“Todd Haynes‘s Dylan film isn’t about Dylan. That’s what’s going to be so difficult for people to understand. That’s what’s going to make I’m Not There so trying for the really diehard Dylanists. That’s what might upset the non-Dylanists, who may find it hard to figure out why he bothered to make it at all. And that’s why it took Haynes so long to get it made.
“Haynes was trying to make a Dylan film that is, instead, what Dylan is all about, as he sees it, which is changing, transforming, killing off one Dylan and moving to the next, shedding his artistic skin to stay alive.” — from Robert Sullivan‘s “This Is Not a Bob Dylan Movie,” an eight-page piece (onlline anyway) about I’m Not There in the 10.7.07 issue of Sunday N.Y. Times Magazine.
“I know you have issues with Christianity,” a reader wrote this morning, “but given your admiration for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I thought you might be interested in this appraisal by Catholic critic (and screenwriting-workshop coach) Barbara Nicolosi, who greatly admires it.”
Roman citizens enjoying the show in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Sign of the Cross
I don’t have issues with Christianity. I have issues with right-wing Christians, particularly the kind focused on in Tony Kaye‘s abortion documentary Lake of Fire. The Romans may not have thrown Christians to the lions in ancient times (as famously depicted in Cecil B. DeMIlle‘s Sign of the Cross and Chester Erskine‘s Androcles and the Lion) and if they did do this it was terribly wrong. People should be free to worship freely, and having your throat torn open by a lion with bad breath is a ghastly way to die.
That said, I think I partly understand why the Romans were so motivated.
Ridley Scott‘s American Gangster (Universal, 11.2) is, of course, naturally… hello?…an absolute Best Picture contender because it’s a straight, robust, high-velocity crime saga in the grand New York movie tradition of ’70s and ’80s Sidney Lumet. Which, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is a very cool and vogue-ish thing to be churning out right now, and not for ephemeral reasons.
This is not a first-rate cops-and-dealers drama by the director of Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down as much as a wonderfully focused and flavorful time-machine ride back to the gritty-stinky Abe Beame-Ed Koch world of Serpico, Prince of the City and The French Connection.
I’m not speaking of some sophisticated film-maven exercise but a dead-on, true-blue revisiting — a submission by a great director to an ethos and an aesthetic that feels absolutely real and true to itself, which is to say true to what happened and particularly the way life caused two dogged, determined locomotives — legendary Harlem smack dealer Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and his opposite number, the doggedly honest Det. Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) — to crash into each other’s fate.
The result isn’t the craziest or most thrilling New York crime film you’ve ever seen, but one with a more authentic and character-rich sense of itself and its milieu than anything released in a very long time. It’s a film with absolute balls-to-the-wall integrity that can’t miss with audiences, and it tells a plain, strong story with a beginning, a middle and an end. It ought to score a bulls-eye with critics and the Academy and if it doesn’t there’s something wrong, and I don’t mean with the film.
On top of which it’s the best film of this type — complex, interesting, sympathetic good guy vs. complex, interesting half-sympathetic bad guy — since Heat.
Does this saga of the rise and fall of Lucas make you tear up and cry at some point? Does it unleash an emotional meltdown in your chest somewhere during the middle of the third act? No, and shame on anyone for asking. Did The French Connection or The Departed moisten tear ducts? American Gangster is what it is, and deserves a salute for this. It doesn’t pander or amplify or push buttons or pull any cheap tricks.
I was a wee bit disappointed when last Tuesday night’s screening came to an end. It had begun around 7 pm, and the closing credits were rolling north around 9:40 pm. What…only 158 minutes? I’d been given all the nutrition any moviegoer could possibly ask for, but I was Oliver Twist. I wanted more.
This is one of those movies that is so good and cocksure in its New York textures and tough hammer-like attitude, that you’re saying to yourself early on, “I don’t want this to end.” I wanted the indulgent director’s cut right then and there. I wanted Ridley to swing for the bleachers and make it three hours. Hell, I could have gone for three and a half. I wanted to pig out.
I mean, my God…even Cuba Gooding comes off pretty well in a co-starring role, and he’s one of those guys with an Irish banshee going “whooooo” behind his back.
