…why is “you wait” the one I remember the best?

Jerry Adler, who passed at age 96, played it straight and plain in every Sopranos scene he appeared in.

The bulk of Hesh’s fortune was built upon the backs of black r&b singers whom he unfairly exploited in the ’50s and ’60s. So he wasn’t a “nice guy”, but Hesh was Hesh was Hesh…the real McCoy.

Boilerplate: Hesh is a Jewish businessman who made his initial fortune in the recording industry, founding F-Note Records during the 1950s and 1960s, bringing many young black musicians to prominence, and receiving royalties by being fraudulently credited as a co-writer on many songs.

“Hesh is thought to be a composite character, inspired by real life music mogul Morris “Mo” Levy, the founder of Roulette Records who (a) had connections to the mafia, and (b) owned a string of racehorses.”

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I’m very sorry but the tourist-friendly center of Copenhagen is much more attractive, serene, dreamy and gentle-vibey than…well, most cities in the States.  A little bit of Munich, a touch of Prague.  

It’s almost too chill here, in fact…too scenic, too storybook, too flooded with mellow. None or little of the noisy rough and tumble one associates with a vibrant city (although an anti-Israel demonstration is happening nearby as we speak).

The first thing I noticed as I exited the plane was the coolish early October weather. Rest assured Copenhagen is abundant with the usual peaked tile rooftops, cobblestoned streets, 19th Century architecture to die for, tens of thousands of healthy green trees, a typically magnificent metro system…everyone you speak to is gentle, open-hearted, at peace with the flow of things. Bicycles, bicycles, bicycles.

I haven’t slept much, of course (my SAS flight left JFK around 7:15 pm Saturday night), but I felt instantly charmed and am very happy to be here. Does that make me a schmuck, an easy lay, a pushover? So be it.

I always forget to take something important when I’m packing for a flight, and this time — yesterday — I forgot to take my basic daily meds. They are (a) Naproxen for achey leg muscles, (b) Atorvastatin for fighting cholestoral, and (c) Lisinopril for lowering blood pressure.

I discovered their absence after arriving yesterday afternoon in West Orange, New Jersey, and I really didn’t want to drive all the way back to Wilton to get them.

So late yesterday I asked a night nurse who works for my Wilton-based health provider, Nuvance, to approve sending prescriptions to a West Orange CVS. She did but due to complications the Naproxen was sent to a CVS in the northern part of town and the Atorvastatin and Lisinopril scripts were sent to another CVS about two miles south of it.

Today’s plan was to take a 2 pm train to Manhattan’s Penn Station, and then hop on the usual A train express to Howard Beach and JFK. But we were on a tight schedule due to Jett, Cait and Sutton deciding to hit a nearby swim club, and then we all ordered a quick bite in Montclair and then stopped by the northernmost CVS to pick up the Naproxen. So far, so good.

Then we swung by the house so I could grab my gear (one modest-sized suitcase plus my leather computer bag), and then Jett took me to the second CVS. We got there around 1:45 pm — 15 minutes before the train.

I hustled over to the pharmacy and noticed that the gate was halfway down. There was a pharmacist inside though. I said I have a script sitting in a paper bag but a 2 pm train was breathing down my neck, not to mention a subsequent flight to Europe, and could she possibly let me have the meds as it wouldn’t be much fuss? Her response: “I’m eating my lunch.” (In fact she was slurping her lunch, some kind of Pho with steamed vegetables.)

I whimpered and pretty-pleased two or three times in a gentle tone of voice, but she was adamant. I said not being able to grab the meds meant I’d have to cold-turkey it in Europe for over two weeks. Tough shit, she essentially replied. Then she picked up her styrofoam soup bowl and walked behind a counter so I couldn’t see her and vice versa, and continued slurping away.

I gave up and left. I’ll probably survive the absence of the meds but jeez, what a frosty pharmacist.

Update: It’s 6:25 pm, and my JFK flight to Copenhagen departs at 6:55 pm. Or so it says on the ticket.

When I first glimpsed an image of an overly muscled-up Dwayne Johnson in a black short-hair wig in Benny Safdie’s The Fighting Machine (A24, 10.3), I immediately tumbled head over heels into a pit of black depression.

Because as much as I respect and admire people who keep themselves in shape, I hate dude bods with swollen, gleaming, well-oiled muscles and bulging veins and whatnot, and especially the sports culture that celebrates this kind of aggressive brawn and pumped-up machismo.

