“What’s Wrong With It?…It’s Cottage Cheese”

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The diner scene in Thief is one of James Caan‘s best acting moments ever (obviously), but also the most emotionally wide open and vulnerable in a given screen moment. And the scene doesn’t work, of course, without Tuesday Weld‘s defensiveness, defiance and hostility gradually downshifting into moderation and then listening, and then opening up herself. And finally accepting what’s being offered.

Hat tip and condolences to director-writer Michael Mann.

Sidenote: Any sensible woman would realize, of course, that a professional diamond thief whose survival motto is “nothin’ means ‘nothin'” is not a good bet for a domestic relationship with an adopted kid. Sooner or later the shit will come down and he’ll get out the lead pipe and clobber the aggressor and then the nihilism will kick in. Almost everyone who watches Thief can see this, but the film is so mesmerizing and so well acted that they let it go.

Sting Losing The Battle

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Sting is the big star, loose and cool and playing at a private party in Figline Valdarno, a leafy Tuscan hamlet about 25 km south of Firenze. And having a good old time with “An Englishman in New York,” a 1987 tune that everyone knows and loves. So he has the ears and hearts of the crowd, but alas, not their visual attention. Sting may not be aware of what’s going on, but the woman behind him, trust me, is revelling in the moment. [Performance recorded sometime in the summer of ’20.]

This is my part of Tuscany — Greve, Panzano, Volpaia, San Donato. I’ve driven and scootered all over this region.

Twitter Jackals Determined to Slay Russell

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We’re all familiar with David O. Russell‘s reputation for being high-strung and occasionally abusive on film sets, and I wish it were otherwise. And I can’t for the life of me understand how or why the 2011 feel-up incident with his transgender niece Nicole Peloquin occured, or why it resulted in Peloquin filing a police report. (A fair-minded person would at least consider Russell’s statement to the police that Peloquin was “acting very provocative toward him” and invited him to feel her breasts.)

The other side of the consideration coin is that Russell is a genius-level filmmaker — the director of five and arguably six classics of the ’90s and aughts — Flirting with Disaster (’96), Three Kings (’99), I Heart Huckabees (’04), The Fighter (’10), the masterful Silver Linings Playbook (’12) and American Hustle (’13).

We all understand that mentioning artistic accomplishment (i.e., the “some geniuses behave like assholes” argument) doesn’t matter to Twitter jackals and woke accusers. Right now they’re firing their opening salvos at Russell for being, they’re claiming, an all-around abuser and deserving of career death and industry expulsion a la Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. (Here’s a Twitter thread from yesterday, and a Reddit one.)

The feel-up incident was revealed by the 2014 Sony hack, so why wasn’t Russell raked over the coals for this when Joy, a biographical comedy-drama that he directed and wrote, was being promoted seven years ago? Because reputational takedowns and cancel culture weren’t a thing in ’15 — they didn’t manifest until the #MeToo ignition in late ’17.

This is the world in which we now live — if a famous film-industry person had been accused of sexual misconduct and especially if he/she has an unfortunate, years-long pattern of having been abusive to coworkers (which Russell definitely was on the sets of Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees and American Hustle), that person must be sent to the gallows.

And that’s what the jackals are going to try to make happen, apparently, when Russell’s Amsterdam opens on 11.4.22, or during the promotional build-up, I should say.

Abusive film-set behavior will never be excused away by this column. It’s highly unfortunate and, if you ask me, adolescent and inexplicable. Making a film come out right is hard enough without explosive tempers screwing things up.

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“Thief”, “Gambler” Performances Were Caan’s Finest

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Down-on-my-knees respect for the legendary James Caan, who has sadly moved on to greener pastures at age 82.

Born in 1940 (three years younger than Warren Beatty and Robert Redford), Caan delivered fine performances in the ’60s and very early ’70s (especially in El Dorado, The Rain People, Brian’s Song and Rabbit Run) but didn’t hit the jackpot until he played Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (’72).

For the rest of the ’70s and into the early ’80s it was smooth sailing and mostly glory glory glory for this Bronx-born son of German-Jewish immigrants.

Caan made 15 films during an eight-year hot streak — Slither, Cinderella Liberty, The Gambler, Freebie and the Bean, The Godfather Part II, Funny Lady, Rollerball, The Killer Elite, Harry and Walter Go to New York, A Bridge Too Far, Another Man, Another Chance, Comes a Horseman, Chapter Two, Hide in Plain Sight and Thief.

All but four or five were either grade-A or B-plus, and fully respectable.

Caan’s greatest performances, hands down and in this order: Axel Freed in The Gambler (’74), Frank in Thief (’81) and Sonny in The Godfather I & II (’72 and ’74).

Caan’s most eloquent scene, arguably, is the Dostoevsky classroom lecture in The Gambler.

He rebounded in Rob Reiner‘s Misery (’90), of course, and did commendable work in Honeymoon in Vegas (’92), as a senior-aged wise guy in Wes Anderson‘s Bottle Rocket (’95), in James Gray‘s The Yards (’00) and in Lars von Trier‘s Dogville (’03).

