God grant me (a) the serenity to accept the bad movies I cannot stop from being made that I will probably wind up seeing anyway because I have to try and stay current because I write a daily column, (b) the courage to refuse to see the really bad films that come along that are truly bad for your soul, like Wanted, and (c) the wisdom to know the difference.

Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny feels that a certain James McAvoy line in Wanted — “Six weeks ago, I was ordinary and pathetic, just like you” — indicates that screenwriters have contempt for their audience. “What is this bullshit?,” Kenny asks. “”Have screenwriters become so defensive /resentful on account of churning out quasi-nihilistic, faux-convoluted, graphic-novel-mytho-Babel tripe like this that they feel compelled to lash out at the audience that laps their nonsense up?” Uh, yeah…kinda.
A gaffe, as Michael Kinsley famously wrote, is when you blurt something out that everyone knows to be true (like Samantha Power calling Hillary Clinton a “monster”) but which you’re not allowed to publicly acknowledge. And in a way, Kenny seems to be saying, that Wanted line is a kind of screenwriter’s gaffe — a confession of loathing for the unwashed masses that kind of “slipped out” and wound up in the Wanted screenplay. (Which is attributed to Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan.)
The Hollywood elite, trust me, think very little of ticket-buyers in general. Once you’ve made it to a certain level in the film industry and have begun to run with the truly cool and connected and earn serious dough, you don’t relate to average stiffs. Big Talent tends to look upon regular moviegoers as prisoners of a sort, living in a comfortable penal colony that allows them to indulge in all kinds of perks but keeps them prisoners all the same. (You know…like the way things are in The Matrix.) I’m sorry if this sounds cruel.
Talk to talent on E.T. or Extra about the fans and they’ll go “we love ’em all!” — but that’s public relations. Remember John Lennon‘s lyric about how “you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see”? That was another “uh-oh…a celebrity just said what he should have kept quiet about.” The real truth about things only comes out when someone is tired or arrogant or involved in primal-scream therapy and the obiter dicta — the words in passing — just tumble out.
I was doing an interview in 1982 with actor Paul Land, who played the “Tommy Dee” character in Taylor Hackford‘s The Idolmaker. Land, whose people skills weren’t that great, was talking about his life before he became a successful actor, and he said at one point, “I was like you back then!” Me, he meant — a low-rent schlub, struggling to survive. I understood what Land was basically saying and I didn’t take offense, but the publicist in the room noticably stiffened and went “aaahh.”

I now have good reason to doubt Glenn Erickson‘s review of the Blu-ray Dirty Harry disc that I linked to and commented about yesterday. Erickson was cool with Fox Home Video’s controversial Patton Blu-ray disc, but has claimed that the Dirty Harry disc shows “heavy tweaking to minimize grain, sharpen contrast and brighten colors” and that “heavy processing has given most night shots an almost unnatural look.”
The reason is that transfer guru and unrequited grain-worshipper Robert Harris doesn’t agree, and neither, according to a well-placed source, does Clint Eastwood himself. Harris says that the Harry disc looks like beautifully restored film and not digital data (unlike, in his opinion, the case with the Patton disc). And an on-the-lot source has told me that Eastwood approved the Blu-ray transfer during a test screening late last year.
Eastwood “came in to watch the first ten minutes, said it was fine, and then got up, went to the back of the room, sat down and watched the whole thing,” the source says. “The only grain reduction was done to even out the grain structure. We also toned down a blood scene so it wouldn’t look so day-glo red.”

The trailer for The Day the Earth Stood Still (20th Century Fox, 12.12) with Keanu Reeves (as Klaatu), Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates and John Cleese. Directed by Scott Derrickson, written by David Scarpa. I copied the code from some Russian site called Ru Tube. YouTube had it up for a bit before it was pulled. It probably won’t last very long here also. It’s also watchable on this fan site.

Scarpa’s script may, I’m reading, be based more closely on Harry Bates‘ 1940 short story called “Farewell to the Master” than the classic 1951 Robert Wise film with Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Billy Gray and Sam Jaffe. Don’t read the Wikipedia synopsis of the short story if you don’t want to know.

During a q & a session following a Los Angeles Film Festival showing of Boogieman, the superb Lee Atwater doc, I asked a question about the differences in the political climate of 20 years ago (i.e., during the Bush-Dukakis presidential race) and today, and said that I don’t think that racial attitudes are quite as fearful and retrograde as they seemed to be in ’88. I was obviously referring to the Obama ascendancy, but some in the audience flat-out laughed at me for saying this.

