I’ve been sent the script of Danny Strong‘s Recount, and it’s as good as I’d heard and hoped it would be. As I wrote a couple of days ago, it’s the basis of an HBO feature that Sydney Pollack will start directing within a few weeks’ time (for airing in early ’08), about the battle over the Florida returns in the wake of the 2000 presidential election and how the George Bush forces managed to finagle things in their favor at the end of the day.

I don’t want to give anything anyway, but I thought I’d let everyone read a five-page excerpt that covers the back and forth between the Gore and Bush campaigns at the moment when everyone realizes the Florida election is too close to call. I chose this portion because much of the dialogue has been used and repeated in news stories and books about this historic political spin battle. But these five pages give you a sense of how cleanly written and down-to-it Strong’s script is. Tell me if you don’t agree.

One presumes that Pollack will refine and augment as he goes along, but even if he shoots exactly what’s on the pages of this draft he’ll have a pretty good film at the end of the day. The draft I have is 137 pages long. Here’s page #20, #21, #22, #23 and #24.

The following quote appears on page 137, and again, I am revealing nothing as it is from a published dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens regarding Bush. vs. Gore: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

I saw the first two installments of HBO’s final Sopranos season last night, and as usual, they’re fantastic and brilliant and darkly funny and all the other superlatives, but there’s not much in the way of any pulverizing story turns — nothing decisive or darkly threatening at all regarding the fate of Anthony J. Soprano, his immediate family or associates.

Okay, a prominent character — a rival — meets his ultimate fate but not at the hand of an assassin or lawman, and yes, tensions between Tony and two of his closest family allies come seeping to the surface, but we’re all familiar with how producer- creator David Chase like this series to play and feel. Aroma, character, emotional undercurrents and karma simmering over a low flame in a kitchen in a big fat New Jersey McMansion. The series always hits home and sinks in, but rarely in the way of Shakespearean high drama.

There sure as shit isn’t anything at all in the way of a narrative toboggan ride in episodes #78 (“Sopranos Home Movies”) and #79 (“Stage 5”), I can tell you. But I loved every minute. I was in pig heaven. In fact, I watched the second installment twice.

You wouldn’t think that a longish scene about four close family members (Tony, Carmela, Bobby, Janice) playing Monopoly at a vacation house on a big lake could result in dramatic fireworks, but the one in the first episode does. (Actually, the way a person plays Monopoly is character-revealing. I noticed that about my kids when we played when they were eight and nine.)

Does anything “happen” in this episode? Not really, but it’s hard to tell with this series. Maybe some kind of plot seed is being planted….maybe. Wherever they’re going, Chase and his writers are certainly in no hurry.

The second episode is about Christopher Moltisanti’s slasher movie, Cleaver, and about a certain party dealing with illness and possible death. I’m not going to get into it any further except to say that director Sydney Pollack is superb as an orderly in a prison hospital who was put in jail for killing his wife and two others. (Has Pollack ever given a performance that didn’t feel absolutely grounded and believable? He was easily the best thing in Husbands and Wives, Changing Lanes, Eyes Wide Shut, etc.)

I don’t sense a bullet in Tony’s future — I just don’t see it. Chase is not a black- and-white moralist who needs his sinners to pay up. Besides, the pressure must be enormous to keep the boss alive in case someone wants to try and shoot a feature-film version down the road. I don’t know anything and I can’t smell anything either (not with this series), but if anyone’s going to get whacked it’ll be Bobby or Christopher or Phil Leotardo…one of those guys. But I really don’t know anything.

One thing about The Sopranos is the way people turn around and suddenly the furies are upon them. In a way, Bob Clark‘s death was like a Sopranos plot turn. Out for a dinner or some kind of good time with his son, some asshole coming the opposite way is getting a blowjob from his girlfriend, the car veers to the left and wham…over, lights out, eternity. Ya never know what’s comin’.

The trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Disney, 5.25) does make the film seem like it might be a pretty agreeable serving of horseshit eye-candy. Question is, how long will it be? I wouldn’t have disliked the second one if it had been, say, 20 or 30 minutes shorter. A jape should never be lengthy. It should run 100 or 110 minutes, tops.

I just want to say that I went out for a moonlit walk last night (i.e., after watching the first two final-season-of-The Sopranos episodes on DVD) and thought long and hard about all the haters bashing me for delivering my honest opinion of Bob Clark‘s movies in the same piece in which I reported the terrible news of his death. Obviously the consensus among 90% of the readership is that it is foul and diseased to be render any kind of mixed or negative verdict on a person’s work concurrent with their death announcement. That’s how I’m reading it, and maybe the haters are right.

In deference to this, I hereby pledge that when the next film artist dies, I will wait…uhm, 24 hours before running negative comments about their work. Is that long enough or should I wait for 48 or 72 hours? Or should I wait a bit longer? A week, a month…you tell me. How about six months or a year? Or should I refrain from ever saying anything critical or contrary about their work once they’ve passed on? How about a general law that says once a person has died, everything they did merits respect and, if at all possible, a certain retrospective positivism?

