Zoomer Critique of “The Godfather”
Go to Sasha Stone’s Instagram page and watch the clip from The White Lotus‘s second season, episode 3:
Bert Di Grasso (played by F. Murray Abraham): “The Godfather is the best American movie ever made.”
Albie Di Grasso (played by Adam DiMarco): “No, it’s not.”
Bert: “No? Why not? I think so.”
Albie: “Well, you would. [Because of] your nostalgia for the salad days of the patriarchy.”
Dominic Di Grasso (played by Michael Imperioli): “They’re undeniably good movies.”
Albie: “The Godfather is a fantasy about a time when men would go out and solve all their problems with violence. And sleep with every woman. And then come home to their wife, and there would not be any questions.”
Bert: “It’s a normal male fantasy.”
Albie: “No. Movies like that socialize men into having that fantasy.”
Bump and Grind
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros., 2.10.23) will hopefully be the last installment. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Reid Carolin, produced by Channing Tatum and costarring Tatum and Salma Hayek (who replaced Thandiwe Newton when Tatum canned her). Tatum is 42 — too old for this racket.
Death’s Honesty
It’s morbid and a bit grotesque to even ask, much less speculate, about which big-name director is allegedly facing The Big Sleep, and that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m just sorry if the rumor is true, and I really hope it’s not a certain fellow I won’t name.
Update: It’s not Clint.
Here’s What Happened
Brendan Fraser has told GQ‘s Zach Baron that he “will not participate” in the 2023 Golden Globe Awards early next year, even if he’s nominated for his acclaimed performance in The Whale.
He will not do so because HFPA member Philip Berk allegedly came close to fingering Fraser in the ass back in ’03, or 19 years ago at a Beverly Hilton function. Fraser tells Baron that he became gloomy after the alleged incident took place and that he lost respect for the organization.
A Fraser interview popped on the GQ site four years ago. Also written by Baron, it’s titled “What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?” That always struck me as a dorky title because we all know what happened.
Between the early ’90s and late aughts Fraser was a hugely popular movie star, partly for his amiable manner and assured acting skills but largely because of his good looks — slender, hunky and big-shouldered with kind, captivating, wide-set eyes.
During the early to mid teens Fraser’s looks changed — he put on a shit-ton of weight and lost his thick wavy hair**, and so he downshifted, naturally, as all actors do when they get fat and turn bald, from a movie star to a character actor.
He’s been rebounding for four or five years now, but mainly, in my mind, since he costarred last year in Steven Soderbergh‘s No Sudden Move. Now he’s really rebouunding as a likely-to-be-Oscar-nominated hotshot for his performance as a 600-pound beefalo in Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale.
The Philip Berk anal finger story, which everyone’s heard time and again, was recounted in Baron’s 2018 piece. In Fraser’s telling Berk came close to anally penetrating Fraser with Crisco: “His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around.”
Fraser “felt ill,” he tells Baron. “I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry. I felt like someone had thrown invisible paint on me.” (Berk tells Baron that Fraser’s version of the incident is “a total fabrication.”)
Let me explain something. If I had been in Fraser’s shoes and Philip Berk had come close to fingering my ass, I would have immediately grabbed his arm or his wrist and twisted his arm around his back. I would’ve leaned down and shouted to Berk, “Are you fucking kidding me?” And after this incident was over, I probably wouldn’t have felt like a little kid or like I was going to cry. And I damn sure wouldn’t have gone to my wife and gone “gee, I feel badly because Phillip Berk came close to fingering me in the ass.”
** Fraser could’ve fixed the hair situation if he’d gone to my Prague guy.
Emotional Television Aesthetic
In his 11.15 review of Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, NewYorker critic Richard Brody says that Spielberg’s core filmmaking aesthetic is about “[putting] the emotional world of prime-time television into the form of classic Hollywood cinema.” Which is interesting.
But as with all concise definitions of complex journeys, there are exceptions. 96% of Schindler’s List, I would say, is enticingly theatrical — it’s the ending that feels television-ish. Ditto War of the Worlds — Tom Cruise‘s son having survived intense combat with the Martians plus Gene Barry and Anne Robinson joyfully welcoming the family into their Boston brownstone at the finale.
