I’ve always been amazed that a line of dialogue this clueless and old-farty was used for a mass-market, right-in-the-swing-of-things entertainment that opened in December 1964. The author was either Richard Maibaum or Paul Dehn. It would have been out of character, yes, for Sean Connery‘s James Bond to have been a Beatles fan, but to have him speak of listening to their music with earmuffs on! Astonishing for a pop hero figure to have blurted this out at that time in history.

One thing when spoken by an enigmatic British hero figure, and something else entirely when attributed to an intense, moustache-wearing, curiously- behaving soldier in the Nixon administration. That said, how many people in the history of prosecution of governmental malfeasance have stood up and refused to rat? Damn few.

Captions withheld on purpose

In March 1970 a career achievement Oscar was given to a beloved, well-known actor. At the end of his speech the 66 year-old recipient expressed great excitement at “the astonishing young talents that are coming up in our midst…I think there’s an even more glorious era right around the corner.” Cary Grant had that exactly right, didn’t he?

Asked by Tim Appelo to name his favorite all-time books about Hollywood, author Peter Biskind — who is still laboring on his Warren Beatty biography, which may (I say “may”) be released sometime next year — has named seven books. Presumably off the top of Biskind‘s head and obviously less than comprehensive, but here they are:

Peter Biskind

David McClintick‘s “Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street,” Stephen Bach‘s “Final Cut: Dreams and Disasters in the Making of Heaven’s Gate,” Julia Phillips‘ “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again,” John Gregory Dunne‘s “The Studio,” Leo Braudy‘s “The World in a Frame,” Thomas Schatz‘s “The Genius of the System” and Lillian Ross‘s “Picture.”

Appelo has allowed two wrongos to slip by, I’m afraid. Bach’s book is not called “Heaven’s Gate: Dreams and Disasters in the Making of Heaven’s Gate.” And the author of “Picture” (i.e., not “The Picture,” as Appelo has it) is Lillian Ross, not Roth.
I would add the following to the must-read list: Otto Freidrich‘s “City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s“, Julie Salamon‘s “The Devil’s Candy,” Mark Harris‘s “Pictures at a Revolution,” Jack Brodsky and Nathan Weiss‘s “The Cleopatra Papers,” David Thomson‘s “Suspects” and “The Whole Equation and “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film,” William Goldman‘s “Which Lie Did I Tell?” and Biskind’s own “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” and “Down and Dirty Pictures.”

As Religulous producer-star Bill Maher or “God Is Not Great” author Chris Hitchens will tell you, anything that undermines any religious myth is cause for popping open the champagne. So Ethan Bronner‘s 7.6 N.Y. Times story that calls into question the legend of Jesus of Nazareth’s resurrection after three days in the tomb is a big whoopee in this regard. Cue the heartland Christian preacher types who will try to deny and spin this thing for all they’re worth.
The gist is that “a recently discovered three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles…because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.”

It’s been a couple of weeks since Patrick Goldstein‘s Big Picture blog started up, and it’s still hard to find the damn thing. Plus it looks too much like Goldstein’s regular “Big Picture” column. Why haven’t those doofusy LAT tech guys created a separate look and identity for the Goldstein blog? The dead-tree column and the blog are next to indistinguishable.
My understanding of the L.A. Times‘ online entertainment coverage is that The Envelope is the main portal. Except there’s no clear, easy-to see link to either Goldstein’s dead-tree column or his blog. Shouldn’t there be links to both? And shouldn’t there be an unmissable link to the blog on the dead-tree column and vice versa? Go to the L.A. Times‘ main search engine and all you get…ahhh, forget it. Who has the patience for a site that can’t provide simple comprehensive direction?
The Envelope does, however, have a clear, easy-to-see link to Pete Hammond‘s “Notes on a Season” 5.27 column about the Cannes Film Festival.

So where’s the footage or at least a still of Hitler’s decapitated head? Or at least one of his headless body, slumped over the desk at Madame Tussaud’s of Berlin? A good moralistic story like this happens and there’s no money shot?

This trailer for the currently-playing Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (HDNet/Magnolia) is so well-cut, smartly condensed and plugged into the Thompson essence that — I need to say this carefully — it’s almost a better thing than the 120-minute doc it’s selling. Almost, I say.

