Director Rod Lurie (Nothing But The Truth, Resurrecting The Champ) sent the following to my e-mail box this morning: “The Democratic primary campaign has been electric,” he began. “It’s been better than any fictionalized version could be. Better than The Best Man, Recount, The American President, The Candidate or The Contender.
“But when people talk about Obama’s experience, it seems like a dead argument to me. That’s because I look at White House governing the same way I do filmmaking.
“Directors, like any Oval Office occupant, bring vision and ideas to the world that they now control. They are not necessarily experts at the technical aspects of the game. A director has a director of photography and a President has a Secretary of the Treasury. The director has a production designer and a President has a Secretary of State. All the below-the-line guys have to respond to the big idea of their boss.
“”First-time directors with no experience, after all, have given us Citizen Kane, The 400 Blows, Reservoir Dogs, Breathless, American Beauty, Buyz in the Hood, Sling Blade, The Maltese Falcon and Ordinary People. Young directors with some but not much experience (liek Obama) have given us The Godfather, The French Connection, Pulp Fiction, Mean Streets, The Killing, Jaws, American Graffiti and so on.
“Once directors gain that experience — once they taste success — they tend to get not so much lazier as they are careful. Safe. There are some directors like Eastwood and Huston who improved as they aged, but not many others.
“The same thing tends to apply to our leaders. When he was younger, John McCain was a reformer and a bull that carried his own china shop around with him. It was commendable when he opposed Reagan putting our marines in Lebanon, for example. It was commendable when he lashed at Christian evangalists like Fallwell and Robertson. But now, he’s playing it safe in his old age. He’s not tweaking the base, not insisting that the Republicans take a good look in the mirror and adjust their tie or realize that the need a haircut. Its as if he needed the advantage of youth’s energy to go against the grain.
“Go Obama.”

Defamer‘s Summer Bad-Buzz Watch article, which went up late yesterday morning, focuses, of course, on the Big Three — Get Smart, The Love Guru and The Happening. Whatever, blah-blah, standard sniper-fire stuff.

What’s funny or mildly amusing about this New York subway poster defacing lying just to the north of this graph? Nothing. It’s asinine. But what it tells you, I believe, is that the elite malcontents out there have picked up on the Happening vibe and are quietly massing against Shyamalan. The fact that 20th Century Fox hasn’t scheduled any press screenings (not just here but in hinterland burghs) tells you something.
I don’t trust what I’ve heard about Get Smart — too blunt, too simplistic — so I’m keeping mum.
I’ve heard that The Love Guru is pretty bad, yes, but doesn’t the concept, Mike Myers‘ makeup/appearance and the ad art make this point more clearly than any loose-talk item?

Last night on CNN, commentator Jeffrey Toobin noted that Barack Obama‘s victory margin “is without dispute — he has won the nomination…so without the deranged narcissism of the Clintons, I don’t understand why [this isn’t officially over].” Asked by his chuckling, mock-shocked colleagues what he really meant, Toobin said, “Well, what does that mean…it’s ‘her night’? He just won!”
GOP strategist Alex Castellanos, also appearing on CNN, said that in Clinton’s almost blustery, non-conceding “no decisions tonight” speech last night “she did everything but offer Obama the vice presidency.”
But “what other decision can she make?,” MSNBC’s First Read essay asked this morning. “Her speech, which came after the networks declared Obama the presumptive nominee, seemed akin to the losing football team remaining on the field after the game is already over and celebrating with its fans.
“A close friend and adviser said, ‘We were going flat-out until last night. We poured everything into winning South Dakota. Now she needs some time to decompress.’ Another said: “She knows she has maximum leverage right now.” The Clintons clearly believe that Obama needs her supporters — and that they can continue this dance for at least a few more days, despite pressure from party leaders to get it done.”
Decompress? In other words, instead of doing what any student of politics would consider to be the traditional, respectful thing — i..e, her conceding the nomination to Obama — she’s focusing instead on trying to chill down so she can personally feel looser and more relaxed? Is she going to double up on foot massages?
Hillary Clinton’s raging egomania is literally sickening. She’s a fiend. She will crawl out the landing gear of Obama’s jet when it lands in Denver and tear Lance Henrickson in half. (Thanks to HE reader Crow T. Robot. Thanks also to Bosco Bear.)
Which makes it all the more difficult to admit that as loathsome and despicable as Clinton is, it would still be the smart thing for Obama to ask her to be his Vice-President.
John F. Kennedy didn’t betray his “let’s get this country moving again” campaign mantra by making Lyndon Johnson, a vulgar, old-school wheeler-dealer, his running mate — he chose Johnson in order to win. Clinton is an absolute monster, but she believes in the right things and Obama, I suspect, will need a scrappy pit bull to help slap some deals together. You can’t be too high-minded in a scummy business like politics.
Clinton will bring along the middle-aged Appalachian-industrial Midwest rube vote (or certainly a greater portion of these good and gentle folks than Obama would otherwise get on his own), and she’ll certainly attract the millions of older, less-educated women who’ve been standing with her since last January and before. She is obnoxious with talons. She is Darkness Personified and nothing but trouble, but she believes in and wants to achieve the goals that Obama is committed to. The poor guy needs to hold his nose, shake hands with the devil and win the damn election, and move on from there.
That said, she is clearly trying to force Oabama’s hand in this thing, and if he decides to turn her down and go with someone else as Vice-President, Obama will be admired for having made a tough and principled decision. For HRC is truly sociopathic — one of the ugliest right-thinking liberals of all time.
As Politico‘s Roger Simon wrote this morning, Clinton’s “fighting words [last night] only increased the need for Obama to show that he can be strong, tough and in charge. Clinton’s unwillingness to recognize Obama as the victor only increased the need for Obama to act like a president and not like a doormat. And denying her a vice presidential slot may be a way of doing that.”