I’m trying not to be snide. I just felt badly about Clark’s passing and reported it, and then I thought, “Well, do I say anything about his work?” and figured I probably shouldn’t because I didn’t like his films, but then I considered that all obituaries include some kind of assessment about how the deceased and/or his work was generally regarded, and that would mean acknowledging that Clark was a two- time Razzie winner who made Turk 182, one of the worst films of the 20th Century, and then I thought if I’m going to acknowledge that general line of critical thinking I might as well be honest and mention what I personally think…and it went from there.

Whatever really happened between Keith Richards and his dad’s ashes in ’02 — i.e., he snorted a small portion with a line of cocaine or he used them to fertilize a tree — no one but no one believes Richards’ manager’s claim that the snorting story was uttered in jest. (Even if it was.)

Just as everyone presumes that Richards’ rep issued the denial because she heard from alarmed Disney publicist Dennis Rice (or from some lackey in the Disney pipeline) and was told that dad-snorting wouldn’t go over with the family-fare donkeys who support the Pirates of the Carribbean films in the greatest numbers, and that the whole thing needed to be spun into oblivion.

But the really ridiculous comment in this L.A. Times/Sheigh Crabtree reaction piece is the one in which Rice says, “Keith won’t be doing a lot of publicity for this movie.” In other words, he’s a loose cannon and his press chats on behalf of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End are going to severely restricted if not eliminated. What did Disney marketers expect when Richards was hired to play Johnny Depp‘s pirate dad? That he’d comport himself like Dick Van Dyke?

Collider.com’s Steve Weintraub (a.k.a. “Frosty”) says he’s spent the last few days researching a story about The Invasion (Warner Bros., 8.17), the Nicole Kidman zombie film that Oliver Hirschbiegel began to direct (but wasn’t allowed to quite finish), and discovered it’s much more of a Wachowski Brothers job than anything else.

The Wachowskis re-wrote 2/3 of it, Weintraub reports, and then arranged for addi- tional footage to be directed by James Teigue, the Wachowski flunky who directed V for Vendetta.

“The last time you may have heard of this film was when Kidman was involved with a stunt gone wrong,” Weintraub begins. “What you may not have known was that the stunt took place during the reshoots for the film.”

“Apparently, Warner Bros. saw an early rough cut of The Invasion and realized it needed a little work. The director, Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall), was said to be ‘unavailable’ to work on the planned reshoots” — i.e., was most likely given the heave-ho — “so Warner Bros. and Joel Silver brought in a pair of writer-directors that they knew they could rely upon — the Wachowski Brothers.

“It was reported that the boys came in to shoot a new ending. But I can report that they rewrote over 2/3 of the film, and brought in Mcteigue to direct the material while they were busy prepping their own film.

“Silver and Warner Bros. knew that they were capable of creating a more commercially accessible and large scale film than had previously been put together. Apparently, the earlier cut may have been a little artsy, talky, and not exactly a summer tentpole.

“So, we all knew we were getting a new Wachowski film with the upcoming G-rated Speed Racer in 2008, but now we’re getting something to hold our appetites in the meantime. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited as fuck about this and I hope there’s a trailer soon. Hint. Hint. And if you’re curious what this film is about, luckily earlier this year, Warner Bros. provided me with a thorough and complete synopsis of said film:

Weintraub says he got “two people to confirm what I wrote.”

The 2nd annual “Green Issue” of Vanity Fair has “an exclusive transcript” from 11th Hour, a new wake-up-to-global-warming doc that Leonardo DiCaprio produced, narrated and co-wrote. (The IMDB provides no release date other than 2007.) This is worth checking out for the video reel of a photo session with Knut (i.e., the little polar bear who was rejected by his mother, and whom some guys actually said should be killed because of that) plus outtakes from the DiCaprio photo shoot in Iceland.

Spider-Man 3 (Columbia, 5.4) will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on 4.30 — terrific. File this one under “financially advantageous for Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal‘s festival but a crass mercenary move that further undercuts the spirit of this once-vibrant event, which was already hurt by last week’s announcement about the ticket prices being jacked from $12 to $18 bucks each.”

A festival needs to show big-star, high-profile flicks to help promote itself, but shouldn’t the ones that get selected at least aspire to some kind of quality-type, serious-moviegoer pedigree? Does anyone believe that a story about Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) giving in to hate and grappling with his dark side (i.e., a rehash of a film I saw in the summer of ’83 or thereabouts….what could that be?) is going to result in echoes that anyone will give a damn about three minutes after they leave the theatre?

The sixth annual Tribeca Film Festival will run from 4.25 through 5.6.