Johnson, a competent actor as far as it goes, is playing former wrestler and MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who peaked in the ‘90s and is now 57. God help me but I’ll have to watch this sure-to-be-bruising tribute film on the Lido.

Peter Yates’s’ Robbery opened stateside on 9.27.67: the San Francisco premiere of John Boorman’s Point Blank happened just over four weeks prior (8.30.67). Hard-boiled and then some.

Posted today (Friday, 8.22) by Politico’s Adam Wren and Dasha Burns:

I respect Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo as much as the next film lover, but the recent IndieWire articles about this shocking, 50-year-old portrait of fascist cruelty and sadism are…how can I put this?…a little diseased and flirting with over–the–top perversity, seemingly at the behest of executive editor Ryan Lattanzio.

I don’t want to ever even glance at another IndieWire article that discusses shit-eating in movies…is that clear? Nor do I want to read about movies that have depicted golden showers in ‘70s gay bars a la Cruising. Ditto the phenomenon of fist-fucking (also featured in Cruising) as well as any mentions of Zoo, that 2007 Sundance film about a real–life guy who died from a perforated colon after getting fucked by a horse…fair enough?

Hollywood Elsewhere flies to Copenhagen around dinner hour on Saturday, 8.23 (48 hours hence). Two days later my Milan train arrives at Venice’s Santa Lucia station at 4:40 pm Monday (8.25). I’ll be in the pad by 6:30 pm or so, after which I’ll quickly hop on a vaporetto to the Lido Casino to pick up my press and vaporetto pass, probably by 8 pm or thereabouts.

Like everyone else, this morning I reserved my press and industry tickets for the first three days of the festival (8.27 thru 8.29). I got tickets to everything I wanted to see except for Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt, which I didn’t pounce on quickly enough.

And now I’m blocked from attending the two big press screenings on Thursday (8.28) evening…the one Venice film I was most looking forward to and I can’t get a ticket…terrific!

I’ve asked a couple of well-connected pallies for some help in this regard….here’s hoping.

HE to Venice press office: “Are there any plans to schedule a spill-over screening of After The Hunt for slowboat douchebags like myself? Anything you could do would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!”

…want to sit through this thing? Francis Coppola has been doing his Megalopolis Foghorn Leghorn routine since the early spring of ’24, and I can’t imagine how Mike Figgis‘ Megadoc wouldn’t be more of the same. Megadoc is debuting at the Venice Film Festival (which launches on Wednesday, 8.27). I for one will be taking a respectful pass.

From HE’s 5.16.24 Cannes Film Festival review:

Or it has been, at least, since ’17 or thereabouts. Which Paul Schrader knows, of course.

Schrader’s four-word question underlines the fact that IndieWire’s DEI-flavored “100 best films of ’70s” list has become a defining embarassment…a meme that won’t go away.

Schrader is saying, in effect, that Team IndieWire values ideology far more than they do the richness and glory of cinema itself, and that ain’t cool.

The climactic battle scene in Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus (’60) ends with a poignant, Viva Zapata metaphor…a lone thoroughbred galloping away from the carnage [8:26]. The horse makes this sequence….he brings it home.

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…you know the movie is going to be a bit of a chore to sit through, unless it’s been directed by Alice Rohrwacher. You also know he’ll be playing a guy who wears the same pair of smelly socks two or thee days in a row. One look at O’Connor and a certain Paul McCartney lyric comes to mind…”man, I can smell your feet a mile away.”

Talk about dead-in-the-water Kelly Reichardt movies…here’s another one.

Posted from Cannes on 5.23.25:

Why did Kelly Reichardt make a 1970 art heist film?, you’re asking yourself. Or an anti-heist film, which a certain Reichardt cultist is calling it.

Because The Mastermind, which I sat through several hours ago, is basically about a married, middle-class, not-smart-enough jerkoff — Josh O’Connor‘s James Blaine Mooney, or “JB” — being so inept at organizing a theft of some Arthur Dove paintings from a museum in Framingham that he’s unmistakably in the running for the sloppiest felon in motion picture history, and I mean right up there with Al Pacino‘s Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afernoon.

We know going in, of course, that Reichardt doesn’t do genre stuff and that The Mastermind, which is being praised, of course…we know her film will be exploring something else. It certainly isn’t Rififi, for sure. But what is it?

