Two days ago Times Online guy Matthew Syed posted the most unusual and amusing article I’ve read anywhere about the Beijing Olympics, called “Sex and the Olympic City.” It’s actually a kind of a history piece — an acknowledgement of the “furnace of sexual energy” that Olympic athletes have revelled in for decades, and perhaps (who knows?) centuries.
“Why do sportsmen and women have such explosive libidos?,” he asks. “I am not implying, for one moment, that every athlete in Beijing is at it. Just that 99 per cent of them are.” Would the TV guys ever touch this subject with a 20-foot pole? Would MSNBC’s bubbly right-wing Olympics anchorperson Tamron Hall even joke about it?
“It is worth noting an intriguing dichotomy between the sexes in respect of all this coupling,” Syed writes. “The chaps who win gold medals — even those as geeky as Michael Phelps — are the principal objects of desire for many female athletes. There is something about sporting success that makes a certain type of woman go crazy — smiling, flirting and sometimes even grabbing at the chaps who have done the business in the pool or on the track. An Olympic gold medal is not merely a route to fame and fortune; it is also a surefire ticket to writhe.”

I was kind of reminiscing just now about a visit to the northern Italian set of Renny Harlin and Sylvester Stallone‘s Cliffhanger, for a N.Y. Times profile called “Can Stallone Get A Grip?”. I’d just come from the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. The crew was shooting at a very high elevation location in the scenic Dolomite mountains, which surround Cortina d’Ampezzo, a serene little skiing village that hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics and was also visited by For Your Eyes Only, the Roger Moore 007 film that came out in ’81.

On or about 5.20.92 in the Italian Dolomites, about 90 minutes north of Venice — a little below 30 degrees, elevation of 11,000 feet, maybe a bit less.

I’ve scanned the 8.23.92 Times article that resulted from the Cliffhanger visit —page #1, page #2.

I visited Cortina again about eight years ago, and was very dismayed to learn the town had gone to to hell due to its popularity with the wrong kind of American tourists — i.e., bearish middle-aged couples from Texas and Kansas and Oklahoma who spoke too loudly in mixed company, wore repulsively-designed ski sweaters and seemed to enjoy dancing to awful-sounding Euro disco in the hotel lounges. I was sitting in a bar listening to this 60-ish bearded guy with a Houston accent talking about how “we really loved goin’ to the Loove…the wife went back on her own the second day, all by her lonesome.” That’s it, I said to myself — I’m never coming back here.

An hour ago I taxied over to the shop of a freelance mechanic named Dennis to pick up my motorcycle, which had suffered minor damage (shattered plexiglass, smashed turn signal) after a small parking-space accident happened a few days ago. Within seconds of leaving his place (about a block east of Fairfax) I could feel something wrong. The bike had no power due to some kind brake-lock problem with the front tire, which kept me from getting up to any speed. Imagine driving a car with your foot tromped on the brake and the emergency brake on — it was like that.

Corner of Fairfax and Melrose, looking west.

I called Dennis as I was putting some air in the front tire (at a gas station at the corner of Fairfax and Melrose) and said, “Something’s really wrong, man…the brake is locking the front wheel or something.” He told me to bring it right back, so I pulled into Fairfax traffic heading north, but the bike would barely move. And then like a shot and right in the midst of a cluster of cars, the front wheel totally froze and the BMW and I both crashed onto the pavement, the bike sitting on my left leg and pinning me to the ground for a few seconds. No real damage to speak of — a bloody left elbow and a scraped left knee plus my nice black dress pants torn in two places.
The cars behind me stopped in time, thank God (nobody was going too fast), and two guys got out and helped me pick the sucker up. I feel fine — just bruised and cut. A slight ache in my rib cage on my left side, but nothing much. The body goes into mild shock when you have a sudden trauma like this, so I’ll probably feel some more minor bruise pain and muscle ache when everything settles down. This only happened 40 minutes ago. Dennis couldn’t figure what had happened, but he obviously screwed up big-time while doing the body work. He had planned to drive out to Lancaster to visit his wife in a rehab facility, so I told him to stay with that plan and we’ll talk tomorrow. His friend (i.e., his wife’s brother) drove me home.
I feel fine about being a motorcycle guy because I didn’t get hit by anyone or make any mistakes — the damn thing just froze up on me.

Update: The PDF file with an error concerning Steven Soderbergh‘s Che isn’t from the Toronto Film Festival crew. It was put together by a dedicated Toronto film buff named Greg Cruse, who runs a fan site called TOfilmfest.ca. The guy “deserves a lot of credit,” I’m told, “for sifting through all the festival info and putting it together in various bundles and for allowing it to be circulated for free.”
The previous version of this post noted that “the titles and corresponding storylines of Steven Soderbergh‘s The Argentine and Guerilla, which together form his epic-length Che, have apparently been switched in a PDF super-file of all the Toronto Film Festival movies.
“Peter Buchman‘s script of The Argentine and the Part 1 film that showed in Cannes is/was about the successful Cuban revolution of ’56 through late ’58. The script of Guerilla, which corresponds the Part 2 of Che shown in Cannes, is/was about the 1966 and ’67 Bolivian insurrection that ended in failure and Guevara’s death. But the Toronto PDF file says that Guerilla is about Cuba and The Argentine is about Bolivia.”

