Artist/Creative Types Going Through A Spiritual Crisis

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In yesterday’s Jay Kelly thread, HE commenter “We’re Totally Fine” said the premise of this upcoming Noah Baumbach film seems to belong to a favored sub-genre — films about Hollywood guys who’ve run out of gas, are going through a bad patch or have otherwise lost their way.

HE additions to this list:

(a) Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (‘62), which is about an alcoholic, burnt-out actor (Kirk Douglas) trying to get back into the swing of things while assisting an old director friend (Edward G. Robinson) in Rome.

(b) Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (‘63)…obviously. I don’t want to even glancingly mention Rob Marshall’s Nine (‘09), but it’s closely wedded to the Fellini so I haven’t much choice.

(c) Paul Mazursky’s Àlex in Wonderland (‘70) — another 8 1/2 descendant.

I’m not including Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (‘93) because except for that one gloomhead scene with Orson Welles in Musso and Frank’s, Johnny Depp’s titular protagonist doesn’t behave like a filmmaker who’s lost his way — he’s actually a relentless optimist.

Totally Wrong Actor Will Portray James Stewart

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In Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (‘59) James Stewart and Ben Gazzara were about as opposed and disparate as they come.

Gazzara was an urban, method-y, dark-eyed “ethnic” type with a sassy, laid-back personality, and Stewart was an American heartland beanpole type (i.e., tall, corn-fed, blue-eyed, non-ethnic) with an upfront manner and an improvisational, half-gawky manner of speaking.

And yet the curiously named KJ Apa, a half-Samoan Gazzara look–alike from New Zealand, has been cast to portray Stewart in a forthcoming feature.

Stewart in heaven after reading Marc Malkin’s Variety story: “All right, now wait a minute, just hold on…this swarthy Apa guy just isn’t my type…hell, I grew up in Pennsylvania and never even visited Samoa…he doesn’t even look like a cousin of mine…plus I was 6’ 3” and he’s 5’11” so there goes the beanpole resemblance. Plus he has a heavy beard-stubble thing going on.”

Idea: What If Collegiate Sex Kittens Were Transies?

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A former vaudeville theatre, the RKO Mayfair (719 Seventh Ave. at 47th Street — 1735 seats) was converted into a movie palace in 1930. Karl Freund’s The Mummy opened on 12.22.32.

Contrary to what you may have heard or assumed due to his representation by Henry Willson, Guy Madison (aka the star of the hit TV series Wild Bill Hickock between 1951 and 1958) was straight. Madison was no one’s idea of a gifted actor, but he did a little better, career-wise, than Rick Dalton. His only serious A-level film was David O. Selznick and John Cromwell‘s Since You Went Away (’44). Madison died from ephysema in 1996, at age 74.

This Is Demonic

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Let’s all celebrate the AI transformation of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo, dated between 1503 and 1506…let’s all cheer the degradation of this fascinating 16th Century woman into a banal shopping-mall Zoomer, posing for a selfie.

“Wicked, evil, up to no good” — Roger Thornhill, 1959.

How Audience Movies Are Supposed To Make You Feel

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I caught a midnight show of The Empire Strikes Back on 5.21.80 at Loew’s Astor Plaza, and I’ll never forget that feeling of immense calm and profound satisfaction as I sat in my aisle seat and listened to John Williams‘ closing credits music.

I was especially charmed by a 15-second-long downshifting bridge (1:18 through 1:35) that departed from the traditional theme.

Even listening now (I watched it last weekend with Sutton) puts you in the mood.

The greatest of all Star Wars films doesn’t really “end” brilliantly — it just stops and winds down and settles into an “okay, all that happened so now it’s time to settle and reflect” mood, but that spunky, tarah-tarah transformation when “directed by Irvin Kershner‘ suddenly appeared…I was muttering ”thank you, God and Gary Kurtz“.

George Lucas was increasingly freaked by and fretting about Empire‘s production costs rising from $8 million to $30.5 million (“It doesn’t have to be that good!”). It wound up making $401.5 million worldwide that year. Not to mention another $138M from subsequent re-releases.

The “fans” who were “conflicted about Empire‘s darker and more mature themes” were major-league morons.

Flush, Pissed-Off People Thrashing Around in Rhode Island

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I’m really and truly sorry, but the just-popped trailer for James L. Brooks‘ Ella McCay (20th Century, 12.12) feels decidedly off in certain ways.

And I’m saying this as a serious die-hard fan of the great Brooks films of the ’80s and ’90s (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets)…all brilliant, incisive, emotional empathy scenarios that wrestled with real-life adult stuff, and in a way that really and truly touched the bottom of the pool.

I’m sorry but there’s just something what-the-fucky about the simultaneous mixture of the following:

(a) A neurotic, emotionally truculent family dramedy about 40-plus adults (one significant exception being the titular character) dealing with unresolved failings and repressed anger plus an anguished, darkly humored tolerance of same;

(b) The film seemingly or primarily leaning upon a trusting mother-daughter relationship…the high-strung, emotionally fraught central character — a driven, pushing-30 political careerist — played by Emma Mackey plus the stalwart, silver-haired, mid-60ish Jamie Lee Curtis;

(c) The name of the titular character sharing the same kind of WASPy ethnicity, the same initials and the same number of syllables as Mackey…Ella McCay is apparently a non-elected colleague of some kind …some kind of managerial, high-level ally of “Governor Bill” (the white-haired Albert Brooks) who’s somehow taking over as governor when “Bill” has to leave office for some unspecified reason (poor health? sexual malfeasance?), plus…

(d) The principal offender being a selfish, stubbornly immature, moderately deplorable older male played by the 60ish Woody Harrelson, the father of Mackey’s McCay.

Plus the vaguely irksome Ayo Edibiri…forget it, not going there.

What the hell is this, man?

I’m good with the punchy, soul-baring family turbulence stuff but we all understand that lieutenant governors succeed governors when a resignation occurs, and not a trusted colleague or political manager or protector in the tradition of, say, who Rahm Emmanuel was while serving Barack Obama during the first couple of years of that adminstration.

Principal photography, mind, began in Rhode Island on 2.1.24, and it wrapped three months later on 5.3.24, and yet extensive additional filming began eight months later (i.e., January through March 2025), not just in Rhode Island but also in Cleveland and New Orleans. What does that tell you?

In March ’25 Julie Kavner, Becky Ann Baker and Joey Brooks (the director’s son) were revealed to be cast additions.

In the trailer the long-of-tooth Kavner, portraying a longtime assistant of McCay, self-announces as the film’s narrator, which indicates that Brooks decided that the movie needed a narrator during the early ’25 extra-filming period, which is always a sign of trouble.

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