He was damn good at whatever and whomever he played, but when you boil it down his best years happened in the ’70s. Bobby Trippe in Deliverance (’72), a racetrack boss in The Last American Hero, The Marcus-Nelson Murders, The Execution of Private Slovik, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings and Nashville, Arthur Jensen in Network (his greatest performance), Justin Dardis in All the President’s Men, Mikey and Nicky, Lex Luthor’s inept henchman Otis in two Superman films plus Friendly Fire, Wise Blood and 1941.
I lived in a Beachwood Canyon bungalow in ’84 and ’85 (2932DurandDrive), and I recall several times in which I watched the overalled Beatty doing work on his handsome Spanish-style home, which was right across the street from the Beachwood Cafe.
More and more frank depictions of sex and violence began to manifest in the mid ’60s, but relatively few actors have delivered what I regard as serious authenticity when it came to portraying gangsters, hitmen, ruffians, sociopaths, etc.
Any two-bit actor can wear a hollow, ice-cold expression or radiate animal hostility; the trick is to suggest serious malevolence with as little effort as possible, and particularly with your eyes and manner and body language. Bottom line: If you’re a serious monster, the camera can spot it right away.
In my mind one of the most believable bad guys ever was Michael Caine‘s Jack Carter in Mike Hodge‘s Get Carter (’71).
Please name other movie characters who radiated evil and malevolence without any showy gestures or demonstrations. Like Michael Madsen‘s Reservoir Dogs psycho, for example. Heath Ledger‘s Joker doesn’t count (way too showy); ditto Richard Widmark‘s giggly nutcase in Kiss of Death (too spazzy and cackly).
I’m talking about bad guys who simply are that rancid thing. You look at them, sense their vibe and you know they’re the Real McCoy.
Set in the early ’90s, Tick, Tick…BOOM! stars Andrew Garfield as a character based on Larson, a 20something composer and playwright grappling with doubt and uncertainty and whether or not he has the makings of a successful Stephen Sondheim-like composer. Larson finally hit it big when a workshop version of Rent opened off-Broadway in ’93. The Broadway version opened in ’96; the film version opened in ’05.
Pic also stars Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, Joshua Henry, MJ Rodriguez, Bradley Whitford, Tariq Trotter, Judith Light and Vanessa Hudgens. Produced by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Julie Oh and Miranda, pic is written by Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen).
There’s nonetheless a weird obsession that pokes through in two reviews of the film — Eric Kohn’s in Indiewire, Matt Goldberg’s in Collider. Both claim there’s something unseemly about the movie trying to “solve” the mystery of Bourdain’s suicide.
Why is it wrong for Roadrunner to examine Bourdain’s suicide and try to figure what happened? Are we not allowed to ask those questions? Or think about them? Are we invading the ghost of Anthony Bourdain‘s safe space? What the hell else is a documentary supposed to do but ask questions and, if possible or reasonable, look deeper?
You really never know where the next stupid woke umbrage is going to come from. The sensitives and their arbitrary dumbshit “moral” rules. This fucking generation of woke idiots is going to kill us.
Collider‘s Matt Goldberg: “A suicide is not a crime to be solved. It’s a tragic circumstance going to the depths of another person’s psyche. You can’t reason it out because no reason will be satisfying. There’s no conclusion where you will get an audience to think, ‘Oh, well I guess suicide made sense in this regard.’ It cannot comfort, and it cannot illuminate. And yet Neville attempts to reason out why Bourdain would take his own life as if that’s a question that needed to be answered beyond anyone’s morbid curiosity.
“This leads Roadrunner down a deeply dark road where the film basically insinuates that Bourdain’s romance with actor and filmmaker Asia Argento was personally destructive to his well-being. If this is a film about Bourdain and his legacy, then why do we need scenes showing footage of an episode directed by Argento that Bourdain’s coworkers felt were not up to the standards they had set? Why do we need talking heads alluding to tabloids that say Argento was cheating on Bourdain and that drove him to despair and ultimately suicide because his personality operated at extremes?
“Even if you have one talking head say, ‘I don’t want to pin a man’s suicide on the woman in his life,’ the fact that Roadrunner is even broaching that as a possibility is deeply gross and incredibly irresponsible.”
Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn: “Roadrunner enters dicey territory during its final act, as it delves into Bourdain’s relationship with actress Asia Argento, who’s absent from the movie as a participant but appears in ample documentary footage.
“By all indications, Argento brought Bourdain to a new plane of happiness in his final months, when he hired her to direct an episode in Hong Kong shortly before his death. It also gave him a renewed sense of purpose as he became a public voice in the #MeToo scandal with Argento’s revelations about being raped by Harvey Weinstein.