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Strengthening Underway

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“Good times create weak people. Weak people create bad times. Bad times create strong people. Strong people create good times. That’s the history of the world, over and over and over again.” — from a piano-scored Tony Robbins interview, posted four or five months ago.”

The lack of opportunities afforded to minorities aside, American good times, largely created and fortified by strong or at least morally decent people, happened between the late ’40s and the mid ’60s.

Astounding, convulsive, turbulent times — “bad” times if you insist, but quite the rollercoaster ride and highly adventurous in some respects — happened between the mid ’60s and mid ’70s.

And then came the Carter years, largely defined by undermining currents and bacchanalian distractions — economic lethargy, cocaine, Studio 54, “Some Girls”, etc.

Then came the Reagan and Bush ’80s — good times for the greedheads, “go for it, guys…take advantage of our laissez-faire attitudes, get as rich as you can because the lights are green”, etc. Charge as you go and worry about it later created fewer savings accounts and a weakening of the traditional American fibre.

The weak people of the aughts elected Dubya, and then, traumatized by 9/11, brought in bad times in the Middle East.

The Obama years were somewhat progressive (Affordable Care Act, gay marriage) but also saw the growth of the lunatic bumblefuck right, which eventually gave rise to Trumpism, which gave rise to wokester terror and the all-but-certain electoral ruin of the left come November.

We are now in very, very bad times with a significant portion of American citizens having supported the Jan. 6th insurrection and ready to take up arms against the government.

Hate Being Asked If I “Like” Something

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Fuck does that mean, “do I like him”? How likable or admirable can a formerly dashing, once-good looking, go-for-the-gusto Australian pussy hound and wild man be? Especially one who wound up looking like sagging, creased leather and dying from drink at age 50, a landmark that Tom Cruise hit ten years ago?

What you’re trying to say (but for some reason have declined to put into words) is “have you liked any of Errol Flynn’s movies?” The answer is “yes — Captain Blood, Robin Hood, They Died With Their Boots On and Objective Burma. Okay, you can add Gentleman Jim and Dodge City. No, I’ve never seen even one of his early ’30s Australian films.

Boris Johnson Finally Goes Down

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After succeeding Theresa May as Prime Minister nearly three years ago (7.24.19), Boris Johnson was quickly understood by those relatively few Americans who pay attention to British politics as a Donald Trump-like figure — brash, conservative, weird blond hair, a bullshitter, an elitist, swaggering, amoral, supported by low-information rurals, deeply loathed by the British left, etc.

And yet from an American perspective Johnson never seemed as utterly foul and rancid and sociopathic as Trump. As arrogant and entitled and indifferent to conventional political behaviors as he was and presumably still is, Johnson has at least, faced with the end of his party’s support and cornered on all sides, finally faced reality and submitted to the rules of the game. Plus he was and is well-educated, well-spoken, occasionally witty and amusing, etc. A woolly mammoth living and conniving by his own rules, if you will, but far more civilized and respectful of the system than Trump ever was or will be.

From Johnson’s resignation statement:

“As we’ve seen recently in Westminster, the herd instinct is powerful. And when the herd moves, it moves. In politics, no one is remotely indispensable. And [so] our brilliant and Darwinian system will produce another leader, equally committed to taking this country forward. I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them’s the breaks.”

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Ringleaders

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The Criterion Channel is currently running a boxing series — Champion, The Harder They Fall, Raging Bull, Gentleman Jim, The Set-Up, Requiem For A Heavyweight, Somebody Up There Likes Me, etc. Because of some rights hassle they aren’t including the Rocky films, of which at least two are pretty good.

HE’s top six boxing (or mixed martial arts) movies: (1) Gavin O’Connor‘s Warrior (’11) with Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton; (2) Leon Gast‘s When We Were Kings (’96); (3) Karyn Kusama‘s Girlfight (’00) with Michelle Rodriguez; (4) Mark Robson and Stanley Kramer‘s Champion (’49) with Kirk Douglas; (5) Robson and Phillip Yordan‘s The Harder They Fall (’56) with Humphrey Bogart, and (6) John Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky (’76).

If I want a good, fast boxing high I’ll just re-watch the Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle“…eight rounds, great fight, great finale.

Son of High Tower Drive

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“I slept and dreamed that life was beauty / I woke and found that life was duty.” — Ellen Sturgis Hooper, from a book of poems called “The Dial,”

12 and 1/2 years ago I misattributed that line to David Mamet, who had used it for a Hill Street Blues episode called “Wasted Weekend.” I repeated the error in a 7.11.18 riff called “High Tower Drive.” So now we have it straight.

I first heard this line during the original broadcast of this episode on 1.13.87. The guy who said the line was Dennis Franz‘s Norman Buntz, and I’ve never forgotten it.

I was watching Steven Bochco‘s fabled series on a 21″ cable-connected color TV. I was living in a cool little pre-war studio on High Tower Drive, a few hundred yards from the Hollywood Bowl and just down the street from Elliott Gould‘s deco-moderne, elevator-accessible Long Goodbye apartment.

Reanimator‘s Jeffrey Coombs lived in the same complex.

I was working for Cannon Films publicity at the time, writing press kits. My future wife Maggie and I had either just returned from Paris or were planning a trip there. We got married the following October, and Jett came along the following June.