Based on a New York magazine article by Mark Jacobson (“The Return of Superfly“) and working from a screenplay by Steve Zallian, Gangster follows the paths of Lucas and Roberts — step by step, chapter by chapter — and how they lead to a third-act showdown.
Lucas’s heroin-dealing heyday was from ’69 or so to 1976. He claimed in the Jacobson article to have grossed $1 million a day at one point. A lawman once described his operation as “one of the most outrageous international dope- smuggling gangs ever.” Lucas’s claim to fame is that he smuggled in his Vietnamese kilos (98% pure heroin) in the coffins of dead U.S. soldiers.
Lucas, we learn right off the bat, is a somewhat conservative guy. We first meet him as a driver/assistant for Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson (a cameo role handled by Clarence Williams III), who’s instilled in Lucas a respect for the old way of doing things. We also see from the get-go that he’s perfectly capable of pouring gasoline over some guy, lighting him up and then filling him with hot lead. But he also gets up at 5 ayem, eats breakfast in the same luncheonette every day, and takes his mother to church on Sundays.
He’s a villain, sure, but he’s fairly likable (he’s Denzel, after all) and semi-respec- table. He’s not totally crazy, and he dresses conservatively and runs his business (i.e., providing a product) like any conservative businessman would. Selling heroin is like spreading a kind of death, but I’m of the libertarian view that people have the right to dope their souls to hell if they’re so inclined. I also think guys like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are just as evil as guys like Lucas, and perhaps even more so.
The first significant thing we see Roberts, a Manhattan detective, do is come upon a suitcase stuffed with a million untraceable bucks and promptly turn every last bill into his station chief. (Anyone who says they wouldn’t at least think about skimming a few grand is either stupid or lying.) Obviously he’s a very different bird than Frank, and yet the film gradually persuades us that they’re not so far apart.
Both adhere to a strict ethical code that sets them apart from comme ci comme ca colleagues, both see their friendships and family lives crack apart under the strain of their work and their single-minded stubbornness, and both run their own renegade teams to get a risky job done.
Deep down, American Gangster is really a procedural film about the ups and down of running a tough business. I challenge anyone who’s run his or her own business to watch it and say they don’t feel at least a little respect and sympathy for Frank, who is first and foremost a vulture and a scumbag, yes, but is also just trying to run a tight ship. It’s always the mark of a good film to persuade you to feel two ways about the same lead character.
Frank and Richie, in the final analysis, are guys who believe in discipline, hard work, integrity, family, adhering to a code. They both pay for being such hard- cases, but in real life Roberts wound up becoming a full-time attorney and wound up defending Lucas in some matter. Life is funny that way, and it sure as shit isn’t black and white.
In the third graph of a 9.19 Newsweek story by Karen Springen about Mary Todd Lincoln, it is offhandedly stated that Sally Field will play the emotionally troubled wife of Liam Neeson‘s Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg‘s forthcoming Lincoln biopic. This is a done deal, or is this being floated to see what the reaction might be? I’m asking in part because the IMDB is reporting that Marcia Gay Hardenhas the role, and because she’d nail Mrs. Lincoln cold.
Sally Field, Mary Todd Lincoln, Marcia Gay Harden
I’ve no doubt that Field can turn on the juice and make this work to some degree, but it might be a stretch. I’ve had this image all my life of Mary Todd Lincoln being a scrapper with a cast-iron backbone, and there’s something about Field’s squeeky heartland voice and fretful manner that seems to channel victims and underdogs (Norma Rae, Places in the Heart). Harden has been superb time and again with that heart-of-darkness battle-axe thing (Pollock, Mystic River, The Dead Girl). And she resembles Mrs. Lincoln a bit more (or certainly could be made to resemble her). This would make her a perfect match alongside Neeson, who’s obviously a close biological cousin of the nation’s 16th president.
Due respect but isn’t Spielberg obliged to at least listen to public opinion on this matter? It’s his movie but the legend of Abraham Lincoln belongs to all of us. David O’Selznick understood this concept when he was casting Gone With the Wind. Not that he would have cast Fred MacMurray as Rhett Butler if the public had called for this (which they didn’t — everybody knew it had to be Clark Gable), but he knew the public was heavily invested in Margaret Mitchell‘s novel and at least made a show of listening to their casting preferences.
