In the wake of Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise‘s descent into wackjob eccentricity and with Tom Hanks “no longer viable for most leading-man scripts,” Newsweek is saying that Will Smith is become the biggest Big Hollywood Kahuna of them all, followed by Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller.

The ability to sell tickets to the shmoes is certainly exciting beyond measure. When I think of all that money, and all that power that Smith has in the palm of his hand, I just go limp in the knees.

Of course, Smith is a softballer from the word “go” and hasn’t accelerated anyone’s pulse since he made Six Degrees of Separation.

And Depp is such a patented eccentric that he makes eccentricity seem mun- dane. Plus he has all that bad movie karma right now. I don’t want to sound judg- mental, but it will take Depp many years to atone for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I’m sorry but he has to suffer for those films, and if sourpusses like me have anything to say about it, he’ll pay through the nose when Sweeney Todd comes out in December.

And Stiller…I used to love Stiller. I own that Ben Stiller Show DVD package and still watch it from time to time. As recently as Starsky and Hutch he was crackling like a sparkler. Maybe he’ll come back. Let’s leave it at that.

Variety‘s Monica Corcoran considers the always-entertaining phenomenon of movie directors getting into scraps with anonymous online detractors. Specifically, helmers Mike Binder and George Hickenlooper jumping into Hollywood Elsewhere reader-response discussions (including some scattered dissings) of their respective films, Reign Over Me and Factory Girl.

“So it seems directors do, in fact, read their reviews,” says Corcoran. “And given the chance to bite back, some would like an opportunity to personally defend their cinematic theses face to face. Just don’t expect Internet posters to play along. After all, stripping web revelers of their masks would certainly leaden the dialogue and make cyberspace just another safe, boring Hollywood party.”

Yes, absolutely, no argument whatsoever — Robinson Devore‘s Zoo (ThinkFilm, 4.25) is, visually, a very lyrical piece of work. Sean Kirby‘s cinematography, especially when taking in the beautiful scenery in and around Enumclaw, Washington (i.e., the final home of a man who died from a perforated colon after having anal sex with a horse, which is what the film is more or less about), is undeniably captivating.

And here’s N.Y. Times writer Dennis Lim and his editors paying a respectful tribute to the fact that the film’s lyricism “is startlingly at odds with the sensational content.” And in a tidy, well-written way that makes the film’s subject matter seem almost as natural as picking peaches or playing stickball.

I’m sorry but there’s something profoundly troubling about talented filmmakers and a highly respected publication like the N.Y. TImes giving their earnest and thought- ful attention to a ridiculously perverse (the term I’m most comfortable with is “diseased”) sexual practice. This is precisely what red-state theologians deplore about liberal blue-state values — there are almost no absolute rights or wrongs, and therefore almost no sexual practice outside of the molesting of minors is considered out of bounds. Every form of wick-dipping under the sun is afforded a certain dignity.

I asked Devore at a Sundance q & a if any “zoo” types had ever looked into having sex with elephants in African game preserves (i.e., on the presumption that the larger the sexual organ, the greater the sexual pleasure for the receiving male). Devore smirked and shook his head and said, “There’s always one person who asks a question like that.”

Of course, it’s entirely within the realm of logic to ask such a question, and the fact that Devore (or perhaps Dennis Lim) would regard such a question as antagonistic and beyond-the-pale is precisely what’s wrong with the blase p.c.-attitude types who can look at perversity of a certain kind and call it a fitting subject for an unusual art film, but then turn around and draw lines and act dismissive when it comes to another, equally absurd form of perversity. Does the notion that human- animal couplings may be an affront to nature and basic decency even enter their minds?

Perhaps as they’re thinking this over, “zoo” types and their friends might want to look at the eyes of the horse in the above photo and ask themselves if they’re seeing calm or comfort, or perhaps a degree of alarm.

Oh, and by the way: Lim (or his editor) gets it wrong by saying Zoo was known during the Sundance Film Festival as “the horse-sex movie” — the coinage was a little blunter than that.

Robert Rodriguez‘s Grindhouse installment, a zombie movie called Planet Terror, “wins points on the basis of sheer accuracy for more exactly replicating the hollow, soul-sucking badness of many low-grade gore films,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy. “By contrast, Quentin Tarantino‘s Death Proof, a road-rage opus, so far exceeds almost anything made [in exploitation films of the late ’60s and ’70s] in terms of dialogue and performance that it seems like a different beast — one half plotless gabfest, the other half insane car chase.

“The dialogue in Death Proof‘s first section, an Iceman Cometh-like segment with Kurt Russell dispensing smoothie chit-chat to some hot ladies in an Austin bar, is “great, ” says McCarthy, “with a touch of the poet at times. Tarantino here lays a claim to being the Joseph L. Mankiewicz of trash talk, so easily does he create reams of dialogue in distinct voices and so well does he direct it.”

