Writing what I want to say about anything comes easy. Bang it out and there it is. But then comes the hard editing, which usually involves three passes.
I begin by simplifying words and cleaning up sentences, and sometimes re-phrasing them so they read better, by which I mean sharper. Then I go back and make each and every passage sound a little more casual and conversational — you don’t want to sound too constipated. Then you go back a fourth time and give each sentence a final spritz.
It helps to get up and walk outside or hit the kitchen or play with the cats, and then you come back with a clean head. You have to re-read and ask yourself “what’s wrong with this? What sentences seem lumpy or problematic or labored?”
After the fourth pass I’m usually good with it, and then I’ll hit “publish.”
And then comes the occasional fifth edit, which is sometimes prompted by reader complaints and corrections, and sometimes by my own delayed judgment.
Pegg was alluding, of course, to the four big controversies that have spilled into the mainstream — the allegedly racist or sexist complaints about (a) Ahmed Best‘s performance as Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, (b) John Boyega in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, (c) Kelly Marie Tran in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, and, most recently, (d) Moses Ingram as Reva Savander in Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Disney + series.
These episodes may have partially been driven by flat-out racism, and that’s appalling. Negative reactions to Boyega may have qualified in this regard.
But the revulsion toward Jar-Jar Binks was about the conception –the character, the dopey voice, the dialogue. The wrath wasn’t directed at Best but the ogre known as George Lucas.
I never had the slightest problem with Kelly Marie Tran‘s performance as Rose Tico, but those who complained were less focused on her Asian heritage (who cares?) and more about her weight — the fans didn’t like the idea of a chubby Star Wars protagonist.
And the complaint about Ingram wasn’t about her ancestry but about her Baltimore street accent, which didn’t fall in line with the crisp British speech patterns of previous Imperial villains.
“I’ve apologized for the things I said about, you know, Jar Jar Binks,” Pegg told SiriusXM’s Jim Norton and Sam Roberts. “Because, of course, there was a fucking actor involved. [Best] was getting a lot of flack and…it was a human being. And because it got a lot of hate, he suffered, you know, and I feel terrible about being part of that.”
Again — it was Jar-Jar, not Best, that people loathed.
Pegg: “There’s no sort of like, ‘Oh, you’re suddenly being woke.’ No Star Trek was woke from the beginning, you know? This is massively progressive. Star Wars suddenly there’s, there’s a little bit more diversity and everyone’s kicking off about it. And it’s…it’s really sad.”
Woody Allen joke from the early ’60s, passed along by regional “friendo”: “I received an offer from a vodka company to be a spokesperson…to shoot some TV ads. So one of their reps called and I said, ‘First of all, I don’t do TV ads, and I don’t drink so I can’t be much of a vodka salesman, and if I did drink vodka I probably wouldn’t drink your brand so I can’t see this happening.’ And the vodka guy said, ‘Well, that’s too bad because we were going to offer you a $500 thousand fee.’ And Allen said, ‘Uhhm, hold on…let me put Mr. Allen on the phone.'”
Every industry name whores out at one time or another. Some more than others (Michael Caine in The Swarm and Jaws 4) but they all mostly do it. Ryan Gosling held his nose and cashed the paycheck for The Gray Man, and in the bargain enjoyed all kinds of exotic travel. One of the reasons that Brad Pitt is allegedly worth $300 million is because he occasionally stars in films like Bullet Train, for which he was allegedly paid $30 million.
Except for Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s been a wealthy, marquee-brand actor for 29 years, and has never once starred in a piece of Bullet Train or Gray Man-level schlock. This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries, Total Eclipse, Marvin’s Room, Titanic, The Man in the Iron Mask, Celebrity, The Beach, Don’s Plum, Catch Me If You Can, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Body of Lies, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, Inception, J. Edgar, Django Unchained, The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Don’t Look Up, Killers of the Flower Moon…26 respectable films, some more commercial or less arty than others but no franchise flicks and none aimed at the jizz-whizz action or gamer or Marvel crowd.
I’m sorry but I laughed out loud at the William F. Buckley joke — a joke propelled by territorial sexual resentment and urban cynicism. And I’m an LQTM guy — it takes a lot to make me actually laugh. I’ve never laughed once at anything Ryan Gosling has said…not once. I’ve laughed at three or four things that Brad Pitt has said, but I wouldn’t laugh if he said them while wearing that fucking kilt.
And neither is the fleurescent Eastmancolor mint green. Does HE have a slight preference? Does HE prefer the lemon-lime popsicle jacket worn by the darker-skinned Ryan Gosling, or the pale-skinned powder blue guy that Variety is chatting up? Answer: HE renders a firm “no” verdict to both. HE also says “no” (no offense) to The Gray Man, which Netflix will begin streaming tomorrow.
