Saturday night, sometime after 1 am, decades ago. We’d been passing the hash pipe around, and Swamp Fire, a 1946 Buster Crabbe-meets-Johnny Wiesmuller film, was on the box. About as bad as a C-grade programmer gets, but we were goofing on it.

Right around the one-hour mark, or eight minutes before it ended, the swamp fire finally happened. Flames filled the screen. And somebody at the station broadcasting the film (WOR or WNEW or WPIX) decided to have some fun. The words SWAMP FIRE began flashing on the screen, as if to say “it’s finally happening…the swamp fire has begun!” We couldn’t stop laughing, and soon concluded that the graveyard-shift station guy flashing the title was either bored to tears or was getting ripped with a friend…one or the other.

The screenwriter of Swamp Fire was Daniel Mainwaring, author of “Build My Gallows High” (novel) and the film adaptation, Out of the Past. It’s been claimed that the writer who wrote the most flavorful Out of the Past dialogue was the uncredited Frank Fenton.

Posted on 9.10.22:

It’s not a rumor — some tiddly-wink at HBO Max has removed Warren Beatty‘s cigar from the McCabe and Mrs. Miller promotional art on the HBO Max menu. Ditto Paul Newman‘s cigar from HBO Max’s promotional art for The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

I’m presuming that someone figured that it’s wrong to promote smoking of any kind so the cigar was zotzed. HE is calling this an advertising form of woke “presentism.” What’s next? Digitally erasing Robert Mitchum‘s cigarettes in Out of the Past?

Read more

In a 3.21.14 piece called “Don’t Forget What’s Happening,” I wrote that “fanboy flicks are a profitable malignancy. They are well on the way to kicking real, adult-level movies out of mainstream cinemas and into VOD, streaming and other home viewing options altogether.”

That’s exactly what happened over the next eight years. Except now the plague has two heads — fanboy shit plus streaming content that numbs the soul.

“Super-amped fanboy flicks are the latest manifestation of the corporate influences which Pauline Kael lamented in 1980. They are flagships of a trend that are coming closer and closer to suffocating a mainstream movie culture that used to at least occasionally be about mirroring or capturing who we were (our values, needs, hopes) and how we lived. Every now and then theatres were the equivalent of community churches (i.e, places for inner communion and contemplation), but fanboy flicks are turning them into the spiritual equivalent of roller rinks and amusement parks.

“Fanboy flicks are a metaphor for the overall devolution of art and culture, not just in this country but all across Europe and Asia. They are injections of corporate heroin and Hollywood is the dealer. They are not pathways into our common histories and values and deep-down places. They are things we shoot into our minds and souls, but they are obviously inorganic. They’re not herbal tea or pot or peyote. They aren’t even Valium or Xanax. They’re Demerol.”

I felt a bit surprised this morning when I watched this Lincoln clip. Surprised because I don’t remember it….blank. Honestly? I don’t remember a single line or stand-out moment from Daniel Day Lewis‘s Oscar-winning performance. I know that DDL won, of course, and that his Lincoln voice sounded like Matthew Modine on his deathbed. But not much else. Okay, I remember a scene or two with Tommy Lee Jones.

I also recall being somewhat disappointed that Lincoln doesn’t include a single establishing shot of the 1863 White House or U.S. Capitol building.

Plus: President Lincoln was the first to take a hot bath with piped-in water, and I was hoping that Spielberg would briefly acknowledge that…nope. Or show us that toilets were made of wood back then — porcelain toilets weren’t made until the 1880s.

I’m basically saying that Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln, which opened at the New York Film Festival 10 years and 25 days ago, has all but vaporized in our collective mind. Nobody talks about it or re-watches it or anything.

“Remember The Lincoln,” posted on 2.1.13: Every last Oscar hotshot predicting a Lincoln Best Picture win at the Oscars — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, L.A. Times contributor Mark Olsen, Toronto Star‘s Pete Howell and MCN’s David Poland — will fold and turn tail after Argo‘s Ben Affleck wins the top Directors Guild award tomorrow night. This is an official HE prediction,.

Spielberg blew it with the Clinton endorsement at the Golden Globes. He overplayed his hand and exposed his hunger. That was what tore it.

