Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, GabrielClarke & JohnMcKenna’s 2015 doc, states very plainly that LeMans (‘71), the semi-legendary race-track pic, was the film that broke McQueen’s spirit as well as his legend to a significant extent, and that things were never quite the same after it.
In my mind McQueen had a great 14-year run from ‘60/‘62 (The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is For Heroes) to his last quality spurt (Junior Bonner, The Getaway and The Towering Inferno) that ended in ‘74. Call it 14 years. Okay, 15 or 16 if you count Wanted Dead or Alive.
But his Godly McQueen aura, that quietly measured and invincible thing that peaked with Bullitt, that Zen-like, supercool man-of-few-words + awesome motorcycle and Mustang-driving era was shorter — The Great Escape (’63) to LeMans (‘17) or roughly an eight-year stretch. That’s all it was — eight years.
[Originally posted on 10.15.04] Three of us — myself, a friend and an acquaintance i didn’t like — came close to dying in a drunken car crash — a wipe-out that almost happened but didn’t thanks to Chevy engineering.
It happened around 1 am in rural Wisconsin, and I’ll never forget that godawful horrifying feeling as I waited for the car we were in — a 1958 Chevrolet Impala convertible — to either flip over or slam into a tree or hit another car like a torpedo, since we were sliding sideways down the road at 70 or 80 mph.
It happened just outside Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Bill Butler was driving, Mike Dwyer was riding shotgun, and I was in the back seat. We were coming from a beer joint called the Brat Hut (or possibly the Beer Hut). We’d jointly consumed several pitchers and were fairly stinko. We were five or six miles out of town and heading south towards Markesan, where we had jobs (plus room and board) at the Del Monte Bean and Pea plant. To either side of us were flat, wide-open fields and country darkness.
Butler, a serious asshole back then, was going faster and faster. I looked at the speedometer and saw he was doing 90, 95, 100. I was about to say something when the road started to curve to the right, and then a lot more. Butler was driving way too fast to handle it and I was sure we were fucked, especially with nobody wearing seat belts and the top down and all.
But thanks to those magnificent Chevrolet engineers, Butler’s Impala didn’t roll over two or three times or slam into a tree or whatever. It just spun out from the rear and slid sideways about 200 feet or so. Sideways! I remember hitting the back seat in panic and looking up at the stars and hearing the sound of screeching tires and saying to myself, “You’re dead.”
The three of us just sat there after the car came to a halt. There was a huge cloud of burnt-rubber smoke hanging above and behind us. I remember somebody finally saying “wow.” (Dwyer, I think.) My heart began beating again after a few seconds.
I realize I’m a little late getting in touch with my emotions, but if Butler is reading this, I want him to know I’m really furious about this. Butler almost took away my becoming a journalist and loving my kids and going to Europe and everything else, and all because he had some idiotic anger issues and tended to dare-devil it after the ninth or tenth beer.
Maybe some 17 year-old kid with issues similar to Butler’s will read this and think twice the next time he’s out with friends and starting to tromp on the gas.
“I don’t think we’re seeing the unwinding of a company (Twitter), but the unwinding of a person (Elon Musk). Which I believe is part of a larger trend. As our society has become wealthier and better educated, the reliance on a super-being along with church attendance goes down. but people still look for idols. Into that void has stepped technology leaders, because technology is the closest thing we have to magic. [For a while] our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk has taken on that mantle. And every ridiculously mean, nonsensical, irrational move he makes is somehow seen as chess, not checkers. We’re just not privvy to his genius yet.
“I think [Musk[] is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him, and is going to see his wealth probably cut in half. Just a week or two after the close, this is already the second worst acquisition in history. This is someone who in my opinion shows a bit of a God complex. Someone who vastly overpaid in a fit of mania or seeing something we don’t see. Twitter is a company probably worth 10 billion, [and] Musk paid 45 billion for it. He thinks he can lay off half the staff and treat them poorly and disparage them and not [suffer] any ramifications. I think he’s a terrible role model for young business people. You can’t deny his incredible accompishments, but now he’s running three different companies.
“So this notion that we need superbeings…I have found that this notion never proves out. The Roman warriors who returned after a triumphant battle, and they would have a huge parade for them, and they would hire a slave to follow and whisper in the conqueror’s ear ‘all glory is fleeting, and you are only a man.’ I have never met a person who is infallible, Christiane. They all eventually screw up, and a universal pillar of truth is that the universe doesn’t want a consolidation of power among any country or any society or any individual.”
Bradley Cooper isn’t terse and taciturn enough to play a reanimated Steve McQueen. And let’s not kid ourselves — Cooper won’t be playing a San Francisco cop named Frank Bullitt, who was modelled after the real-life Dave Toschi. He’ll be playing the Great McQueen, of course, and that shit is over and done with and 55 years old.
Cooper’s Bullitt can’t be some sensitive, lily-livered, kind-hearted detective. Moreover Steven Spielberg doesn’t have the courage or the character to direct a movie about a somewhat flinty loner cop who eats TV dinners and doesn’t know from 2022 woke sensibilities. Which is why they should abandon this project right now. Cooper is too sensitive and teary-eyed, and Spielberg doesn’t do hardball genre stuff…hell, he never has. McQueen is dead — leave him alone.
Okay, this could work if Spielberg and screenwriter Josh Singer decide to shoot it as a mid ’60s period thing.
Today marks Sutton Wells‘ first full spin around the sun — born 11.17.21. Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending her birthday party on Saturday afternoon.
I saw Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion (Netflix, 11.23) yesterday morning. The movie is a “game,” and it’s fine. We all know the form — Daniel Craig‘s Benoit Blanc as a 21st century Hercule Poirot, etc. That happens, of course, although Knives Out felt slightly more…uhm, arresting. But the film is diverting enough, especially if you like the idea of woke bastards being hung out to dry.
When Glass Onion was first described it sounded like a Mediterranean companion piece to The Last of Sheila, and it still seems like that.
The well-dressed Craig is somewhere between diverting and approvable. Edward Norton‘s Elon Musk-styled character isn’t as much fun as Norton was in Birdman. Kate Hudson shrieks too often. I kept staring at the weird ripples and fissures on Dave Bautista‘s shaved head. You know going in that Janelle Monáe‘s Cassandra “Andi” Brand character will turn out to be a fearless, steely-eyed angel of justice.
I hate people who laugh loudly at anything and under any circumstance, and so I had a problem with two loud-mouthed women of color who were sitting two rows behind me. They didn’t just laugh at every single thing that could be called vaguely amusing or triggering or whatever — they shrieked their effing heads off. It got so bad that I literally turned around in my seat and stared at the two of them for a full ten seconds. I knew they would ignore me, and of course they did. Nothing was quietly amusing to these two — they screamed and squealed with laughter. Everyone in the damn theatre was flinching.
Lydia Tar vs. “robot” Max is probably my favorite scene in Todd Field‘s TAR. A UHD streamer is commercially streamable for roughly $20, and is digitally purchasable for $25.
Cate Blanchett takes on critical race theory and gender identity politics in her new role. Absolutely based.
…and still primarily making films for “the mob” — agenda-driven, social media Zellennial types.
Core message: Stop listening to the woke mob.
Is Thelma and Louise a woke movie? Not in my book. I fell in love with that Ridley Scott film when the rasta man blew marijuana smoke into the trunk that the cop was locked inside of.
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.”