I’ve made a preliminary list of 55 films worth seeing at the Toronto Film Festival (9.6 to 9.15). I’ve relied upon the usual criteria — (a) decent, good or strong advance buzz/reviews or (b) a film having been directed by a someone whose past work I respect (and who isn’t considered to be somewhat over the hill), or at least by someone whose output can be called “interesting” enough so that you can’t blow off his/her latest without feeling a bit guilty.
I’ve have seen 11 of these prior to the festival. The rest I’ve only heard or read about (or read the scripts for). If you’re attending the festival as a civilian, you can’t go too wrong if you focus on these (although if you ignore everything else you’re sure to miss the four or five out-of-the-blue surprises that always pop through). I’ve underlined the ones I’ve seen and totally swear by, or have heard only the very best things about. They’re listed in five groups of ten and one of five.
I’m going to wind up seeing maybe, at the very most, 25 or 30 of these. I’ve been begging L.A. publicists to show see whatever they can in advance, but most of them aren’t coming through. The parenthetical numbers at the end of each graph refer to films I’ve ever seen or expect to have seen by the time the festival begins.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Christian Mungiu), Across the Universe (Julie Taymor), Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who (Paul Crowder, Murray Lerner), Angel (Francois Ozon), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik), Atonement (Joe Wright), The Babysitters (David Ross), The Band’s Visit (Bikur Hatizmoret, .Eran Kolirin), Battle for Haditha> (Nick Broomfield), Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet). (1)
The Brave One (Neil Jordan), Captain Mike Across America (Michael Moore), Cassandra’s Dream (Woody Allen), Control (Anton Corbijn), Death Defying Acts (Gillian Armstrong), Le Deuxieme Souffle (Alain Corneau), Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur), Emotional Arithmetic (Paolo Barzman), George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (George A. Romero). (2)
The Girl in the Park (David Auburn), Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (Scott Hicks), Heavy Metal in Baghdad (Eddy Moretti, Suroosh Alvi), I’m Not There (Todd Haynes), I’ve Never Had Sex… (Robert Kennedy), In Bloom (Vadim Perelman), In the Valley of Elah (Paul Haggis), Into the Wild (Sean Penn), Joy Division (Grant Gee), Juno (Jason Reitman). (2)
Lou Reed’s Berlin (Julian Schnabel), Lust, Caution (Ang Lee), Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach), Married Life (Ira Sachs), Man from Plains (Jonathan Demme), Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient (Todd McCarthy), No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen), Nothing Is Private (Alan Ball), The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona), Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (Andrei Nekrasov). (3)
Redacted (Brian De Palma), Religulous: A Conversation with Bill Maher and Larry Charles (panel), Rendition (Gavin Hood), Reservation Road (Terry George), Run, Fat Boy, Run (David Schwimmer), The Savages (Tamara Jenkins), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel), The Shock Doctrine (Alfonso Cuaron, Jonas Cuaron, Naomi Klein), Sleuth (Kenneth Branagh), Terror’s Advocate (Barbet Schroeder). (4)
Son of Rambow (Garth Jennings), Trumbo (David Askin), The Walker (Paul Schrader), Weirdsville (Allan Moyle), Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy). (1)
With 11 under my belt by the time Toronto happens, I’ll have 44 to choose from. I’ll almost certainly miss seeing 15 of this group if not more, so now I have to decide which among the chosen are doubtful or expendable. Not fun. Not enjoyable. I’d rather just see them all.
Gambling is an addiction — a high-dive fever trip that people with wired, aggressive natures enjoy because (and I’m not trying to be facile or judgmental about this) it offers a brief respite from the dutiful, methodical, nose-to-the-grindstone rigors that are necessary in order to lead a life defined by at least some degree of honor, dignity, consistency, responsibility and consideration for others. Gambling is, I’ve always believed, about tempting disaster and flirting with self-destruction. It can take you down as surely as alcohol or cocaine or debt or anger. But there’s still something about it that I like.
The willingness or at least the readiness to gamble is, of course, a necessary element with any creative person who dreams of making it big, and certainly with any producer or screenwriter or director. It’s been said over and over that the lack of hot gambler nerve is what ails the film business more than anything else these days. You can’t hedge or calculate your way into a hit movie. The biggest Hollywood cliche of all is that movies are a crap shoot, but over the last 25 years or so the purse strings have become increasingly constricted by more and more nervous-nelly corporate types, which has often been a key factor in bad big-studio movies and the much-bemoaned corporate addiction (unfortunately necessary within the realm that big studios are obliged to operate) to franchises.