“He thought a little thing like winning would stop her? Oh, Bambi. Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons. If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance. ‘It’s never going to end,’ sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. ‘We’re just moving to a new phase.’

“Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. Getting dragged across the finish line Tuesday night by Democrats who had had enough of the rapacious Clintons, who had decided, if it came to it, that they would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary, the Illinois senator tried to celebrate at the St. Paul arena where Republicans will anoint John McCain in September.
“But even as Obama was trying to savor, Hillary was refusing to sever. Ignoring the attempts of Obama and his surrogates to graciously say how ‘extraordinary’ she was as they showed her the exit, she and a self-pitying Bill continued to pull focus. Outside Baruch College, where she was to speak, her fierce feminist supporters screamed ‘Denver! Denver! Denver!'” — from Maureen Dowd‘s 6.4.08 N.Y. Times column, titled “She’s Still Here!”

For a change, I’m in complete accord with the tweedly-deedly Dave Kehr over his enthusiasm for Blake Edwards‘ What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), which is out today on DVD.

Or rather, my memory of this World War II farce, having seen it many eons ago, is in accord with what Kehr wrote today in his N.Y. Times DVD column. I remember it being hugely funny, but you have to careful with Edwards (who is one of the slickest and coarsest auteur-level directors of all time) and you really can’t trust your memory. I will therefore see it this evening and render a verdict down the road.
I remember clearly that Harry Morgan, Jr.’s Major Pott character is a hoot. He somehow gets lost in a network of caves and tunnels under the small Italian town where the story takes place, and the loneliness and confusion slowly turn him into a babbling loon. I remember one of his final lines: “White man speak with forked tongue!”

A studio exec has written and clarified some points about the Universal fire and the films (prints) that were destroyed. First, he says, “No archival material is stored at Deluxe — circulating prints of the more popular titles are kept there. Those prints, of course, remain unharmed.”
Secondly, “A monumental amount of Universal’s archival prints — highly precious, still screened on occasion, and not to be confused with original camera negatives — were destroyed in the fire.”
Thirdly, “Even though the negatives are allegedly safe in New Jersey, this is still a colossal tragedy. It will take Universal years — if not decades — to replace all the lost archival prints (assuming they even have the inclination).”
“Also remember that Universal owns pre-1950s Paramount, so much of those archival prints have been lost as well. UCLA maintains nitrate prints of those titles, but those are not lent out for screenings.”

N.Y. Times guy Michael Cieply on Sony Classics’ unusual (and perhaps trend-setting) plan to open Baghead in Austin, and then, according to SPC co-topper Tom Bernard, “probably” Dallas, Houston and maybe Portland. The New York and L.A. openings won’t happen until sometime in July or August. The first group of non-coastal cities, says Bernard, √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚Äútend to connect with what√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s new and different.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù

The trailer for Wanted (Universal, 6.27), which certainly, definitely costars James McAvoy as well as Angelina Jolie. A bit of an odd choice to open the L.A. Film Festival…no?

