience, I can advise that the best response is “I was feeling pretty good, actually, until you asked me that.”

Eddie Marsan, Hawkins

Imagine if Poppy was a born-again Christian asking total strangers, “So have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?” and “Would you like to be saved?” The police would be called, she’d be cuffed and thrown into a van and taken down to the station. But there’s no recourse with the happy-happies.
I hate people who ask me if I’m happy because, of course, they’re not really asking me that. They’re saying they’ve observed my behavior, examined my vibe and decided that I just don’t have the right peppy-happy attitude, and that I need to adjust it right away so that it pleases them. I do meet these people from time to time. They’re like Moonies or Hara Krishna devotees — they’ve got the beautiful inner force inside them, and they know they’ve got that wondrous glow in their faces, and they’re determined to beat you over the head with it until you’re on your knees, bloody and begging them to stop.
Poppy feels like a kind of symbol of the whole happy-face movement of the ’70s, which for me represented a kind of alpha-vibe fascism that you could sense every so often in certain liberal-minded circles. Get with the positive attitudes or else! The late George Carlin once said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” that “when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley-smiley.”

The French poster for Leigh’s film, called Be Happy over there, has a slogan at the bottom: “Adoptez la Poppy attitude!”
The term “emotional fascism” was first coined by Elvis Costello in the ’70s, and it’s real, you bet. There’s a scene when Poppy’s friend Zoe says, “You can’t make everyone happy” and Poppy replies, “There’s no harm in trying that Zoe, is there?” I am here to stand up and say that yes, there is harm in it, and would all the Poppy girls of the world please refrain from ever doing so again in my presence? It’s like being beaten with Mao’s little happy-face book during the Great Cultural Revolution.
There are many of us, I’m presuming, who look upon cheery, cock-eyed optimists as people you sometimes have to speak to at parties — sometimes it’s better just to suffer quickly and get it over with so you can move on — but if you see them coming down the street do cross over to the other side and duck into a book store or something, and then stay there for a good 15 minutes, just to be safe.

Cut together by the intrepid souls at 23/6…hats off.