The vast majority of creative people in this town are not problematic casino gamblers, although a lot of them are in regular poker games with industry friends. I know a few actors and at least two director-writers who enjoy playing the tables in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but I wonder if anyone has ever written a piece about the overlap between gamblers of whatever delineation and the type of films they tend to dream up or pitch or try to make?
Gambling addicts are people looking to lose, but is there something in the character of people who, under the right circumstances and with the right idea or inspiration, have the brass to throw the dice on a script or a concept that has a tendency to spill over into Vegas-y gambling (or horses or dogs) to some extent? All the legendary producers have been tenacious with thick skins, but don’t you also need a little of that “crazy guy still playing craps downstairs at 4 ayem” spirit?
I’ve never been into gambling of any kind. I’ve played in less than ten serious poker games in my entire life. I hate losing money. But there’s something about that side of my nature that has also led, I suspect, to not having had the brass or the drive to push harder at other ventures like scriptwriting (which I tried and failed at, possibly because I didn’t have the talent but also because I may have lacked the moxie to keep at it and theoretically improve as I went along). I’m very happy with what I do, but deep down I’ve always admired the gamblers, or at least the thing they have that leads them to an occasional belief, as James Caan‘s character puts it in James Toback‘s The Gambler, that “two plus two equals five.”
Rush Hour 3 will have about $53,515,000 in the pants pocket by Sunday night. It made $18,456,000 last night, but it’ll probably be down today because (a) sequels always fade on Saturday unless they’re propelled by exceptional word-of-mouth (as The Bourne Ultimatum was last weekend) and (b) the word-of-mouth on Brett Ratner‘s film is sure to be piss poor. (You’d have to be a complete movie retard to enthusiastically tell a friend, “Wow, great film!!”) The Bourne Ultimatum will pull in $32,321,000 — down 52% from last weekend — for a $131,995,000 two-week cume. The Simpsons Movie is down 56% for $11,139,000. Stardust has tanked with a projected $8,661,000 by Sunday night, with $2,985,000 earned last night in 2540 theatres. Underdog will come in fifth with $6,880,000.
The sixth-place Hairspray will earn $6,634,000 by Sunday, and will therefore have a total of $92.4 million, meaning it’s all but certain to cross $100 million. (Hey, how come it’s not up to $150 million by now? All right, that’s it…can Russell Schwartz!!) I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will be seventh with 6,130,000, which will put it across the $100 million mark — $ 104,000,000, to be precise. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will make $5,873,000 — the cume is now $272 million. No Reservations will be ninth with…I lost the figure but the Sunday-night cume will be $32,184,000 — will WB make back its p & a outlay? And poor Daddy Day Camp is tenth with $3,720,000 — 2392 theatres, 1600 a print, dead. Becoming Jane expanded, added 500 runs, 600 theatres now….$3,179,000 and 5300 a pinrt…not bad.. Skinwalkers opened in 737 theatres and willl take in 472,000 by Sunday night…$670 dollars a print. Julie Delpy‘s Two Days in Paris opened in 8 theatres, and will earn $164,000 or about $28,000 a print. Rocket Science opened in six theatres and will make… okay, this makes two films I’m not completely sure about. But it did moderately well, I’m told.
I sat through a memorable showing of Showgirls once at Robert Evans‘ Beverly Hills home in the early fall of ’95. In Evans’ legendary rear bungalow, that is, behind his egg-shaped pool in the backyard of his French chateau-styled place on Woodland Avenue. With Jack Nicholson of all people, as well as Bryan Singer, Chris McQuarrie, Tom DeSanto and two or three others. With everyone hating it but sitting through the damn thing anyway because Nicholson had come over to see it and nobody wanted to be contrary.
All that ended when Nicholson, who was sitting right under the projection window against the rear wall, stretched his arms and put his two hands right in front of the lamp. The resulting hand-silhouette on top of Elizabeth Berkeley and her grinding costars conveyed his opinion well enough, and suddenly everyone felt at liberty to talk and groan and make cracks and leave for cigarette breaks. Nicholson and Singer ducked out at one point, and I joined them. (I had recently seen Paul Verhoeven‘s film and had no desire to suffer a second time.)