The night before last I happened to watch 48 HRS. (’82), the seminal action buddy movie with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy as a cop and a con kicking around San Francisco and looking to stop some bad guys. I was surprised how…yesteryear it felt.
And I’m telling the snooties who laughed at my political naivete a couple of weeks ago that the racial attitudes and undercurrents in this Walter Hill movie, which came out 26 years ago, have all pretty much disappeared in Blue America. They give you a taste of a racially-biased and separatist culture that no longer exists in this country, or is at least severely diminished, and would never be represented in an action film made today.
Nolte is a flat-out racist brute who calls Murphy “nigger” and “spear-chucker.” They go into a redneck bar that’s supposed to be some kind of haven for good ole boy white separatism (in San Francisco?), and when Murphy walks in the vibe in the room is like, “Holy shit, a black guy!” When Murphy order a drink the bartender goes, “How about a Black Russian?” Can anyone imagine material of this sort turning up in any movie made today? Even one set in Bumblefuck, Idaho?

48 HRS. is about Nolte and Murphy seeing beyond their personal petty crap and coming to like and respect each other for who they are inside, but the fact that Hill and his writers toss in the racial jibes tell you something about the culture back then.
Attitudes were still fairly ugly in some quarters. The hosing of the civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, had happened only 17 years before, or what 1991 is to us today. Ours was a reasonably progressive society in elite media circles (Bryant Gumbel began his Today stint in January 1982, and Bernard Shaw had begun as a CNN anchor two years earlier) but Nelson Mandela wouldn’t be released from Robben Island prison until 1990.
I was around and I don’t remember anything in the early ’80s like the comme ci comme ca homogenous whatever vibe that you feel today. In the blue cities and upscale suburbs, I mean. Maybe my memory is faulty, but I don’t think so. The flannel-shirt dumb-asses are obviously still out there in force (they obviously kept Hillary’s campaign going in the final stretches of the Democratic primary race), but things have definitely evolved and progressed since the early Reagan era.

“For those who are quick to call Hancock ‘a mess’ or the third act ‘a huge left turn’ or Variety‘s hypetastic Last Action Hero-like or whatever euphemism they are using this time, I offer this very serious suggestion — see the movie again. If they still don’t see how well the tapestry is woven, I will leave them to their myopia.” — Opening graph of David Poland‘s spoiler review of Hancock, which went up (I think) the night before last. See it again? I have a different suggestion. Erase this movie from your mind by any means necessary.

“The new Blu-ray of Dirty Harry prompts mention of the heated web debate about whether or not studios are over-enhancing older films for hi-def,” writes film.com’s Glenn Erickson. “Irate bulletin board posters have singled out Patton, as Fox’s Blu-ray has been enhanced to minimize natural grain, presumably because Blu-ray proponents think that the format means ‘no grain.’ Patton was so bright and clear in its 70mm theatrical presentation that ordinary viewers are unlikely to complain. This reviewer wasn’t offended either.

“Dirty Harry on Blu-ray is more complicated. The Blu-ray disc shows heavy tweaking to minimize grain, sharpen contrast and brighten colors. Sunny exteriors haven’t changed much but heavy processing has given most night shots an almost unnatural look — detail and bright color in what were once dimly lit areas, with everything else falling into inky blackness.”
Hold on…Erickson is complaining about a so-so-looking film looking better than it did upon original release? Whatever for? I don’t see the beef as long as it looks like “film” and bears a strong resemblance to the intended color and lighting scheme. Is Erickson saying it looks unnatural? Like data rather than celluloid? Look at that Clint Eastwood still up above, which was taken from the Blu-ray by the DVD Beaver guys. He looks terrific. And what’s wrong with that?
“To this reviewer, Patton looks more or less like its theatrical presentation, while Dirty Harry is substantially altered,” Ericksonj continues. “The 1971 release, after all, was never a visual beauty. The quest for ‘docu realism’ seems to have meant indifferent exposure and an over-reliance on zoom shots. Many dialogue scenes have a very shallow focus, and a number of shots are just plain out of focus. On original release prints, ‘pushed’ nighttime scenes offered milky blacks, golf ball-sized grain and weak hues.”

Too many actresses are treated like race horses. They’re allowed to race for a certain period, and then they “age out” and are put out to pasture. Is this what’s happened to Rene Russo? She was looking good during the Clinton years, gliding along there in the early to late ’90s (In the Line of Fire, Get Shorty, Tin Cup, The Thomas Crown Affair). And then…?

