My favorite line of the night came when the Mexican-born Alfonso Cuaron thanked “the wise guys of Warner Brothers.” If he hadn’t corrected himself the implication would have been that the WB guys are a little bit shady, a gang of gamblers and connivers and goodfellas, etc. Which probably isn’t too far from the truth. My heart sank when Cuaron restated himself by saying “the wise people of Warner Brothers!” I prefer to think that “wise guys” was a Freudian slip rather than a mis-applied term, but Cuaron, who is absolutely one of the most articulate guys I know in this town (along with Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu), will never cop to this.

“Tonight, there are so many different possibilities. Possibility number one: 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Possibility number two: You’re all racists! Now, for our first white presenter, Anne Hathaway!” An HE colleague asks the following: “Does anyone think maybe, just maybe the producers who hired the ‘safe’ Ellen over an edgier choice would really let her tell what is essentially a Chris Rock joke at the top of the show unless they knew 12 Years A Slave was the winner?” Zadan and Meron could be the new Gil Cates (i.e., they want the gig for years and years), and I don’t think they would let her call the Academy racist ‘in quotes’ unless they knew that joke had a happy ending. Of course they have control over her script. The writers included former SNL people and so I’m sure they threw out some even edgier stuff.” My response: You’re presuming that the Price Waterhouse guys share the results with the producers. But you’re right about one thing — that was a Chris Rock joke, and if he had been hosting and told it instead of Ellen it would have gotten a different reaction.

The just-released poster for Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska (Paramount, 11.22) tells you it’s a serious award-season film about the stark realities of aging. (Obviously similar to the 2002 one-sheet for Payne’s About Schmidt.) My white hair is so sparse that I might as well be bald plus I have a neck wattle plus I’ve won a million bucks from Publisher’s Clearing House plus I’ve been an abusive drunk for most of my life plus my old friends and relatives sit around their living rooms and watch TV like immobile zombies. No sedatives, no soothing bromides to speak of, no emotional comforts of the usual sort.

In their latest (8.1) newsletter, the board of the Elitist Fraternity of Film Dweebs reminded readers that (and I quote) “under no circumstance will any EFFD members be permitted to say anything that doesn’t enthusiastically praise Criterion’s Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds.” I understand the ruling, but I bought this Bluray at Amoeba last night and then drove home and watched it. And watched it. And watched it. And I’m telling you it’s a black drag to sit through. A dark, creepy, chilly-hearted downer from start to finish. Mainly about malevolence and threats and intimidation and dread. “Interesting,” yes, because of the creepy Orwellian (or do I mean Burroughsian?) tone and James Wong Howe‘s nightmarish black-and-white cinematography. But it’s mostly punishing.

The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being freed from the horrific old-guy equation…the bitter gruel choice of drooling, bent-over Biden vs. pushing-80, flabby-neck-wattle Trump…thank you, God!; and (b) the historic, undeniably exciting opportunity to elect a fairly sharp, tough-minded, semi-youngish woman of color as U.S. President. Hard to resist.

Yesterday an official trailer surfaced for Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a Searchlight/Hulu release costarring Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack and Isabella Laughland. The three-hander begins streaming on Hulu on 6.17.

“Nine Thoughts About Leo Grande and Naked Emma,” posted on 1.26.22:

Thought #1: Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat through Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, and I was more or less okay with it, minor issues aside. It’s a reasonably engaging two-hander about a 55-year-old woman (Emma Thompson‘s “Nancy Stokes”, who doesn’t look 50ish as much as her actual age, which is 62) and a handsome young sex worker (Daryl McCormack‘s Leo Grande”). The widowed Nancy has led a rather sex-less and certainly orgasm-free life, and she’s hired Leo in order to sample the real thing.

The film (97 minutes) is basically three sexual and very personal encounters in a hotel room, and one in a hotel bar. (Or something like that.)

It’s an intimate, occasionally amusing, open-hearted exploration of an older woman’s sexuality and what a transformational thing good sex can be (nothing wrong with that!), along with the gradually building rapport between Nancy and Leo. It’s smoothly and nimbly performed, especially by Thompson.

Thought #1: Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat through Sophie Hyde‘s Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, and I was more or less okay with it, minor issues aside. It’s a reasonably engaging two-hander about a 55-year-old woman (Emma Thompson‘s “Nancy Stokes”, who doesn’t look 50ish as much as her actual age, which is 62) and a handsome young sex worker (Daryl McCormack‘s “Leo Grande”). The widowed Nancy has led a rather sex-less and certainly orgasm-free life, and she’s hired Leo in order to sample the real thing.