I was Evans’ journalist pal that year. I had written a big piece about Hollywood Republicans earlier that year for Los Angeles magazine, and Evans had been a very helpful source. As a favor I’d arranged for him to meet some just-emerging GenX filmmakers — Owen Wilson, Don Murphy, Jane Hamsher, et. al. — so that maybe, just maybe, he could possibly talk about making films with them down the road.
Anyway, it was sometime in late September and Evans, myself, Singer, DeSanto and McQuarrie were having dinner in the back house, and Evans was doing a superb job of not asking the younger guys anything about themselves. He spoke only about his past, his lore, his legend. But the food was excellent and the vibe was cool and settled.
Then out of the blue (or out of the black of night) a window opened and Nicholson, wearing his trademark shades, popped his head in and announced to everyone without saying hello that “you guys should finish…don’t worry, don’t hurry or anything…we’ll just be in the house…take your time.”
What? Singer, McQuarrie and DeSanto glanced at each other. Did that just happen? Evans told us that Nicholson was there to watch Showgirls, which they’d made arrangements for much earlier. He invited us stay and watch if we wanted. Nobody wanted to sit through Showgirls — the word was out on it — but missing out on the Nicholson schmooze time was, of course, out of the question.
There was a little talk after it ended. I recall DeSanto (Apt Pupil, X-Men, X2, Transformers) introducing himself to Nicholson and Jack, who had brought two women with him, saying, “And it’s very nice to meet you, Tom.” Gesturing towards Girl #1, he then said to DeSanto, “And I’d like you to meet Cindy and…” Lethal pause. Nicholson had forgotten the other woman’s name. He recovered by grinning and saying with a certain flourish, “Well, these are the girls!” The woman he’d blanked on gave Nicholson an awful look.
We all said goodbye in the foyer of Evans’ main home. Nicholson’s mood was giddy, silly; he was laughing like a teenaged kid who’d just chugged two 16-ounce cans of beer and didn’t care about anything. I was thinking it must be fun to be able to pretty much follow whatever urge or mood comes to mind, knowing that you probably won’t be turned down or told “no” as long as you use a little charm.
In this 9.29 L.A. Times essay, critic Kenneth Turan seems to be writing about Once from a slightly different angle — i.e., how come it took so long for this exquisite little film to get picked up? — than the one I went with yesterday, which was basically “how come more Average Joes haven’t paid to see it?” But he gets around to saying the exact same thing at the conclusion.
“The Once experience worried me,” Turan writes, “because it underlined how much the risk-averse studio mindset of being indifferent to quality, of caring more about what can be sold than what will be cherished, is infecting an arena that has always prided itself on being impervious to those ways of thinking.
“Yet to be fair, it would be wrong to completely blame the specialty distributors for their lack of brio where acquiring Once was concerned. If they are timid, if they lack trust in the willingness of an audience to find and support something that lacks marketable elements, it’s because experience has shown them that they have reason to be afraid.
“Even now, in the face of the success and visibility of Once, I am constantly running into supporters of independent cinema who have not gone to see the film partly because, despite a terrific Fox Searchlight campaign, it lacks the kind of easy-to-remember hook having Keri Russell in a cute uniform has given Waitress.”
Turan’s kicker graph is well phrased, but it’s a stern lecture from a man who’s losing his patience with those who say theyr’e into offbeat cuisine but in fact are dilletantes looking for comfort food: “If you want distributors to acquire films as sophisticated and unusual as Once, ” Turan admonishes, “you must make the extra effort to seek them out and patronize them. If you don’t, don’t count on them to be around when you need them the most.”
The irony is that Once is about as comfort food-y as anyone could ask for. It just happens to be very Irish and low-budgety and lacking in big stars.
A Pathe Pictures sales rep for Francis Coppola‘s Youth Without Youth asked me this morning to take down that negative assessment of the film that was received from a trusted buyer yesterday and posted soon after. The Pathe guy said he was horrified and that airing this view would be damaging, etc. I told him I was torn between feeling that it was fair to post the comment and at the same time feeling a little bit badly about it. But I finally decided to pull it and wait for reactions from some fair-game screening down the road.