The last beam-ups were costarring roles in two movies released three years ago — Two for the Money with Al Pacino and Yours, Mine and Ours with Dennis Quaid — and then she went poof. And now off the radar for three years and counting. Not fair, not right — women of Russo’s age (born in ’54) are in their prime and very watchable.
Hey, what about Madeleine Stowe? I saw her at the Aero Theatre a few months ago with her husband and child, but she’s been MIA for a good while also. Several years. I heard she wrote a good script a few years ago (a western?) that people liked and wanted to make, but they said no when she said “I have to star in it.” She wouldn’t budge, the interest faded and it went away. That’s the story I was told.

John McCain “was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the [Nicaraguan] guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention,” Republican Sen. Thad Cochran recounted earlier this year, according to the Sun Herald‘s Michael Newsom. “But I saw some kind of quick movement…and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever.
“I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him.”

The Western Writers of America have come out with a list of the 100 top westerns of all time. Variety‘s Anne Thompson, in an uncharacteristic burst of passion, has written that “they should be ashamed of themselves for these woeful rankings.” I don’t have the same likes and dislikes but I certainly don’t feel…you know, disdain.

The WWA’s Top Ten: Shane, High Noon, The Searchers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Dances with Wolves, The Wild Bunch, Red River, Tombstone, The Magnificent Seven and Open Range.
HE’s Top Twelve: Shane, Unforgiven, Red River, The Wild Bunch, High Noon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Open Range, The Ox-Bow Incident, Hud, Lonely Are The Brave, Tombstone and The Professionals.
I have a slight soft spot for Ride the High Country and Johnny Concho, the Frank Sinatra western. I’ve never really liked Johnny Guitar. I respect but have never really gotten off on those Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart westerns. Sergio Leone‘s westerns have too many portentous close-ups. I don’t like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as much as I should because of the TV sound stage vibe, the hamminess of the acting, the fact that John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart are at least 15 years too old for their parts, etc. But I love the music and the opening credits.

I should have thought longer and harder before writing that Akiva Goldsman most likely wasn’t to blame for Hancock‘s horrendous third act. HE reader “Richardson” did a good job earlier today of persuading me to reconsider. As he put it, “I can’t see how you can blame Will Smith for major script problems when Goldsman is the credited re-writer who defanged the script. Same as [he did on] I Am Legend. You can blame Smith for approving Goldsman as the writer, though, since he surely did that.”

Only in the film industry have I seen people laugh so uproariously and so obsequiously as Akiva Goldsman seems to be doing here. When you get to this town you soon learn that the vast majority of funny things that movie stars say and do are often hugely funny, causing those in their presence to shriek and bust a gut.

I guess my judgment was clouded by the fact that I’m an admirer of Goldsman’s scripts of A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man, but I sorta kinda woke up when I re-read Richardson’s post late this afternoon and also after a veteran Los Angeles critic reminded me in an e-mail, “When in doubt, blame Akiva Goldsman!”
This same guy sent along me a copy of Vy Vincent Ngo‘s Tonight He Comes — the original script that eventually morphed into Hancock. “I haven’t had time to read this completely yet,” he said, “but from what I can tell it looks interesting and might serve as some sort of object lesson about what happens to scripts when they get tailored for a big-star tentpole. It’s worth checking out if you have a little time. I don’t know who sent this to me, but it’s obvious he doesn’t care who sees it at this point.”
The problem is that Ngo’s 126-page script isn’t dated, and it’s missing page 125. In any case, if anyone wants to read it I’ll send it along.
Here’s the letter that accompanied the script: “It’s always frustrating to read movie reviews in which the writing is slammed. Screenwriters are easy targets, but they’re often innocent bystanders in the development process. If you want to know what Hancock looked like before all the cooks in the kitchen got their grubby paws on it, here’s an earlier draft that shows the writer’s true vision.
“If you take the time to read it you’ll discover that it was once a very promising story before the bigwigs crapped it up. You can’t blame the writer for that.”
Anyway, here it is. It would be better, of course, if I could find a version that contains page 125. If anyone has a PDF with all the pages, please send along.

Off to that screening (which I’m late for) — back around 3 pm. In the meantime, please review this astounding summary of right-wing talkshow and blogger reactions to WALL*E. Consider this Glenn Beck quote in particular: “I can’t wait to teach my kids how we’ve destroyed the Earth. I can’t wait. You know if your kid has ever come home and said, ‘Dad, how come we use so much styrofoam,’ oh, this is the movie for you.”
The denial levels in this guy are menacing. There are guys like Beck out there right now — millions of them — waving away the reality and chuckling to themselves and passing their bullshit along to their kids and keeping the ignorance levels high. This is the way the world is going to end.