As I wrote last month, Alex Gibney‘s doc tells the full lopsided tale about a brilliant journalist who produced great stuff for maybe 11 or 12 years (mid ’60s to mid ’70s) and then wallowed around in drug-fueled lassitude for almost the next 30. Gonzo is a good film — thorough, inventive, humorous — but it drives you mad with a sadistic ’60s soundtrack made up of songs that classic-rock stations have been torturing their listeners with for the last 30 or 35 years.
The trailer hits every basic point delivered in the film but without the music. Which makes it, in a way, better. At the very least, it gave me an idea of what Gibney’s film might’ve been without having to be swamped with the sounds of Janis Joplin, Jesse Colin Young, et. al.
Sidenote: Time‘s Richard Schickel has written that Gonzo “seems to me a very sad story about an essentially minor figure. Thompson’s was not a life to celebrate (and Gibney, to his credit, does not do so). But there is an implicit approval in this film that makes me uneasy. But then, irrationality always make me uneasy. All artists — and nominally, Thompson was an artist — need a touch of the lunatic about them. But only a touch. In the end they are obliged to produce. And they are obliged not to succumb to, or to excessively encourage, their own myths.”

“What I find really hard to take is the way the media behave. They seem to pick on Barack much more readily than they do on McCain. They suddenly say he’s this kind of politician, he’s not what we thought, dah-dah-dah-dah. They say, ‘We’re not supposed to take a side, we’re supposed to just give the news,’ but they don’t just give the news, and they don’t tell the truth…excuse me? I only listen to Keith Olbermann. To hell with the rest of them. I’m an MSNBC type now.” — Lauren Bacall speaking to the S.F. Chronicle‘s Walter Addiego. Somehow the idea of that “put your lips together and blow” lady from To Have and Have Not being a BHO fan feels delightful.

David Gilmour‘s “The Film Club” is nominally about his decision to permit his 15-year-old son, Jesse, to drop out of school as long as he agreed to watch three movies a week of Gilmour’s choosing. That’s it? No requirement to write about them afterwards? No digesting and reprocessing them in some creative way (like shooting a short-film tribute)? Just watching three films a week doesn’t seem like enough to engage a 15 year-old. I would insist on at least four or five.
Douglas McGrath‘s 7.6 N.Y. Times article about the book reminded me, in any case, of that i-Village article I co-authored with my son Jett about three years ago that covered…well, vaguely similar ground. The title was “Kazan for Recess? Kubrick for Snack? How to create a passion for film in your kids.”
The underlying point, now that I’m thinking about it, was that unless a movie-fanatic father saturates his kids with first-rate films early on (and I mean starting at the toddler stage), any effort to implant or encourage a sense of taste in movies will be an uphill one, and may well prove fruitless.
Kids are off into the wild blue yonder by the time they hit 15. Friends, school, burgeoning sexual urges, media distractions…forget it. The spiritual divorcement process actually begins sometime in their late tweens. You have to reach them early on, when they’re still soft clay, or you’re spinning your wheels. Even if you’ve gotten to them early they still go away in their mid teens. But if you’ve done your work they’ll come back after three or four years.
I love two Gilmour lines that are excerpted in McGrath’s article. The first is a statement that Peter Yates‘ Bullitt “has the authority of stainless steel.” The other, as McGrath writes, “captures the reality-altering magic that movies cast.” After seeing Bullitt as a kid, Gilmour recalls “emerging from the Nortown theater that summer afternoon and thinking that there was something wrong with the sunlight.”

In response to a somewhat dithering, self-regarding Emily Gould piece called “How Your Emily Gould Sausage Gets Made” (posted 7.3.08 on her Emily Magazine blog), Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny wrote the following: “Um, not to put too fine a point on it — and believe me, I know this is going to sound ‘mean,’ but there’s just no way around it — but could you do the rest of humanity the favor of, like, throwing yourself in front of a bus or something? Thanks.”

Glenn Kenny; Emily Gould

I had read elsewhere that Kenny had suggested Gould should off herself, but this is not that. By the use of the term “bus,” which is universally preceded these days by the words “throw under the,” Kenny is telling Gould to dispense with a certain late June/early July attitude or psychology that she’s currently working from, or which (if you want to be forgiving or magnanimous) has enveloped her.
As we all know, those who get thrown under a bus are being punished for something they’ve recently said or done — discipline, not execution. What Kenny is actually suggesting, I think, is that Gould should change or refine or alter or somehow upgrade her…whatever, Brooklyn blogger shpiel. (Not that I have any such issues with Gould myself. I’ve always liked her prose and considered her a pretty cute kitty.)
The proof is in the pudding of Kenny’s actual sentence. The word “like” and the words “or something” are obviously softeners (as in fabric) which emphasize a meaning that is 90% metaphorical.