“What Were The Lincoln people Thinking?‘, posted on 2.3.13: “The DGA Best Director award going last night to Argo‘s Ben Affleck makes it a 99% certainty that Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln won’t win the Best Picture Oscar.

“Now that we know the score, I’d like to openly ask all the Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby prognosticators who stuck with Lincoln all through December and especially January a simple question: why? What tea leaves told you that there was enough serious passion out there to push this well written, ploddingly paced, passionately performed grandfather clock of a movie into the winner’s circle?

“We now know that the passion was never there, not really. And yet for weeks Team Lincoln told us over and over again “it’s the likeliest winner, what other film has the stature?, it has to happen, it’s Spielberg’s best in years, it’s too good a film, it’s about a legendary U.S. President, it’s made well over $100 million” and so on.

“Even after those Argo wins at the BFCA, Golden Globes and the PGA and especially after Bill Clinton‘s Lincoln plug at the Golden Globes suggested to some of us that the hand had been overplayed, a lot of people still held fast. Why? What vibrations from what insect antennae told you to stick? I’m honestly curious.

“Yes, I had Lincoln down as my own Best Picture prediction for a while but I did so with resignation and depression. From the beginning I saw Lincoln as a lazy default choice. It was just sitting there like a lump of mashed potatoes. I couldn’t wait to dump it after sensing a change in the wind.

“My pet theory: The downfall of Zero Dark Thirty sealed Lincoln‘s fate. If ZD30 hadn’t been torpedoed by the Stalinists and had held on the strength it had in early December with all the critics awards, it would have taken a lot of support away from Argo, which after all is a more congenial and entertaining version of the same basic story (i.e., a brilliant CIA maverick bucks the bureaucratic tide in order to push through a secret, risky-seeming CIA operation in the Middle East that involves hoodwinking Islamic militants and which ends in delicious success). The Argo and ZD30 votes might have split the faction that is now voting entirely for Argo, and Lincoln might have inched ahead and become the favorite…maybe.”

“Lincoln Fades In The Mind,” posted on 7.6.19.

Read more

I’m going to watch RRR tonight, and I feel as if I’m about to have a tooth extracted without anasthesia. I don’t know for a fact that I’m going to hate it (how could I?), but I strongly suspect that I will. I’ve watched a few low-rent Indian schlock films in Indian restaurants; maybe if I watched it while eating…

My primary motivation in posting this was the exquisite lighting used for the Jean Harlow fireplace pic, which was snapped in 1935 by George Hurrell. Then I happened to walk by the Britney Spencer photo inside the Sono Collection. And then Claudia Cardinale came to mind, followed by Paulina Porizkova.

“One big reason Bonnie and Clyde seemed exciting then and still seems contemporary fifty years later is that it was made in between two regimes of self-censorship — the old Production Code, which dated from 1930, and the ratings system (G, PG, R, and X), which went into effect in 1968.

“In 1967, you could make a movie without worrying much about the approval of the Motion Picture Association of America, an advantage long enjoyed by European movies. (Bonnie and Clyde still had to be screened for the Catholic Legion of Decency.) This meant that you could do more with sex and violence, which was perfect for a crime-couple genre picture.

“Originally, the screenwriters intended to portray a ménage-a-trois involving Clyde, Bonnie, and the character C. W. Moss, played by Michael J. Pollard. Beatty [allegedly] refused. But the movie opens with Dunaway lying naked on a bed, includes action that implies fellatio, and ends with the camera lingering on two bullet-ridden bodies. In between, Dunaway strokes Beatty’s pistol and does suggestive things with a Coke bottle, the bank manager is shot through the eye, and a blinded Estelle Parsons screams hysterically as the police open fire on the gang.

“Two years earlier, the movie would not have been approved by the M.P.A.A. Two years later, it would have been rated X. It found a historical sweet spot. — “Bonnie and Clyde, Fifty Years After,” by Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 8.14.17.

Okay, make that 55 years.