Late to the table, as usual (three days ago…good God!), but Paul Rudd and Michael Showalter reenacting the Lily Tomlin/David O. Russell Huckabees sceamfest is a lot funnier than I thought it would be.

“I’m not an industry insider like you, but I’ll bet dollars to popcorn, Peter, that you…hear what I do from some of our most gifted filmmakers — expressions of deep concern, if not downright despair, about Hollywood’s growing hostility to creative enterprises that don’t fit the entertainment conglomerates’ increasingly rigid templates, and about the precarious plight of the independent film movement. If this is health, then spare us all from too much more of it.” — Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern to Variety editor Peter Bart about Bart’s 3.15 column — over two weeks ago! — that claimed critics are out of touch with the tastes of the mongrel hordes.

The Tribune Company and the L.A. Times have been purchased by Sam Zell, a “flamboyant” Chicago real estate tycoon with zero newspaper-managing experience who “fancies Ducati motorcycles, leather jackets [and] playing paintball,” according to an L.A. Times article by Thomas S. Mulligan and James Rainey.

Zell is a self-made billionaire, and — judging from what I’m reading here — a bit of a rube. In a 12.04 interview with the N.Y. Times, “Zell suggested that he did not have a high opinion of journalists,” according to a 4,2 piece by Katherine Q. Seelye and Andrew Ross Sorkin. “I started out as a kid thinking that reporters are out there to do good, to expose the world to the truth,” Zell is quoted as saying. “Over the years I’ve gotten a lot smarter. I’ve gotten a lot thicker skin.”

Manhattan-based entertainment journalist Lewis Beale says, “I’ve been a staff writer for three dailies — two individually owned, and one run by a chain. And I’ll take the chain ownership any day of the week. Not subject to individual whims, prejudices and bizarre peccadillos. Chains sure aren’t perfect, but they’ve definitely got the billionaire bozo-owner beat.”

“I feel really sorry for the folks at the L.A. Times and Newsday,” he adds. “They are in for some hard times.”

I smirked…no, I chortled when I read this Ronald Bergan article in the Guardian six or seven days ago — a piece that explained in some detail what a good film critic needs to have read and seen, and the terminology he/she generally needs to know. I actually found it sobering and slightly humorous. Bergan knows his stuff, and anyone looking to be a serious film critic should absolutely follow his lead. But you also have to swim in the waters as you find them.

Guardian essayist and scholarly film critic Ronald Bergan (center)

I’m saying, in part, that not knowing the difference between, say, diegetic and non-diegetic music and being unfamiliar with the writings of Siegfried Kracauer and Roland Barthes (which I am guilty of on all counts) is not going to hurt you that much in this day and age. In fact, referring to these criteria with any regularity will mark you as some kind of elitist dweeb.

By today’s degraded and debauched standards, Bergan, to go by his article, is very nearly a monk wearing brown robes and living in a country monastery and writing memos on scrolled parchment. I don’t say this with any relish; I say it because it’s almost true.

The natural proverbial environment for most of the movies released today is the colisseum, not the salon . Movies have become a mongrelized art form, and the film-snob culture that came out of the ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s is becoming more and more marginalized. It hasn’t gone away (God help us if that culture is forgotten entirely) but it has certainly withered on the vine.

If you want to respond and grapple with 21st Century movies in a way that will engage Average Joes, you have to ditch the robes and sandals, put on some jeans and boots, walk down the winding stone staircase of your ivory tower and step out into the world and deal with the elements as they come. No more going “pooh- pooh” and “tut-tut” from a sitting position with your gut hanging over your belt — you have to get down, get online, walk the walk and boogie it up.

I might have forgotten about this whole Bergan matter if I hadn’t run across Ty Burr‘s response to his article on his “Movie Nation” blog (is there a print version?) on the Boston Globe site. Burr feels more or less the same way I do, although he’s a bit more circumspect about it.

L.A. Times guy Paul Cullum has struck again with a Richard Gere interview piece about his portrayal of legendary con man Clifford Irving in Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hoax. Gere is pretty good in the film — it’s one of his high-wire, high-energy performances, playing another great pretender — but there’s one small thing wrong that turns into a big thing the more you think about it, and it’s the kind of thing Cullum would never mention in one of his kiss-ass profiles.

(l.) Richard Gere as Clifford Irving in The Hoax; Irving himself sometime in the early ’70s

The thing is, Gere, 57, looks a wee bit too old for the part.

Irving was born in November 1930, and was 40 and 41 years old when the Howard Hughes fake-autobiography scandal happened in 1971 and early ’72. Gere looks fine for his age, but he doesn’t look too much younger than 57, even with dyed brown hair. And Irving was a handsome, young-looking guy back then (i.e., like someone in mid to late 30s), so Gere is facing even more of an uphill situation.