The film (97 minutes) is basically three sexual and very personal encounters in a hotel room, and one in a hotel bar. (Or something like that.) It’s an intimate, occasionally amusing, open-hearted exploration of an older woman’s sexuality and what a transformational thing good sex can be (nothing wrong with that!), along with the gradually building rapport between Nancy and Leo. It’s smoothly and nimbly performed, especially by Thompson.

Thought #2: But the 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating is all but meaningless, simply because most critics would be terrified of writing honestly about a film that ends with Thompson doing full-frontal nudity in front of a mirror. Nobody would dare say an unkind or unsupportive word. One critic has stated that Leo Grande “comes ring-fenced with the kind of bullet-proof worthiness that makes any negative criticism seem crass, glib and needlessly cruel.”

I don’t regard myself as cruel but I do lean toward candid, and I have to say…

Thought #3: Most of us, I suspect, have problems with older or overweight people performing nude scenes or sex scenes. Anne Reid‘s nude scenes in Roger Michell‘s The Mother (’03) were, for me, slightly discomforting. Kathy Bates did nude scenes in Hector Babenco‘s At Play in the Fields of the Lord (’91) and again in About Schmidt (’02), and the less said about them, the better. The middle-aged Dennis Hopper and Amy Irving were nude in Bruno Barreto‘s Carried Away, and that was no more or less comfortable than it sounds.

Thought #4: I wouldn’t want to see a nude scene with anyone who’s too old or saggy or out of shape. There are very few older actors whom I’d be willing to watch without clothing, but think about the possibilities. Imagine, for example, if Neil Young decided to star in a film that called for full-frontal nudity. I’d be terrified by that prospect. Imagine the horror of watching, say, Jack Nicholson as he looked ten years ago…imagine portly Jack with his gross animal…please! Let’s just forget the idea of older actors getting naked for any reason, except, perhaps, for muscular, rugged-looking guys like Harrison Ford but even then it might be a problem.

Thought #5: The idea of older women enjoying sex as much as any 17 or 22 or 38 or 46 year-old is great. Graying, neck-wattled women experiencing shuddering orgasms in their 50s, 60s or 70s sounds lovely and delightful…Hollywood Elsewhere fully approves. Just don’t ask me to contemplate their seen-better-days bods. And if an actress of Thompson’s age wants to do a full-frontal nude scene, fine. I just think it’s fair to ask them to first get a nice tummy tuck and boob lift. (My friends in Prague are excellent at handling both.) It’s fair to add that a woman’s navel should always be vertical or perfectly round, and it needs to be an “inny,” of course. But it can’t be horizontal, if you follow my drift.

Thought #6: The scene in the hotel bar involves an overweight waitress (Isabella Laughland‘s “Becky”) expressing curiosity and to some extent a slight degree of alarm about the relationship between Nancy and Leo. They initially lie to her by saying they’re meeting about one of them buying the other’s car, or something like that. And then they come clean. Becky is very involved and whatnot, and I was saying to myself “what has this waitress got to do with anything? Who cares what she thinks about Leo or Nancy’s sexuality or whatever? She’s just a waitress, and waitresses don’t count. Or this one doesn’t, at least.”

Thought #7: I have to admit that I got scared when I heard this movie was made with a “sex positive” attitude. That sounds a little too much like “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” The best sex is usually animalistic, runting, howling, raw, skanky, pervy, in some way objectionable. HE believes that the famous Woody Allen line — “Is sex dirty? Only when it’s being done right” — still applies.

Thought #8: Good Luck To You, Leo Grande has been described by many as a comedy. It is not that. Katy Brand‘s screenplay is brisk and amusing and allows for some self-lamenting humor on Nancy’s part, but that doesn’t make it a comedy — it makes it a mildly amusing, briskly-written character piece.

Thought #9: Sophie Hyde‘s film will go straight to Hulu. The target audience is expected to be older women. I guess so, but I can’t imagine any older woman being at peace with the sight of a female physique gone to seed. They know all about that on their own dime. People generally go to movies to escape their cares and woes, for the most part.

As it must to all men, death came yesterday to Sumner Redstone, the scrappy, swaggering, carrot-haired media magnate and “daring dealmaker” with a huge ego and, over the last 15 or 20 years, a messy “House of Borgia” private life. Not to mention that odd episode when he fired Tom Cruise off the Paramount lot for behaving like a hyper, couch-jumping eccentric.

The Boston-based Redstone began his entertainment career in the mid ’50s with a 12-theater drive-in chain (i.e., Northeast Theater Corp.). He gradually built it into a major megaplex exhibition chain in the ’60s and ’70s. In 1987 at age 63, Redstone engineered a hostile takeover of Viacom, the syndication company that owned MTV and Showtime, for $3.4 billion. In early 1994 he took control of Paramount in a $10 billion deal. Not to mention Blockbuster, CBS, yaddah yaddah…always the drive to dominate, acquire more money and power, a few missed opportunities and miscalculations, etc. You don’t wanna know. Okay, maybe you do.