“The floors were sticky. The seats were worn down to the springs. The smell was a combination of buttered popcorn and bodily fluids. In the back row, someone might be in a heated argument with a fellow patron — or getting a $5 hand job. Sometimes, a rat would scurry past your leg. Onscreen, any number of sordid acts, seedy pleasures or splatterrific gore played to a crowd that expected extremities at every turn.” — Time Out‘s David Fear on the 42nd Street grindhouses that are no more.

Speaking of which, a rat (or a very sizable mouse) crawled up my leg once — at a private screening room on Sixth and 54th or 55th, when I was watching John Badham‘s Dracula, which means it happened…good God, 28 years ago. I felt a slight flutter sensation on my lower left pants leg, and then the sensation of sharp little claws heading north. I spat out some vulgarity and flinched and stiffened my leg and swatted whatever it was that was crawling inside. The mouse-rat fell onto my shoe, dead or stunned. I grabbed him by the tail and threw him against the curtained wall. I was furious, but I managed to joke about it later on with the publicist.

Sad, terrible, traumatic news: director Bob Clark (A Christmas Story, Porky’s) and his son Ariel died early this morning on the Pacific Coast highway when a foolish, inebriated 24 year-old guy, Hector Velazquez-Nava, swerved and slammed into Clark’s Infiniti sedan head-on. Clark, 67, and his 22 year-old son were pronounced dead at the scene.

Nava and his passenger, Lydia Mora, 29, were treated for minor injuries and later released. Nava was reportedly found to be driving under the influence of alcohol and operating a motor vehicle without a driver’s license. (What could cause a young drunk with a woman in his car to swerve madly while driving? Not, I’m guessing, a suicide impulse.) Nava will be booked on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and gross vehicular manslaughter.

I’m saddened and distressed by Clark’s death, but the poor guy is gone and a semblance of honesty is required and here it is: very few directors have offended me as much as he did over the years. Clark always struck me as a coarse and unsubtle man because he always made grossly “commercial” movies — i.e., ones that always aimed low, low, lower than low. His films always managed to convey a certain blue-collar crudeness, and I pretty much hated each and every one of them.

I didn’t even like A Christmas Story. (I always seem to frown when I see a picture of that little blonde kid with the black-rimmed glasses — when I see that kid I think Village of the Damned.) I hated Porky’s and Porky’s 2: The Next Day. I thought Rhinestone was pretty bad, and I found Turk 182 abysmal. (I’ll never forget a line that some New York smart-ass wrote about that film — “Turkey! Made $182 dollars!”) Loose Cannons, From the Hip, Baby Geniuses…forget it.

Clark was nominated for a Worst Director Razzie twice — In ’85 for Rhinestone, and then 20 years later for his direction of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

Again, I’m sorry for what happened. What a terrible tragedy. It’s always a little bit dicey to be driving at that hour, which, after all, is when the drunks are usually on their way home. Don’t drink and drive, obviously, but don’t drive when the assholes who do this anyway are out in force.

Disney marketing chief Dennis Rice, a guy renowned for having a contentious attitude towards a certain coterie of journalists and critics who don’t pull punches and whose working mantra is “you have to be nice to my movies and clients or I’m probably not going to be very nice to you,” is taking a new gig as president of worldwide marketing and publicity for Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner‘s United Artists.

The rough going-over that Cruise had gotten from the press since the couch- jumping episode seems to have been a factor in the Rice hire. The appearance, at least, is that Wagner has decided to bring in a tough guy who can shove as well as push and give as well as he gets. (Rice probably has very smooth relations with the majority of journalists and critics — he just has issues with certain parties, and I don’t mean just myself.) Rice started at Disney fifteen years ago, and then left for October Films nine years ago, and then served as marketing prez for Miramax, and then returned to Disney in ’03.

Famous people are going to be poked and badgered from time to time about their sexual tastes and proclivities (i.e., by gay media types if they happen to be gay), but it’s their own damn business and if they want to keep it private they’re damn well entitled and should be left alone. I say this having read on Radar Online that Out magazine’s May issue (on sale 4.17) is raising a rude curtain on Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster, even if there’s not much of a debate about where these two are at.

Would it be a healthier world all around if no one made the slightest attempt to mask their sexuality because doing so would be needless and pointless? Of course, but if a person decides that his/her career will work out better if they keep their cards to their chest, they should be allowed to play it that way.

This is off-topic, but the same goes for those execs in the film industry who’ve had “asshole interventions” — i.e., family and friends sitting them down and telling them they need to make some behavioral adjustments for the general betterment. (A producer of a film I saw recently allegedly went through one of these about eight or nine years ago.) Would you want to be on the cover of some magazine if you (or your wife/husband) had undergone group therapy along these lines? Would you want it known that your personality problems had become so critical that family and friends had to step in and try and fix things?

This is a good reader-response topic. What persons working in or adjacent to the film industry right now could be evaluated to be most in need of an asshole intervention? I know, I know….I’m a candidate, right? But who else? There must be dozens.