“Roadrunner, however, bursts the sunny image of Bourdain’s new partner with claims from his former collaborators that he cut them off in the midst of the relationship; then the movie goes one step further by hinting at the idea that his suicide was an erratic act of revenge as the romance went south. Despite one subject who makes it clear Argento isn’t truly to blame — Tony killed himself, after all — it’s still a queasy passage that comes dangerously close to exploiting the scenario with a murky explanation assembled from secondhand accounts.”
I may have been overly harsh yesterday in my dismissal of the 40-year-old Clash of the Titans. I’m walking it back a bit because the Harry Hamlin vs. Medusa sequence is half-tolerable. There’s no believing it, of course, but it’s spooky all the same. Otherwise the entire film is a tedious, old-hat, stop-motion joke.
In The Heights has stumbled and crashed at the box-office — not modestly but decisively.
Yesterday morning Forbes‘ Scott Mendelsonlamented an estimate of “a frankly mediocre $5 million Friday” and “an over/under $15 million weekend launch.” Then Varietyreported that Heights had earned even less — $4.9 million on Friday with an expected weekend tally of “just under $13 million.” Now Variety‘s Rebecca Rubin is reporting an $11 million weekend haul.
Variety‘s Rebecca Rubin: “The disappointing commercial reception for In the Heights is puzzling because critics embraced the joyous film, showering it with some of the best reviews of the pandemic era.” HE interjection: Nobody cares what elitist critics think — they live on their own woke planet.
Rubin: “Moreover, Warner Bros. put substantial marketing heft behind the picture, and director Jon M. Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda devoted a great deal of energy into promoting the movie, which compensated for the fact that its cast was comprised of mostly unknown stars and emerging actors.
“The film’s hybrid release on HBO Max likely affected its box office business. [And yet] recent Warner Bros. releases like Godzilla vs. Kong, Mortal Kombat and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It still pulled in solid receipts despite being offered simultaneously on streaming.”
Make no mistake — In The Heights is a very well made, ace-level, stylistically assured neighborhood musical with an emotionally affecting current. It made me feel trapped, okay, but I resisted and toughed it out. The apparent message is that unsophisticated proles will only pay for theatrical if the film in question is scary, if it has wowser visual effects or if it’s aimed at kids and families. Teens on a Saturday night or children on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Friendo: “The original overestimates of how well In the Heights would do are, of course, the whole problem. (‘Projecting $20 million or higher!”) And that was definitely a case of seeing the movie through woke-colored glasses. ‘Look, it’s a Latinx musical! Every brown person in America will go! The same legions of cool brown people who are going to vote for Kamala Harris for president! What a wonderful progressive world!’
As much as I admire who Kamala Harris is and the values she’s stood by (and for), I suddenly realized this morning that she won’t win the ’24 election if Biden doesn’t run (will he run for a second term?) and if she beats out all competitors. Don’t ask me how I know — I just do. It’s an instinctual thing — an insight I don’t welcome but can’t ignore.
Her theoretical Republican opponent (God help the country if Trump actually runs again) would tar and feather, slice and dice…it would be awful. Plus she doesn’t have a commanding or musical speaking voice — she has little if any Obama in her. And she’s quite short — 5’2″.
I would will vote for her in a New York minute — I’d love to see a smart, tough woman in the Oval Office. But my vote means nothing in this context.
Now that In The Heights has opened and failed to make box-office history and now that between half and two-thirds of the moviegoing public has written it off or at least decided to defy Eric Kohn and watch it on HBO Max…now that it’s regarded as a ruptured duck and people have left it behind, does anyone who saw it yesterday or today agree with the following?
One, that it’s a first-rate, well-made, go-for-the-gusto, real-deal musical, shot and performed and edited to the professional utmost but two, it’s also a film that strangely makes you feel a bit trapped and suffocated…a film that you’d like to escape from but you can’t because you shouldn’t because you paid to see it and you might as well tough it out. Does anyone feel that way?
I’m serious about the quality of John Chu‘s film — Heights is an absolutely first-rate production in every department.
#InTheHeights fans, don’t let that bad box office buzz bring you down. The film’s financial story is FAR from over, and no matter what, nothing can diminish its impact or the immense joy it has brought to *so* many audiences around the world. Keep your head up 💃🏼 pic.twitter.com/ewXt8v4Q57
I know it’s about basically a revenge story, or about planning payback. Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson) is distraught over his daughter’s death in a five-year-old car accident. When he finds out that the guy who ran his daughter down (David Morse) is about to be released from prison, he decides “I’m gonna make this guy suffer, or maybe even die…I’ll play it by ear.”
It opened 25 and 1/2 years ago, and I swear to God I don’t remember a single scene, a single line of dialogue, a single shot, the ending…none of it. Is it me or the film?