I told the rep that I thought the posted comments sounded too rough, as I said in the item, but also that Youth Without Youth is going to have to face the music sooner or later. Coppola has been keeping it under wraps for months and months, and saying all along that it’s a student film, an experimental film, a personal artsy film, etc. Everyone knows that these are code phrases that mean “not that commercial.” I also said I’m in business with distributors all over (I depend on advertising support) and that I don’t want to be an asshole about this. But given my knowing and trusting the source, I explained again that it seemed fair to air the opinion, especially for a film that was shot in Romania and Bulgaria in late ’05 and early ’06, and has been shuffling and re-shuffling the deck ever since.
I said I suspected that Youth Without Youth might be in trouble when it was announced last May that it would have its world premiere at the RomeFilmFest, which is not a serious film festival, is renowned for being a softball venue, and so far has not been frequented by top-level critics (trade and otherwise) or buyers. I expected way back that it would go to Venice or Toronto first. It may go to Telluride (a prestigious but unofficial venue) but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
In the end I decided I don’t want to cause pain just for the sake of causing pain or asserting stubbornness. I’d like to see Francis Coppola back in the game and plugging away for the next two or three decades, and I don’t want to preemptively interfere with that scenario. And yet I’ve been asking myself if I’m being a pushover. Is anything on HE ripe for removal providing the person requesting such is sufficiently horrified and believes that the item/story will be damaging enough?
Last night I attended an LA Film Festival discussion called “Shock & Awe: New Wave Exploitation.” Moderated by F.X. Feeney, the panelists were directors Eli Roth (Hostel, Hostel Part II), Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) and Jack Hill (the ’70s exploitation flicks Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters). I recorded the whole discussion — here it is.
Director Eli Roth following last night’s disucssion at Westwood’s Armand Hammer Museum — 6.30.07, 8:10 pm
The idea was mainly to size up the 35 year-old Roth, who’s recently been on the skillet for two reasons. One is his having been tarred as the leading purveyor of “torture porn” (a term coined two years ago by New York magazine critic David Edelstein) and particularly due to the loathing expressed over the fetishistic gruesomeness in Hostel Part II, particularly the scene in which a character played by Heather Matarazzo is hung upside down and knife-sliced to death. The other is the recent notion that torture porn is on the wane or starting to be “over” due to the underwhelming earnings generated by Hostel Part II.
I learned last night that Roth is a bright, sophisticated operator — he’s hard-core and full of fire. He knows himself, his movie history, his directors, how to shoot cheap, what he’s proudest of, etc. The key thing is does he want to keep on being “Eli Roth” or does he want to shift into a new gear in order to avoid being typed and confined within the walls of the horror/torture-porn dungeon? (You’ll hear me asking this right after Feeney opens the session up to questions.)
The talk went on for a little more than an hour. I came out of it feeling a lot more respect for Roth than I had going in. He’s much more talented and sophisticated that his films and subject matter suggest. I only hope he doesn’t end up like Tarantino — a B movie fetishist and wallower who refuses to do anything but recycle and reconfigure old-time exploitation movies he fell for in his teens and 20s.
The waiting-in-line-at-the-Grove-to-pick-up- an-I-Phone-on-opening-day story turned out to be a dud. Not that many bodies, no shoving or pushing or raucousness of any kind, nobody shouting “open the doors!” Just 70 or 80 nice people sitting on the curb and on fold-up chairs, waiting patiently under the hot early-morning sun and…you know, quietly shooting the shit or reading or checking e-mails on their I-Books or soon-to-be-yesterday’s-news handhelds
A couple of TV news guys and two or three Apple flunkies were standing around outside the door. I was doing the same and asking myself, “Why did I come here?” It was nothing….a big zero.
The first I-Phone hounds arrived last night but were told to leave by Grove security. The second wave arrived at 5 a.m. but were also told to leave. A uniformed security guy told me the line was permitted to form at 6:30 pm. At first people weren’t permitted to unfold and sit on their lawn chairs…but then Grove security backed off and said “okay.” Grove security also passed out free loaner umbrellas and bottles of Smart water to any “waiter” than wanted either one.