Born on 7.18.61, Elizabeth McGovern was around 18 when she played Jeanine Pratt in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (9.10.80). A lively career followed, and 45 years have since flown by. McGovern is now about to begin a six-week run in Ava: The Secret Conversations at the New York City Center (131 W. 55th Street).

On-stage she resembles the older Ava Gardner, wearing a dark and tidy On The Beach wig. This Ava actually half-resembles the brunette Elizabeth McGovern who appeared in Cannes in 2012. But she’s gone gray in recent years and is making no effort to hold onto a semblance of her former self.

The truth is that McGovern currently looks like a blend of Jessica Tandy in The Birds and that care-worn woman who came to take Blanche Dubois to the mental hospital during the finale of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

McGovern is roughly Demi Moore’s age (actually a year older), but she sure as hell hasn’t been taking Substance injections. We’re simply accustomed to famous actresses looking a little bit better for wear, and it’s a wee bit jolting when, out of costume and sans makeup, they appear to be more or less their natural age. Which is not a crime — just a surprise.

McGovern in Cannes in 2012:

On Friday afternoon I asked Mark Kane, a friend since ‘80 and a devoted fan of Bruce Springsteen from way back, to write about the approach of Scott Cooper’s Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century, 10.24), a film about the making of Nebraska:

Kane: “Obviously, I love Bruce Springsteen.  I feel connected to him on many levels, and it’s been that way since 1975.  I buy all of his music and listen to it over and over.    

“That said, I’ve become a little uncomfortable with his increasing deification.   It reminds me a little, although the analogy is far from perfect, of what Noah Cross said in Chinatown: ‘Of course, I’m respectable…I’m old.’

“I guess there’s no getting around the fact that Bruce is old too. I don’t think we have many heroes these days, but Bruce seems to fit the bill. And yet rock and roll, as I understand it, wasn’t about being respectable.  It was about something much different, perhaps even the opposite of being respectable. 

“I also felt Bruce was a good guy, perhaps better than just good, but he wasn’t perfect.  He was a guy trying to figure it out, just like we all were, and that was one of the things I loved about him.  The evolution of his music showed him trying to figure it out. I could relate.

 “Which brings me to Nebraska, which came out in 1982 after The River.  At that point, it was another example of Bruce doing his thing.  Sure, it was different than his other records but it wasn’t that big a leap to follow Bruce down that dark and dusty road.  After all, Dylan had evolved and we all kept up.  So had the Beatles.   

“The songs on Nebraska were good, and some bordered on great: “Atlantic City”, “Nebraska”, “State Trooper”, “Open All Night”, “Highway Patrolman”.  Everyone has their favorites. 

“My brother-in-law, a banjo player who isn’t much into commercial rock, was a big fan of Nebraska.  I remember him saying that it was the one that made him impressed with Springsteen.  Movies have been inspired by the record.  The songs have been covered by many other artists, Johnny Cash, The Band, etc. Ryan Adams has covered the entire record.

“Nebraska isn’t a ‘respectable’ record.   It’s an outlaw thing.  A recording of someone exorcising demons.  The narrators of those songs are fucked up.  So it’s a brave record.  The lo-fi production values (it was recorded at home) seemed risky. And given the trajectory of Springsteen’s career at the time, just after The River and right before Born In The USA, it was a detour that was surprising and perhaps a little dangerous career-wise. 

“Interestingly, Nebraska sold well, soaring high on the charts and becoming certified Platinum.  It continues to be revered.

“Which brings me to Deliver Me From Nowhere. I haven’t worked up much enthusiasm so far. The trailer tells us that Springsteen has become such an icon in our society.  The movie, as far as I can see from the trailer, is part of the myth-making. 

“But the dialogue in the trailer is Hollywood-reverent in a way that makes me somewhat uncomfortable.  Jeremy Strong’s (Jon Landau) dialogue in the trailer is…well, I admire his commitment, but it seems kind of silly (‘He’s going to repair the world’).

“I’m sure Jeremy Allen White’s Bruce will be very good.  But if I want to see young Bruce Springsteen, I can rent the No Nukes concert video of his performance only, which is truly awesome.  I’m not sure I want, or need, to see someone playing Bruce Springsteen at this point.  There are still too many ways for me to see Springsteen himself at every stage of his career.   

“I also have my memories.  Perhaps that is the most important thing.  I don’t want the movie to interfere with my memories of what I thought and felt about Springsteen when Nebraska came out. 