Plus you need the elan of youth to play a man who’s so arrogant that he decides to tell one of the biggest whoppers of all time to everyone on the planet. A guy like that in a movie has to look, at the very oldest, about 40. When you’re 40 years old you’re still close enough to your 30s to have hung onto that cocky attitude you once had…that “I’m so fucking cute I can get away with anything” mentality. An audience can roll with a 40 year-old doing this (especially one who looks a tiny bit younger), but the sight of a guy in his mid ’50s shamelessly lying through his teeth is tawdry and undignified. You’re supposed to know better after you’ve passed the big five-oh.

A nicely written interview-profile of Grindhouse star Rose McGowan, by L.A. Times staffer Paul Cullum. It’s also a little bit chickenshit, truth be told, that Cullum failed to mention, however faintly or anecdotally, the on-set turmoil that resulted from Planet Terror director Robert Rodriguez’s indiscretion with McGowan during shooting early last year, blah, blah. EW‘s Chris Nashawaty dodged this one also. Not that it’s an important or worthwhile subject, but avoiding even a cushion-shot mention seems cowardly.

Werner, Werner, Werner Herzog all the way at the Film Forum, starting on May 18th.

Last Monday afternoon I did a brief phoner with the great Jeff Daniels while standing outside a neighborhood luncheonette on Madison and 81st. The idea was to pay tribute to his fine supporting performance in The Lookout, Scott Frank‘s midwestern bank-job drama. Daniels plays a guy named Lewis — a lazy, bearded, low-rent, shoulder- shrugging, guitar-playing, middle-aged smartass — with a dry, succinct wit that settles in and hits the spot. He’s far and away the best thing in the film.

After last Tuesday’s performance of Blackbird at the Manhattan Theatre Club — Tuesday, 3.27.07, 9:20 pm

I’m not a huge fan of The Lookout (it has a few good things), but I really liked Daniels and I was trying to do Frank a small favor. But I waited until today to run this piece, and that makes me two days late and a dollar short. The Lookout opened and died this weekend with only $1,929,000 in the till and $2000 a print. Face it — DVDs of The Lookout will be sitting in the Walmart bargain bin four or five months from now. It’s a cold, cruel, fuck-you world out there.

Plus the interview, frankly, didn’t go all that well. Daniels was in a cranky, almost bitter mood and preoccupied by the emotional load of playing a very difficult lead role in David Harrower‘s Blackbird, a play that was in previews at the Manhattan Theatre Club. His character, Ray, is a guy in his mid ’50s who’s done time for having had a brief affair with a 12 year-old girl named Una when he was 40. The play is about the girl, now 27 (and played by Allison Pill), visiting Ray and wanting to regurgitate and hash things over in more ways than one.

Playing the role, Daniels said, is harrowing, draining, bruising. I mentioned an actor friend who used to unwind from a difficult role by getting a shiatsu massage after each performance. Not in that realm, said Daniels. Getting into Ray makes him feel like he needs the services of a therapist.

Daniels in The Lookout

Is there some way we could meet before or after the play, I asked, so I could take a quick photo? I can’t see doing that, Daniels said. Talk to the Lookout publicist. What if I stood outside with the autograph hounds after a Blackbird performance and snapped a shot when you come out…how would that be? Still don’t see it, he replied. I might not come out right away, it depends what door I leave by, there might be notes, I don’t like to do that stuff anyway.

Scott had spoken favorably to Daniels about me, which was why we were talking there and then. “I mean, I can’t even believe I’m talking to you,” he said at one point, meaning that he was whipped and disturbed and phoners like this were above and beyond the call. I wasn’t offended, but I can’t say I was charmed.

I tried some standard flattery (like mentioning how much I liked him as Chris Reeve‘s boyfriend in the 1981 B’way production of The Fifth of July), but that didn’t help much. Daniels just said “thank you” a couple of times, and the conversation seemed to stop each time he said that, and I started to feel like a kiss-ass. It was basically a dud conversation all around.

So I called the publicist for Blackbird and asked for a couple of press comps. She obliged, and I saw Daniels do the hard thing last Tuesday night. Blackbird is a 95 minute one-acter, and pretty much a straight sprint. It holds you with a hard grip. And Daniels is damn impressive. Not touching, exactly, since he’s playing a kind of monster, but it’s a steady “wow, wow, wow” thing to watch him go to town. He should end up with some great reviews when the play opens on April 10.

Four people walked out, but that’s to be expected, I guess, with a play about a pedophile and his victim. Except it’s not that cut and dried.

Directed by Joe Mantello, Blackbird is about two people who are totally destroyed by the fact that they were genuinely in love (or something close to that), and who briefly and clumsily acted on it and have been paying for this criminal sin for 15 years and counting. It’s also about dealing with guilt and trying to move on. It could also be about a serial molester who’s never moved on at all.

This is Lolita territory, of course, which means that it’s not just about an older guy having his way with a lamb in the woods (although it was certainly that in part). Ray’s crime was loathsome, of course, but it’s clear from listening to the 27 year-old Una that she had some pretty strong feelings at the time of the seduction that were nearly the equal of Ray’s, and that putting this kind of relationship in a box and keeping it there isn’t easy or simple.