Watching these John McCain spots produces feelings of slap-shock, numbness, amazement. The irony is that the comical pandering will probably connect with some of the older PUMA types out there, no matter what Hillary Clinton says at the Denver podium (which we all suspect will be one thing verbally and quite another thing in terms of delivery and passion). “She won millions of votes but isn’t on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth. On his plans. On the Rezko scandal. On his attacks. The truth hurt and Obama didn’t like it.”

The Movie Gods are more or less pleased that Tropic Thunder beat out House Bunny this weekend, if only by a meager million bucks. Ben Stiller‘s Hollywood-actor satire made $16.1 million on its second weekend (for a cume of $65.7 million) compared to Bunny‘s $15.1 million. Then again, Bunny did what it did on 2714 screens compared to Thunder being on 3352 screens.
Another issue that critics will be sternly questioned about when they arrive at the pearly gates — did you ever write a buoyant article-review that reflected positively on a film that you knew in your heart of hearts was absolute plastic trash because you fell in love with the lead performance?

It’s part of the fate of film critics to face a special, sometimes brutal judgment at the gates of St. Peter when they die. Did they diss, ignore or under-value a film they knew was honorable in an exceptional, raising-the-bar sort of way — a movie that unquestionably enhanced the lore of movies as providers of bracing reality baths and deliverers of spiritual revelation — because it didn’t provide familiar comfort in the form of reassuring “movie moments”?
Those critics who are found guilty will be denied entrance to heaven and sent back to earth to try again. Call me an Old Testament sort of guy if you want, but I believe that every critic or blogger-columnist who dismissed Steven Soderbergh‘s Che at Cannes last May because it was too long and wasn’t reassuring enough in terms of conventional drama and emotional whatevs will, I humbly submit, face such a judgment. They will, however, be given a chance to redeem themselves in Toronto. Knowing of the human capacity for frailty and missing the boat, God has decided to cut them some slack.

“This is what I’ve always liked about New York…these little moments on the sidewalk, you can watch the buildings, you can feel the air, look at the people…and sometimes you meet somebody you feel you can talk to.” — line from trailer for New York, I Love You, the more-or-less-finished anthology film in the vein of Paris jet’aime (from the same producers) that will debut at the Toronto Film Festival.

Bruce Eder has written a perfunctory career-review piece about Miklos Rosza for Films in Review, dated 8.21. But it’s a much better thing to simply listen to any one of Rosza’s better compositions. Like this one. There’s a very serene mood that seeps in towards the end, getting quieter and quieter over the last minute or so. Old-school composers were expected to keep the fanfare loud and brassy for films of this type; only artists like Rosza had the cojones to go the other way.

The French-language trailer for Christophe Barratier‘s Paris 36 (known in France as Faubourg 36) tells you it’s an “audience film” — broad, good natured, a little bit square and perhaps Amelie-like. Which is totally fine. Variety reported yesterday that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired distrib rights to the film in the U.S., Scandanavia and “Australasia,” which is located to the northeast of Freedonia, the country featured in the Marx Bros. film Duck Soup. Barratier’s film opens in France on 9.24.

Less than an hour ago in Springfield, Barack Obama introduced Joe Biden as “the next president…the next vice-president of the United States of America.” Which simply meant that deep down BHO regards the Delaware Senator as genuine presidential timber should the unthinkable happen, and not just as a good second banana. Big deal.

Oren Shai‘s Films in Review interview with Israeli producer Menaham Golan reminded me of my service as an in-house publicity writer for Cannon Films, which Golan ran with partner Yoram Globus in the ’70s and ’80s. Cannon was an industry joke but my job, which lasted from ’86 to early ’88, was sometimes fascinating. I became friendly with Barbet Schroeder as we worked together on the Barfly press kit, and I buddied up with a lot of other cool people, including Tough Guys Don’t Dance director-screenwriter Norman Mailer.

I always tell the story of being asked to interview Globus for a corporate profile. During our chat Globus named the biggest selling videos of the ’80s, ticking them off title by title, but his dense Israeli accent presented obstacles. One of these films, he said, was “weezudofauhz.” I couldn’t decipher what he meant when he said it, so after it ended I took my tape recorder downstairs to my office and played the “weezudofauhz” portion for a couple of colleagues. We listened over and over until it finally hit us. Globus was trying to pronounce the title of a 1939 Victor Fleming film that costarred Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Margaret Hamilton.
My Barfly press-kit duties also allowed for a visit to the modest Long Beach home of Charles Bukowski. The casually-dressed, pot-bellied Bukowski was warm and gracious. Kindly, self-effacing. Chuckling to himself from time to time. And quite sharp. More than once he referred to himself in the third person (“Bukowski has always liked this,” etc.) He knew I was in awe of him to some extent and said at one point, having read some of my stuff, “He’s influenced by Bukowski.” I naturally wanted to drink with the guy, and Bukowski, perceptive fellow that he was, obliged with servings of Coors or Dos Equis. In bottles, as I recall.