Facebook reactions: (a) “Now that’s offensive…can we not think for ourselves?”; (b) “Maybe cinema really is dead if you’ve lost the marketing team at TCM…”; (c) “Psycho is transphobic? Simon Oakland’s wrap-up specifically shuts down any such connection”; (d) “How is the Hunchback of Notre Dame ‘ableist’? Man, those Ted Turner guys are some smart cookies”; (e) “‘Let’s Movie’ = worst advertising tagline IN HISTORY”; (f) “Norman Bates is a trans American?…TCM [is] here to help and educate.”

Cate Blanchett and Todd Field are brilliant, grade-A visionaries…film elites at the top of their game. But they haven’t the first clue about what it means to love movies in a Joe or Jane Popcorn way. Field especially. Listen to him go “oohh” and “aahh” over Mikhail Kalatozov‘s The Cranes Are Flying.

This is why Tar is a bust with the Joe and Jane crowd, and why it’s only made a lousy $2,516,138 so far. It is what it is, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t at least respect Tar. We all understand that Blanchett is favored to win the Best Actress Oscar, and that the film itself hasn’t a prayer. Because Field refuses to spread the mustard and relish on the hot dog.

To me a perfect film understands itself perfectly, embraces the virtues of self-discipline and doesn’t mess around.

It tells the truth (or at least its own truth), throws nothing but strikes, allows no opposing hits and leaves no dangling threads.

It’s always a step or two ahead of the average audience, but not too far ahead. It’s smart and perceptive, and yet it never bores even the dumbest audience member, and it understands pacing and story tension and how to deal the right cards in the right way, and at the right time.

It knows, in short, what beginnings, middles and ends are supposed to achieve, and it follows through like a pro. It presents a spherical, recognizable world that adds up no matter how you slice it.

In his new book “Cinema Speculation“, Quentin Tarantino lists seven 20th Century films that he regards as perfect:

I’m not disagreeing with Quentin’s choices exactly. I certainly agree with five of them, but if I was forced to select my own seven perfectos I definitely wouldn’t include Hi-Ho Steverino‘s Jaws (a very satisfying and finely crafted summer popcorn film but saddled with a few problems) and I certainly wouldn’t choose Tobe Hooper‘s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre…please.

Here are more perfect or near-perfect films…50 of them….the top third from “HE’s 160 Greatest Films of All Time” (posted on 7.24.15). I believe with all my heart that these 50 are just as perfectly assembled as Quentin’s seven. There’s no way to make a convincing case that Quentin’s seven are more perfect than any of HE’s 50, whatever that could possibly mean. Everything is arbitrary, personal…there’s no formula.

HE’s Top Ten Greatest American Films: (1) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, (2) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, (3 & 4) The Godfather & The Godfather, Part II (5) The Graduate, (6) Election, (7) Zodiac, (8) Rushmore, (9) Pulp Fiction, (10) Some Like It Hot.

Greatest American Films (11 to 20): (11) North By Northwest, (12) Notorious, (13) On The Waterfront, (14) Groundhog Day, (15) Goodfellas, (16) Out Of The Past, (17) Paths of Glory, (18) Psycho, (19) Raging Bull, (20) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Greatest American Films (21 to 30): (21) Annie Hall, (22) Apocalypse Now, (23) Strangers on a Train, (24) East of Eden, (25) Bringing Up Baby, (26) The African Queen, (27) All About Eve, (28) The Wizard of Oz, (29) Zero Dark Thirty, (30) Only Angels Have Wings.

Greatest American Films (31 to 40): (31) Repo Man, (32) Heat, (33) Red River, (34) Drums Along the Mohawk, (35) Gone With The Wind, (36) Rebel Without a Cause, (37) Ben-Hur (38) The Best Years of Our Lives, (39) The Big Sleep, (40) Shane.

Greatest American Films (41 to 50): (41) Rear Window, (42) Bonnie And Clyde, (43) The Bridge On The River Kwai, (44) Casablanca, (45) Chinatown, (46) Citizen Kane (47) One-Eyed Jacks, (48) King Kong, (49) 12 Angry Men (50) The Informer.

HE’s choice for Best Celebrity Halloween Costume…seriously. Hats off to Heidi Klum and the people who helped her become (no slight intended) a perfect slithery worm. Imagine the feeling of confinement. It must be suffocating under all that latex crap. Hats off.