“…is that what you say doesn’t have to make sense, or jibe with the facts, or ever be challenged lest the challenge itself be conflated with racism. Seeing clearly is necessary for actually fixing problems, and clearlyt racism is simply no longer everywhere. It’s not in my home, and it probably isn’t in yours. We date human events as A.D. and B.C. but he need a third marker for Millennials and GenZ…B.Y., or Before You.” [Starting at 4:58 mark]
Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is callingIn The Heights “the first real heartbreaker of the summer.”
And that statement was based upon estimates of “a frankly mediocre $5 million Friday” and “an over/under $15 million weekend launch.” Except Variety is now reporting that Heights earned a piddly $4.9 million on Friday with an expected weekend tally of “just under $13 million“…I’m sorry but there’s a word for this, and the word is “bust.”
Compare this to woke media hypesters projecting at least $20 million and, per Mendelson, “even a $25-$35 million launch on par with Crazy Rich Asians.”
Mendelson’s dagger in the chest: “Film Twitter convinced themselves that In the Heights was The Force Awakens, but general audiences viewed it as Terminator: Dark Fate.
“In the Heights sold itself as a celebration of Hispanic-American culture but had little else to offer (no stars, no high concept, no IP, etc.) to those who those who didn’t view such a noble sentiment as automatically ‘worth seeing in theaters.'”
Did the ticket-buying public consider my 6.8 review and a certain sentence in particular and decide to blow it off or at least wait and see? The sentence in question read, “No question about it — In The Heights is one of the best films I’ve ever felt vaguely suffocated by.”
Mendelson: “Barring incredible legs (which is still possible), the $55 million In the Heights could be another example of audiences acting in opposition to online media narratives.” Otherwise known as the “whatever Eric Kohn is urging us to do, we’re doing the opposite” syndrome.
Mendelson: “We say we want Widows, but audiences show up for Venom, Halloween and The Grinch. Film Twitter championed Birds of Prey, but audiences showed up for Joker. Film Twitter decried Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody, while both films from ‘problematic’ directors, won multiple Oscars and grossed $322 million (the biggest-grossing Best Picture winner in a decade) and $905 million (the biggest-grossing straight drama ever) respectively.
“Meanwhile, during that 2019 Oscar season, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston’s ‘problematic’ The Upside earned $108 million domestic from a $20 million debut. Conversely, alt-right trolls didn’t stop Captain Marvel from topping $1.128 billion, a lesson that came too late for Disney’s Star Wars trilogy.
In the matter of the stunning, inexplicable suicide of Anthony Bourdain, it has long been my belief…okay, my strong suspicion that Bourdain was tragically triggered by the behavior of his turbulent girlfriend, Asia Argento.
I’m sorry but there was just too much sensual and philosophical and person-to-person pleasure in Bourdain’s life…he was seemingly all but smothered by the stuff, perhaps not by the reality but certainly the appearance of one orgasmic Zen delight after another…not to mention the charge of travelling from one place to another on a near-constant basis.
Of all the people who’ve ever offed themselves, Bourdain has to be the least likely of all time. And hanging himself just doesn’t make sense without some kind of emotional trigger, without some kind of brief drop into despair…some kind of cause-and-effect.
It is my belief that in the parallel realm of the last scene in Vertigo, Asia Argento was Scotty Ferguson and Anthony Bourdain was Judy Barton.
How do I mean that? I mean that Asia unwittingly (or carelessly) pushed Anthony over the cliff as surely as that shadowed nun in Vertigo scared Judy Barton into fearfully leaping out of that San Juan Batista bell tower.
Did Scotty kill Judy? No, he did not. She leapt out of her own sense of panic, clearly of her own accord — but Scotty was damn sure part of the reason why her life ended so suddenly and tragically.
And you’d better believe that without Asia Argento in his life, Anthony Bourdain might well be with us today.
To what extent does Roadrunner, Morgan Neville‘s just-premiered doc about Bourdain’s life, get into the whole Asia Argento mishegoss, or at least fiddle around with the possibility that Argento’s influence served as a fatal trigger in Bourdain’s psyche?
According to early Roadrunner reviews as well as a heads-up from a friendo, Neville “barely” goes there. Which sounds to me like he glances at the Argento factor without getting into it. He takes a snapshot or two and then moves on.
Here are some notes and thoughts I assembled this morning…partly from past HE posts, partly not:
So Roadrunner doesn’t get into the whole Asia Argento flagrant-infidelity-in-Rome thing? Various reports stated that she was fucking Hugo Clement, a younger journalist, just before Bourdain hung himself. It seemed to many of us that this may have tipped the secretly depressed Bourdain into nihilist despair and self-destruction. Maybe.
And therefore the film barely ponders the distinct possibility that Bourdain’s suicide was significantly influenced by Argento’s messy (i.e., human) appetites and messy (i.e., human) life?
