Can We Get This Straight, Please?

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This is a very nickle-and-dime matter but…

In an 11.9 interview with N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott, Steven Spielberg recalls his brief meeting with legendary director John Ford — an encounter depicted at the end of his latest film, the largely autobiographical The Fabelmans (Universal, 11.11).

“I was only about 16 when I met him,” Spielberg says, “and I didn’t know anything about his reputation, how surly and ornery he was and how he ate young studio executives for breakfast. That only came later when people began writing more about him. I felt I really escaped that office with my life.”

The slight problem is that Spielberg was born on 12.18.46 and therefore lived his sixteenth year of life between 12.18.62 and 12.18.63. Spielberg’s meeting with Ford, which happened at Radford Studios in Studio City, was arranged by a “second cousin” who was working on the then-upcoming Hogan’s Heroes, which began pre-production in ’64 before debuting on CBS in September ’65.

Let’s presume Spielberg met Ford sometime in the summer of ’64, while he was working as an unpaid assistant at Universal Studios’ editorial department. (He graduated from Saratoga High School in June 1965, at age 18.) He was therefore 17 and 1/2 when Ford instructed him about horizon lines — 17, not “about 16.” Just saying.

“Three Fabelmans Keepers,” posted on 11.9.22.

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Chapelle Washed Out The “Wakanda”

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Closing remark: “It shouldn’t be this scary to talk about anything. It’s made my job incredibly difficult and to be honest with you, I’m getting sick of talking to a crowd like this. I love you to death and I thank you for your support, and I hope they don’t take anything away from me. Whoever ‘they’ are.”

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Endurance Test

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6:24 pm: I’m in my seat (E9) for a 6 pm showing of Wakanda Forever…God help me. I intend to tough it out no matter what.

Trailers put a deep scowl on my face. Movies for ADD morons. Nobody hates animation and those highly paid digital animators more than myself. If the ghosts of John Calley, Irving Thalberg, Daryl F. Zanuck or Dore Schary were sitting beside me and watching this shit…words fail.

I’m clutching my leather computer bag to my chest for warmth — November jacket weather outside and the AMC guys have the a.c. on.

9:50 pm: I lasted with Wakanda Forever for 90 minutes. I. Could. Not. Stand. Another. Minute.

I started to disengage when it got into the backstory of the Yucatán aquatic blue people. I knew I had another hour-plus to go. I just couldn’t do it.

Friendo #1: “The blue Yucatán people is the worst part. They should have lost it. The whole movie is obviously too long.”

Friendo #2: If you bailed at the 90-minute mark, you missed the best part.”

HE: “Good! Fine!”

Massachusetts Statehouse + Rat Silhouette

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I accepted the death of Matt Damon‘s “Colin Sullivan” in The Departed, but I wanted Leo DiCaprio‘s “Billy Costigan” to live. Up to no good and loyal to Jack Nicholson‘s demonic “Frank Costello,” Sullivan earned that bullet in the head. But Costigan had performed cunningly and bravely — he deserved to live. Plus William Monahan‘s screenplay got that famous Chinese laundry saying wrong — in the film Costello says “no tickee, no laundry” but the actual line is “no tickee, no washee.”

Don’t Trust Any Film Critic Under 40

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I don’t mean this literally, of course. There are always exceptions to the rule. But I do regard Millennial- and Zoomer-aged critics askance. Too many of them have bought into the bullshit. Too few of them think and write like men, and I mean that in the Robert Ryan / “Deke Thornton” sense of that term (i.e., “We’re after men, and I wish to God I was with them”).

Paris at Sunset

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Daniel Craig cutting loose in Paris is wonderful…wait, wait, why is he slinking around in some swanky hotel? Get back on the streets, bruh! Feel the joy and rapture. You don’t need Belvedere Vodka…you really don’t.

I Say Again

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HE acknowledges that Everything Everywhere All At Once may end up with a token Best Picture nomination to placate Zellennials, but the less said about that unpleasant possibility the better. With the unseen Babylon and Avatar: The Way of Water in a limbo position, the best films of the year are as follows…these are the 2022 motion pictures that have earned the serious points except for Water and Babylon, which are likely to score highly before long:

1. The Fabelmans
2. TÁR
3. Top Gun: Maverick
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
5. Babylon
6. Empire of Light
7. She Said
8. Armageddon Time
9. Bardo
10. Close

“Stardom Can Work Wonders on Rational Thinking”

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The early to late ’70s saw the flowering of a revolutionary sexual awakening all over…in showbiz circles, in elite professions, in the major urban areas, in upper middle-class neighborhoods. Hell, everywhere.

And especially for rich, powerful, good-looking actors on the prowl. For them every day was a combination of Plato’s Retreat and I, Claudius. It was madness back then.

Even Average Joes tasted the nectar. From a certain perspective they were lucky to be living and frolicking in one of the most breathtaking nookie eras since the days of Ancient Rome.

In our Salem Witch Trial climate there’s nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by being candid about this. I certainly can’t go there but…

The context of the ‘70s was so dramatically different than the climate of today. We’re living in the midst of #MeToo Puritanism — a very conservative and punitive social movement.

That aside, any adult actor who may or may not have had his way with an under-age teenager…such behavior was selfish and cruel. That was then, but this is now. And criminally is criminality. You don’t mess with jailbait.

So many people today have no understanding of how many people in Hollywood and the pop music world diddled around with jailbait back in the day. They think it was just Warren Beatty and Led Zeppelin. Celebrities, or at least many of them, have little sense of morality when it comes to showing restraint or putting the brakes on. They lead wild lives. But no one seems to understand this. The tabloids present banal addiction and divorce dramas as The Truth. They don’t report on most of what actually goes on.