And…well, read about his combative life if you care to, but it’s exhausting. Reviewing all of the super-strenuous clutching, grabbing, conniving, plotting and scheming by Sumner, his family members and especially a pair of girlfriend gatekeepers will drain your soul. Two Vanity Fair pieces — this and this — tell part of the tale.

I spent 75 minutes refreshing my memories of the man this morning…whew, whatever, later.

The 1979 Copley Hotel fire incident was quite the episode. Redstone nearly died, suffered major burns, needed about a year to fully recover.

If I’d been in Redstone’s shoes in the ’70s and ’80s I would have paid for some neck-wattle surgery, but that’s me.

Consider two N.Y. Times opinion pieces about the ongoing strategic erosion of Joe Biden‘s would-be presidential prospects — Ross Douhat‘s “The Real Joe Biden Decision” (4.2) and especially Michelle Goldberg‘s “The Wrong Time for Joe Biden” (4.1), for which the subhead states that Biden “is not a sexual predator, but he is out of touch.”

They’re a one-two punch that says “it’s all over but the shouting — Biden doesn’t have the balls to run as the moderate, behind-the-curve guy he really is deep down, and if he tries to apologize and suck up to the wokesters he’ll seem like a weak sister to his older, mostly white hinterland and suburban supporters, and so he’s basically between a rock and a hard place.”

Goldberg and Douhat are not wrong. Joe is more or less done.

Because his neck-wattled, decent-older-guy centrism will ignite all kinds of missiles and grenades from the urban forces of “the Great Awokening” (i.e., coined by Vox‘s Matthew Iglesias). And after months and months of this Biden may, Douhat suspects, wind up losing as badly as Jeb Bush did to Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries.

Plus the somewhat squishy, always-looking-to-accommodate Biden probably lacks the courage, in Douhat’s view, to run a no-apologies, straight-talking campaign that politely but firmly talks back to the wokesters and says “hold on, take it easy, you don’t have an exclusive hold on wisdom and truth and divine, heaven-sent strategy.”

Goldberg notes that while Biden is “by most accounts a man of great personal decency, if he runs for president he will have to run away from his own record. To those desperate to unseat Trump, the centrist, establishment Biden might seem like the safest choice, but it would actually be risky to pick a candidate who will need to constantly apologize for himself. Particularly when he doesn’t know how to do that very well.”

The word around the campfire is that Joe Biden is not only about to announce his Presidential candidacy but that he may also preemptively announce that recently defeated Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams will be his vice-presidential running mate. The immediate reaction will be, of course, (a) “whoa, bold move”, (b) “instantly establishes his 21st Century progressive credentials” and (c) “We love you, Joe!”

In fact it’s a sign of desperation. Only a 70something, semi-doddering, neck-wattled candidate who’s afraid of being perceived as yesterday’s news and over-the-hill would do such a thing. It would essentially be a kind of Bidenesque, liberal community, higher-brain-cell-count version of what John McCain did when he tapped Sarah Palin to be his running mate back in the summer of ’08.

Plus the fact that Abrams — in HE’s judgment one of the most brilliant and charismatic lightning-rod liberal politicians around today, in the hallowed realm of Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg…the notion of Abrams being one heartbeat away from the Presidency (and especially with Uncle Joe nudging 80 if and when he takes office in January 2021) will scare the bejeesus out of your white pot-bellied hinterland bumblefuck voting community. Not to mention the Jenny Craig/weight watchers crowd.

Clint Eastwood is pushing 89 but still has a nice clean jawline. I don’t meant to sound obsessive, but Joe “turkey wattle” Biden, 76, needs to “Clint up” before he announces his Presidential candidacy sometime next year. Joe knows what to do. He’s been no stranger to this and procedure over the years. He was a hair-plug pioneer way back in the late ’80s or thereabouts, and it probably helped him a lot.

Tragedy this day, 55 years ago. The brutal kind, to put it mildly. Instant cut-to-black at age 46. At least it was quick.

People who make it into their graying, neck-wattled, bent-over years experience a hundred or a thousand signals a day that say “things are slowing down, you’re becoming a bit more vulnerable, your gleaming years are behind you, it’s all downhill from here on, life can be dull and dispiriting, time for a nap,” etc. I sensed that resignation every time I visited my parents in their assisted living facility.

I guess I’m saying in a very narrow way that there might be a very slight upside in being spared all that, and in making a fast, decisive, sudden exit when the sky is blue and you’ve got a full head of hair and millions in the bank…wham.

You’re here and then you’re not here. Then you’re somewhere else…maybe.

That being said, all hail Kirk Douglas and Norman Lloyd! God, forgive me — I just used an exclamation point.