“…And You Know You’re Right”

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There’s something I never paid attention to in the famous “you’re not a loser, Eddie, you’re a winner” scene from The Hustler. The “something” is this: traffic noise nearly floods this scene.

Director Robert Rossen could have shot in some remote woodsy area or in upper Central Park, but he chose to shoot near a highway of some kind. I’m guessing the Henry Hudson Parkway, somewhere near the 80s or 90s. They couldn’t be more than 40 or 50 feet from it — listen to those cars and motorbikes whirring by.

I think Rossen chose this spot because…I don’t know why. Perhaps he wanted to say that there’s no peace in New York City for some people…no calm, no havens, no real cover or seclusion. The clutter and clamor never leave you alone.

Oh, and Newman addressing Jackie Gleason‘s Minnesota Fats over and over as “fat man” doesn’t seem right by today’s standards. Gleason was somewhere between portly and hefty, but his girth is nothing compared to your typical 21st Century Jabba. Lost City costar Da’Vine Joy Randolph is twice Gleason’s size.

Wiki excerpt: “According to Bobby Darin‘s agent, Martin Baum, Paul Newman‘s agent turned down the part of Fast Eddie. Newman was unavailable to being committed to star opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Two for the Seesaw. Rossen offered Darin the part after seeing him on The Mike Wallace Interview.

“When Taylor was forced to drop out of Seesaw because of shooting overruns on Cleopatra, Newman was freed up to take the role, which he accepted after reading just half of the script. No one associated with the production officially notified Darin or his representatives that he had been replaced; they found out from a member of the public at a charity horse race.”

Musical Approach Could Have Saved “Power of the Dog”

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An hour ago Erik Anderson posted a genius tweet…a tweet that, if conceptually heeded two or three years ago, could’ve saved Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog from itself. If that morose and tiresome melodrama had been made into a grand musical tragedy, and if a 12-years-younger version of Madonna had played Kirsten Dunst‘s role of Rose, the alcoholic newlywed with a gay, covertly homicidal son, it could have been something. Really. I’m not being facetious. Especially, I’m thinking, if it had been made Evita-style, as a sung-through musical.

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What Ails Young American Males?

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There are many things, I’m sure, that are lamentable or neurotic or fucked up about 40-and-under dudes in this country. But here’s one of them. Some designer out there designed these hellish slip-ons, and I can guarantee there are hundreds…okay, scores of dudes out there who are wearing them as we speak. Just strolling around and giggling with their idiot friends and making the world a much darker place by way of footwear. If I was an absolute ruler, a Ming-the-merciless of style and fashion, I would put out orders for police to arrest and detain anyone caught wearing these godforsaken things.

Penelope Cruz! Penelope Cruz! Penelope Cruz!

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I like Jessica Chastain, I loved her in Zero Dark Thirty, and I certainly respect the herculean effort that went into the making and performing of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. But Best Actress cannot and should never be a Best Makeup thing…c’mon. It should be about strength, craft, pieces of a heart and the depth of a soul.

Will Ya Listen To These Stooges?

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No, not those who believe that the Lia Thomas example is deeply unfair to female sports competitors and is really hurting the women’s sports industry. I mean the college-age robots who are using the term “transphobic” to describe people who have a problem with the lanky, man-sized Thomas defeating her female swimming competitors. Play the video and listen to these toadies. They’re so invested in progressive trans talking points, they’ve rejected the concept of basic competitive fairness.

Simply Not True

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I’ll be reviewing Adam and Aaron Née ‘s The Lost City (Paramount, 3.25) sometime tomorrow (Saturday, 3.19), but this paragraph from Peter Debruge’s 3.12 Variety review conveys highly misleading and unreliable opinions. I don’t just disagree with the first and last sentences — I screamed out loud when I read them. I only saw the film last night so…

What’s Happened to the N.Y. Times?

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The N.Y. Times, formerly the “paper of record” and a bastion of woke Stalinism for the last five or six years (certainly as far as the usual woke-kneejerk issues are concerned), has actually posted an editorial that warns of the dangers of cancel culture, pushed by left-progressive absolutists since the new Robespierre terror began.

The editorial is titled “America Has a Free Speech Problem.” The authors didn’t have the courage to dump this problem on the lap of the radical left; they’ve used the old “both sides” tactic to claim the right is just as bad in this regard. The Trumpist-nutter righties are evil, of course, but 95% of the scolding and repression these days is coming from the left.

HE regulars are hereby advised to read the comments.

The Unfairness of This

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It’s not cool and not fair for Lia Thomas, the 22 year-old transgender swimmer who yesterday won the women’s 500-yard freestyle race and thereby became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship, to compete against women who were born that way.

Thomas’s natural athletic superiority — built like a dude, taller, stronger, big shoulders — clearly give her an advantage over female competitors. The NCAA honchos who paved the way for Thomas and others like her to compete are helping to destroy women’s sports. It’s really not right.

Thomas is like the robot pitcher in that 1960 Twilight Zone episode, “The Mighty Casey.” Imagine if a race of human-resembling aliens with extraordinary athletic abilities had landed on earth and decided to complete in men’s sports, and started winning everything — this is what Thomas is doing.

She’s not a “woman” — she’s a dude who’s taken hormone therapy and announced that she’s trans. but still enjoys the advantage of her natural male strength.

Jen Yamato Would Like A Word, Chris

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Three or four years ago it was noted that among the new crop of Academy and SAG members, “representation isn’t an important thing — it’s the only thing.”

To say that we’re living in weird, obsessive times is putting it mildly. Chris calls people who are obsessive about representation “narcissists.”

40 or 50 years hence Millennials and Zoomers will be written about in the same way that historians today write about Hollywood’s anti-Communist rightwing brigade (John Wayne, Adolph Menjou, Robert Taylor, Cecil B. DeMille, Ward Bond) who did what they could in the early to late ’50s to destroy the lives of screenwriters and directors who had flirted with Communism in the 1930s, when the general consensus was that American capitalism had failed the working class.