North Carolina-based film archivist and HE loyalist Joe Corey tells me that he’s confirmed the validity of an e-mail, posted today by Home Theatre Forum subscriber Stephen Bowie, that “was apparently sent out in an e-mail to theaters with upcoming Universal repertory bookings, and appears to contradict what Uni [has been] telling the press,” to wit:
“It is with great sadness that I must inform you that yesterday’s [Universal Studios] fire destroyed nearly 100% of the archive prints kept here on the lot.
“Due to this we will be unable to honor any film bookings of prints that were set to ship from here. Over the next few weeks and months we will be able to try and piece together what material we do have and if any prints exist elsewhere. For the time being please check your rental confirmations and look under shipping instructions. If the print was set to ship from the studio then you date is now canceled. If the shipping instructions say ‘ship from Deluxe’ then those dates are still good.”
I haven’t heard anything definitive, but apparently this is a burned-print situation — not negatives. The archival material was at Deluxe. What was destroyed, apparently, were prints that were skedded to sent to repertory showings.

Frank Pierson‘s King of the Gypsies, which is out today on DVD, is a fairly difficult film to sit through. It’s a stab at trying to give a Godfather-like treatment to gypsy culture, and there’s just no believing it. While it “isn’t the worst film of the year,” said N.Y. Times critic Vincent Canby in his 12.20.78 review, “the gypsies should sue.”

Degraded Polaroid photo of King of the Gypsies star Sterling Hayden and journalist during filming in late ’77 (or was it early ’78?) at Manhattan’s Plaza hotel.

But the film carries a special memory for me, however, as I managed an interview with star Sterling Hayden during filming in Manhattan in late ’77. Hayden, who lived in my home town of Wilton, Connecticut, and whom I knew faintly because of this, was the first “name” guy I ever sat down with for a piece.
A good actor but an even better writer, eloquent and blustery, and a “bothered” malcontent from way back, Hayden — 62 at the time — was a tall, bearded Zeus-like figure, and one of the first bohemian-minded older guys I’d had the pleasure of slightly knowing.
He liked being the ornery old rebel, and was fairly open to hanging with younger fans like myself. I visited his Wilton home two or three times to listen and learn and shoot the shit. (It helped that I knew all of his films, and had strong opinions about his best performances.) I never got high with Hayden, but I knew a couple of Wilton guys who told me they did. Hash, they said.
Hayden had some legendary problems with the bottle. He wasn’t all that different from Roger Wade, the alcoholic writer he portrayed in Robert Altman‘s The Long Goodbye. (Hayden was less bitter.) He would do rehab and fasting from time to time. I remember him saying once that fasting “is the precise opposite of debauch…the hard thing is to hold that middle ground, hold that middle ground.”

My King of the Gypsies interview with Hayden took place in a hotel room at the Plaza hotel, where filming was happening that day. It was sometime in the mid-afternoon, and I remember that he downed a couple of large glasses of Johnnie Walker Red over a two hour period. Hayden wasn’t much of a give-and-taker. He was the Great Man who’d been through it all, knew it all and had a lot to say. It was all about feeding him set-up lines and and letting nature takes its course.
He told me that producer Dino de Laurentiis had given him a copy of Lorenzo Semple, Jr.‘s script of Hurricane, in hopes that Hayden would agree to costar. When De Laurentiis asked what he thought, Hayden said (or so he told me), “I gotta tell ya — I think it’s crap!” Bristling, De Laurentiis replied, “You’re the first person who’s said that!” A day or two later Hayden talked to a De Laurentiis development guy who said, “Naahh…you’re not the first.”
The best moment of our interview happened when Hayden began speaking of his farmer role in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900. He said that Bertolucci had let him write his own dialogue, and was proud of a line he’d written for his death scene. I knew it and said it before he did — “I’ve always loved the wind.” Talk about a bonding moment.

Montana is said to be safe-and-solid for Obama this evening, but indications are that South Dakota could topple for Hillary. If this turns out to be true, it would suggest, of course, that there are more white, undereducated, working- class “low-information voters” (i.e., dug-in rubes) in South Dakota than Montana.
But why, I wonder? What is it about Montana that has lessened the prevalence of “low information” voting patterns? Why are voters less racist there than in South Dakota? (Blacks represent .09% of the state’s populations; Hispancs comprise 2.1%.) It’s like there are two countries out there.
The core factor, I suspect, is that Hillary will benefit in South Dakota from the the usual under-educated older female gender-loyalty factor, which is now in an Alamo-like mindset with even her staunchest supporters realizing she’s done.