“In his concerts, Springsteen told us about his relationship with his father.  I’ve read the interviews through the years about what he was trying to accomplish with the album.  I know about his struggle with relationships.  I’ve heard this story before.   It’s old news to me in one sense. 

“Perhaps the movie will be surprising in ways, but it will still be a movie with an actor and not the real thing.  In some ways, this isn’t a movie for me.  I guess it’s for a different generation.  That’s okay.  

“This is similar to the upcoming quartet of Beatles movies.  I’m not that interested in seeing actors play the Beatles.  A Hard Day’s Night is always streaming and it’s great to rewatch and admire it, and them.   

“Of course, I’ll probably end up seeing Deliver Me From Nowhere.   I’ve always assumed that there would be a movie made some day about Bruce.   But for some of the reasons above, I wish it hadn’t been made because Jeremy Allen White won’t be as good in my mind as the original, not even close, and it just interferes.”

In his just-published Clint Eastwood book, author Shawn Levy dismisses Breezy (’73), a gentle, deftly handled romantic drama about an affair between William Holden’s 50ish real-estate salesman and Kay Lenz’s free-spirited bohemian, with “ew, just ew” (actually pronounced “eeyooh”).

I really don’t like that kind of thinking or judging about a nicely honed, well-written film that isn’t even vaguely lewd, so here’s what I wrote this morning about the jailbait aspect:

“I think somewhat older guys (10 years older or less) should keep their distance until a woman has hit 20, or her junior year in college.

“That said, there are 30 states in which the age of consent is 16, and 7 states that determine consent can be given at 17. (Connecticut is one of the former.)

“Breezy happens in California (primarily the flush environs of Laurel Canyon and the surrounding hills), where the age of consent is 18. If you accept the film’s narrative about Lenz’s Breezy being 17, Holden is definitely outside the legal zone when their relationship becomes intimate.

“Then again the social perimeters of ‘70s culture, especially in the affluent regions of Los Angeles, were more liberal than in today’s post-#MeToo era, in which taking down or shaking down inappropriately frisky or even half-interested older guys is par for the course. In today’s culture adult males are deer, and every younger woman is armed with a rifle and ready to shoot at the drop of a hat.

“But it wasn’t like dudes in the ‘70s weren’t mindful of the dangers of jailbait. Holden’s real-estate shark is a fairly crusty and guarded type and obviously a social conservative, and yet he doesn’t have a line in which he even ALLUDES to the fact that the age of consent is 18. Does that make any sense?

“Plus it really doesn’t figure that Breezy is 17. She tells Holden that she graduated from high school a year prior to their meeing. It would have been fairly unusual if she’d graduated at 17, but let’s bend over backwards and say she did. It naturally follows she would be 18 when she meets Holden.

“On the face of it, this kind of age gap (roughly 40 years) is unappealing, granted. But it’s the singer, not the song. Eastwood directs and cuts it just so, and Jo Heim’s’ script is nicely sculpted with just the right amount of restraint.”

Posted earlier today by gfoshizzle:

“Hey Jeff — I watched Grand Prix yesterday. For whatever it may be worth, it STILL is the quintessential car-racing film. Just a technical masterpiece from John Frankenheimer. I caught F1 in IMAX on the 23rd and enjoyed the hell out of it. But GP reaches for and finds a deeper place when it comes to super-fast, 180 mph racing and the competitive human spirit. The racing scenes are absolutely remarkable in their construction — you really do feel the speed in the final product. I had seen scenes of it before but had never sat for a full viewing, so glad I finally did. Thanks for recommending it.”

HE to MGM marketing (LBJ era): This 1966 poster art is shameless bullshit The mood of Grand Prix is tense, pensive, anxious, even melancholy at times. “I have a rendezvous with death” = nobody’s having a rollicking good time.

I’m not going to say that I loathe and despise Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps sight unseen, as that wouldn’t be fair or wise, much less patient.

And yet I do kinda feel this way. The light-blue color scheme — it’s basically The Jetsons within a Marvel universe — makes me feel nauseous. But let’s not go there until it screens.

I can at least say this: As one of the Fantastic Four is played by Joseph Quinn, who is destined to sully, vandalize and perhaps ruin the memory of George Harrison when Sam Mendes‘ quartet of Beatles biopics comes out in ’27…I can at least call myself a Fantastic Four hater because of Quinn alone.

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Posted on 6.5.25:

Snapped last night inside the big Danbury AMC, prior to catching Ballerina. Obviously the people behind Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney, 7.25) have no shame. Has Pedro Pascal ever said no to anything or anyone? And the gingered Joseph Quinn, who will play the physically dissimilar George Harrison for Sam Mendes later this year…this, ladies and germs, is whoredom personified.