What other instances of Spielberg films that generally play by theatrical rules until their endings?
“Why Was I Not Made Of Stone Like Thee?”
William Deterle‘s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (’39) was one of my father’s favorite films. He took my mother to see it at a Norwalk revival house on their honeymoon. No one’s idea of a romantic gesture, and yet he may have been subliminally reaching out — he may been saying to my mother “will you be my Esmeralda?”
When I was 8 or 9 I would scare the neighborhood kids by pretending to be Charles Laughton‘s Quasimodo, contorting my face and squeezing a pillow under my T-shirt and running around with that lumbering sideways gait.
Dieterle and his dp, Joseph H. August, should have shot this one in color. If future technology allows someone to colorize this classic decently, as opposed to how these clips look, I would happily re-watch it this way.
Alfred Newman‘s score is masterful.
Wiki except: With a budget of $1.8 million, Hunchback was one of the most expensive movies ever made by the studio. It was shot at the RKO Encino Ranch, where a massive replica of medieval Paris and Notre Dame Cathedral was built — one of the largest and most extravagant sets ever constructed.
“The sets were constructed by Van Nest Polglase at the cost of $250,000 (about $4,974,622 in 2021 dollars), while Darrell Silvera worked as set decorator. Walter Plunkett oversaw the costume design.
“Filming was difficult for the cast and crew due to the hot temperatures, particularly for Laughton, who had to act with a lot of makeup.
“In her autobiography, O’Hara recalls one day arriving on the set and finding chimpanzees, baboons and gorillas. Dieterle wanted monks to be on the set but his assistant mistakenly thought he wanted monkeys because of his poor English and thick German accent.”
Bloated Gasbag Loser Over
“At this point in the narrative the ’24 Trump candidacy totally self-defeats its own purpose.” —Jake LaMotta.
Inclusivity Mandate
A friend is feeling depressed about the GenZ effect upon films. Their demand that POCS graced with presentism have to be featured in everything. If this doesn’t happen GenZ will destroy, attack and reject the film in question. We’re living through a 21st Century version of China’s Great Cultural Revolution in the ’60s. The idea that admirable non-white characters always have to be prominent no matter what, and that they have to be portrayed as “good” while white people are only allowed to be complex failures. By friendo’s estimation there have only been three 2022 films that haven’t been inclusivity-stamped to a fare-thee-well — Top Gun: Maverick, The Fablemans and The Banshees of inisherin. Any others that friendo is forgetting about?
Missed Opportunity
From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety riff on Daniel Craig’s dancing-around-Paris Belvedere spot: “If the new Belvedere Vodka commercial, starring Daniel Craig and directed by Taika Waititi, were a scene out of Craig’s latest film, it would be the best scene in the movie, or at least the one that everyone’s talking about. Then again, no one would mistake it for a movie scene.
“The commercial has a postmodern strike-a-pose viral aesthetic — it‘s two minutes of bliss frozen in time. As Craig saunters and dances through a swank hotel in Paris, it becomes the rare commercial in which a movie star isn’t being used to sell a product so much as he’s using the commercial to sell a shift in his own image.
“Yes, the extended spot is hawking vodka, and Craig probably got a paycheck that leaves most movie-star paychecks in the dust. Yet that’s all kind of beside the point. The commercial is Craig’s way of announcing who he is, or might be, now that he’s done with the role of James Bond.”
HE to Gleiberman: “Your Daniel Craig riff is very good. The ad is an inspired image makeover.
But it was a SERIOUS MISTAKE, I feel, for director Taika Waititi to send Craig into the interior of a glitzy-ass Kardashian Paris hotel. Because once inside that golden dungeon the endless organic glories and intrigues of Paris disappear. Because glitzy Kardashian hotels are the same boorishly vapid experience the world over…Paris, Milan, Moscow, NYC, Berlin, London, Seoul, Los Angeles, Dubai, Barcelona, Stockholm…exactly the same damn experience and atmosphere.
“And so the Belvedere ad fails in terms of spirit and imagination. And this failure, I regret to say, rubs off on Craig a little bit. It’s good but it could and should have been a lot better if it had been about silky Craig-as-Fat Boy Slim Chris Walken dancing and shuffling around several Paris nabes, it could have been ten or fifteen times better.”