PresidentJoe BidentestingpositiveforCovid despite being double (or is it triple?) vaxxed means that some Nervous Nellie governors may call for new mask mandates. If so, it’ll be Biden’sfault — he will have done this to allofus. If I succumb to Covid flu symptoms again, fine…I don’t care. But I’d almost rather die than wear a mask again.
TailofthePup, a storied and beloved Los Angeles hot dog stand if there ever was one, is backinbusiness at 8512 Santa Monica Blvd. in WeHo. I’m genuinely sorry that I’m not there — 2700 miles to the east and I can smell the mustard and sautéed onions and sliced Jalapeño. Anthony Bourdain would have produced a great PartsUnknown segment about this. (Photos courtesy of Maxim Shapovalov.)
The thing that gets me about England is that fewer than 5% of the households have air conditioning. I know what it feels like to weaken and slowly melt. I was living in Paris during the summer of ‘03 (23 rue Tourlaque) so don’t tell me. All we had were fans.
HE is experiencing a Fairfield County brown-out as we speak…right now. But everyone has a.c., of course.
Regional power will be restored around 10 pm, give or take.
I’d like to believe that Halloween Ends (Universal, 10.14) will be the last and final flick in this soul-draining franchise. A pox upon those who always pay to see witlessfranchisehorrorflicks and almost never support elevatedhorror. We are what we eat, and we make our own beds.
My favorite David Gordon Green films are Pineapple Express (except for Danny McBride‘s performance) and the Terrence Malick-y George Washington.
A few months ago I watched the first episode of The Last Movie Stars (HBO Max, 7.21), a six-part Ethan Hawke documentary about Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward that seemed, based on episode #1, to be a celebration piece — a portrait of a fairly wonderful, for the most part glorious relationship.
I posted my understanding of the six-part doc series around 10 days ago.
Paul and Joanne first met in ’53 or thereabouts, got married in 1958 and stayed together for 50 years. Paul died on 9.26.08.
Hawke’s admiration for Newman-Woodward is upfront and unfettered, and his fascination with the transformative acting world of New York in the 1950s is fully conveyed. But this seems to basically be a valentine doc, and having dug into Shawn Levy‘s “Paul Newman: A Life” (’09), a very thoroughly researched and written biography…I shouldn’t say more but the basic approach seems to have been one of serious admiration.
I’ve since been told that this entirely isn’t the case. I’m told that Hawke doesn’t mention the name of a journalist, Nancy Bacon, with whom Newman had an affair in ’68 and ’69, but the affair is definitely mentioned. It’s also acknowledged that Newman was a functioning alcoholic, and that the booze was a real problem for a while. Woodward even kicked Newman out of their Westport home at one point, or so the story goes.
Before last night’s screening of Nope I had never paid much attention to Keke Palmer. I’m sorry but nothing she’d appeared in seemed edgy or alluring enough. But now Palmer is a name — she’s crossed over. And not just over her noteworthy Nope performance, but because of the Being Mortal thing.
I probably shouldn’t mention this, I realize, because everyone in the media seems to have sworn an oath of silence. But why is everyone being so silent?
I’m sorry but there was that kerfuffle last April (technically in late March) in which people were asking “what happened on the Being Mortal set, and what was it that Bill Murray did to piss somebody off so badly that the whole movie shut down…how is it that Aziz Ansari’s stab at launching a directing career was blown to pieces because of something that happened of a relatively minor, non-assaultive nature…something that nobody will talk about?”
All we know is that Murray did something he “thought was funny but it wasn’t taken that way.”
Palmer was asked about the incident on a Nope red carpet, and apart from saying that she loved working with Ansari she claimed to know nothing.
When’s the last time that a film stopped shooting over someone taking offense over something that happened that didn’t involve anything felonious?
I KNOW NOTHING, but the fact that nobody will say anything almost certainly proves that some kind of hot-button, hot-potato, avert-your-eyes issue is behind it. Murray aside nobody has said boo about it for three and a half months, which suggests that the complainer wasn’t a makeup or wardrobe person or a craft services guy or a truck driver.
On 4.29.22 or two and two-thirds months ago, I posted a theory about Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie: “As far as I can determine there’s only one way for Gerwig to go story-wise, and that’s to make a Barbie variation of The Truman Show” — a film about whether it’s better to live a life of plastic, isolated perfection or one that grapples with the unruly ups and downs of the real world.
Four weeks and one day later or on 5.27, World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimyposted the following description: ‘The film is set in Barbieland, a beautiful, colorful society with Kens and Barbies. Ryan Gosling‘s Ken, said to be a ‘complete doofus’, is obsessed with Margot Robbie‘s Barbie, but loves the real world for all the reasons Barbie hates it (beauty standards, sexism, etc).
“Gerwig’s film eventually becomes a ‘fish out of water comedy’ as Ken and Barbie leave Barbieland for the real world. This motivates the Mattel CEO (Will FerrellJason on Twitter: “Sounds like the meta aspects of Gerwig’s Little Women mixed with Splash and Truman Show [with] Jacques Demy musical influences.”