In a certain vague sense, I was “there” when this Arthur scene was shot on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. It was the summer of ’80 and I was anxious and under-employed. I was standing across the street with several other onlookers, and I recall watching Liza Minnelli, Dudley Moore and John Gielgud performing this scene two or three times. I can still hear Minnelli yelling “get me a cop!”, over and over….the clapper, “cut”, etc.

I remember staring at Gielgud between takes, parked on a canvas chair, and wondering why he was sitting so stiffly…motionless, like a sphinx. Then I saw the film a year later, and Gielgud’s snooty putdown riffs were hilarious. He and Minnelli had the funniest lines.

Minnelli was 34, Moore was 45, Gielgud was 77.

Posted on 2.18.06, roughly six years before I embraced sobriety:

“Dudley Moore‘s drunken playboy was funny in 1981’s Arthur, but less so in 1988’s Arthur 2: On The Rocks. Arthur was a fresher film, of course, with a kind of champagne-fizz attitude. The sequel was boozier and more “real.” Moore was obviously older in ’88, his career wasn’t going quite as well, the performance felt desperate and the mood wasn’t the same.

“Drunks aren’t funny in real life unless you’re 19 and hanging with your drunken friends and as drunk as they are. You have to be fairly young and unsullied.

“True story: I was staying with some friends at a beach house on the Jersey shore when we were all 17 or thereabouts, and there was this big guy named Richard Harris who was half-sitting and half-lying on the living-room couch and about to throw up from too much vodka. I was coming down the stairs and Harris was suddenly on his feet and making for the bathroom (or at least the kitchen sink), but he wasn’t fast enough.

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In the good old Times Square of the ‘50s and ’60s, the movie marquee sell — the visual presentation of the theme or tone of the film — made a big impression. It conveyed attitude and confidence. It meant a lot.

In the case of Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder, it’s noteworthy that Columbia distribution execs felt that Saul Bass‘s austere, monochrome logo for this 1959 film (opened on July 2nd) was the way to go.

Frank Capra‘s A Hole in the Head, playing one block to the north at Leow’s State, opened two weeks later (July 15th).

“Marquee Swagger”, posted on 12.16.19:

You also have to admire the marketing chutzpah of the distribution executive who calculated that a visually concise Saul Bass logo (is there any other kind?) would be more than sufficient to attract Times Square passers-by. You have to admire the certainty and the confidence. The applicable term is “balls.”

The point was that the distribution guys were so confident that Saul Bass’s twisted arm logo had penetrated the marketplace that they figured they didn’t need to spell out the title to sidewalk traffic. Yes, the east-facing front of the Victoria marquee spelled it out, but that side wasn’t seen as much as the north and south facers.

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In A.O. Scott‘s N.Y. Times review of Shawn Levy‘s “Clint“, he notes that Levy’s judgments “mostly follow the critical consensus, but the mini-reviews embedded in the narrative are among the most amusing and illuminating parts of the book.

“Levy can be witheringly succinct: ‘Ew. Just ew’ sums up his view of Breezy (’73), Eastwood’s little remembered third feature as a director. (It’s about a middle-aged man’s sexual awakening with a 17-year-old flower child).”

Correction #1: Scott is dead wrong. Breezy is about a middle-aged man’s (William Holden) spiritual awakening by way of a relationship with a 17-year-old hippie chick (Kay Lenz). They eventually become lovers in Act Two, yes, but Eastwood gently de-emphasizes the sexual aspects of their relationship. It’s a story about emotionally opening up.

Correction #2: Breezy isn’t even a slight “ew” — it’s modest and character-driven and entirely effective for what it is. I hate Holden’s ’70s wardrobe (orange sweaters, checked pants, elephant collars) and his real-estate hustler scowls a lot (Lenz’s hippie-chick calls him “dark cloud”) but it’s an honestly felt, medium-range thing, and a better-than-decent effort on Eastwood’s part.

The pacing is natural and unhurried, and the dialogue is nicely sculpted for the most part. It was also the first film Clint directed in which he didn’t star.

Holden’s performance as Frank Harmon, a cynical real-estate agent, radiates a solid gravity force in every one of his scenes. I’m particularly fond of a moment in which Harmon and a real-estate colleague are discussing some hippie kids who are frolicking nearby. Harmon offers a sardonic two-word assessment: “Low tide.”

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Alternate: “Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?”