Reichardt is primarily interested in JB’s life being blown to smithereens when the half-assed robbery goes wrong. But why? Is it about JB’s subconscious attempt to punish himself for marrying Alana Haim‘s Terri and having two boys with her and…I don’t know, feeling trapped by this? Is he looking to thumb his nose at his straightlaced parents (played by Bill Camp and Hope Davis)?

It certainly seems to be about a form of convoluted self-destruction.

JB winds up on the run, penniless, scrounging around, snatching an old lady’s cash-filled handbag and finally being arrested during an anti-war demonstration. But to what end?

The Mastermind asks “how would a born-to-lose guy go about escaping from his life?” Suicide would be the simplest way, of course, but JB seems to lack the necessary character and conviction to put a pistol in his mouth. If he wants to join up with some hippies and run away to Hawaii or Mexico or Central America, why doesn’t he just do that? Why go to the trouble of hiring a pair of young fuck-ups to steal the paintings, knowing that in all likelihood one or both will eventually screw up and get popped and rat him out?

All I know is that The Mastermind has a little story tension going on during the first 75 minutes or so, but once the jig is up and JB goes on the lam, it has nowhere to go. The last shot of JB in a police paddy wagon conveys a little something, but the film basically peters out.

I don’t want to say any more. The film isn’t dull or uninteresting — O’Connor is always good in a grubby, glint-of-madness sort of way — but it’s basically a wash. For me, at least, but then I’m not a cultist.

“History of Sound” Is Nicely Done But Chaste, Subdued to a Fault,” posted from Cannes on 5.21.25:

]Early this month I confessed to being a little bit concerned about seeing Oliver Hermanus and Ben Shattuck‘s The History of Sound, a period gay romance starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor.

I wasn’t exactly afraid of any chowing-down scenes, but I knew I’d be a wee bit antsy about anything too graphic. I mainly wanted The History of Sound to be as good as Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer, but I knew this would be a tall order.

I emerged from a Debussy press screening of The History of Sound about an hour ago, and my initial reaction, much to my surprise, was “where’s the vitality…the primal passion?”

I’m not saying I wanted to see Mescal lick up more cum droplets (as he did in All Of Us Strangers), but there hasn’t been a more earnestly delicate, suppressive, bordering-on-bloodless film about erotic entanglement since David Lean‘s A Passage to India (’84) and before that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie(’64).

Come to think of it, Marnie at least has that one scene when Sean Connery rips off Tippi Hedren‘s bathrobe, leaving her buck naked.

A History of Sound delivers a welcomely non-graphic sex scene early on, but that’s all she wrote.

The History of Sound is a gay romance made for older straight guys like me, I suppose, but even I was thinking “Jesus, I never thought I’d complain about this thing being too tasteful and hemmed in.”

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has called it “listless and spiritually inexpressive…Brokeback Mountain on sedatives.”

The heart of the film is when lovers Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor) go hiking around rural Maine in boots and backpacks and carrying a wax cylinder sound-recording device, the idea being to record rural types singing folk tunes.

Except this happens in the winter months, and if you’ve ever been to Maine between December and late April…well, c’mon! Not to mention the lack of bathtubs or showers on such a trek, which means smelly feet and gunky crotch aromas after a few days. Who the hell would do such a thing? During the summer maybe…

O’Connor’s role is smaller than Mescal’s but the former exerts more feeling somehow…more command. Mescal’s Lionel is supposed to be a native Kentuckian, but he doesn’t sound or look country-ish. (Imagine if he’d played Lionel in the manner of Gary Cooper‘s Alvin York, who hailed from Tennessee around the same time.)

Mescal is basically playing a master of emotional constipation who doesn’t behave in a manner that suggests “1920s gay guy”…he’s very, very committed to keeping it all buttoned inside…the relationship with O’Connor’s David is highly charged and drilled, and yet they part company and Lionel moves to Italy and then England to teach music.

And then, while in England, Lionel flirts with the idea of being in love with with Emma Canning‘s Clarissa, a to-the-manor-born British lass who seems to love him unconditionally, only to blow their relationship off in order to return to Maine and possibly hook up with David again.

Which is totally nuts, of course. There was no percentage in living an openly gay life in the 1920s, so the smart move for Lionel would have been to marry wealthy Clarissa and, in the manner of Heath Ledger‘s camping trips with Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, visit O’Connor for annual vacations and whatnot.