We know it’s fake, but it’s pretty good. And chilling — we all get the point. It’s fairly amazing to consider the Roland Emmerich– or Michael Bay-level CG fakery that’s available these days to almost any enterprising online hoodwinker.

Originally posted on 7.13.16: One thing you’ll never see explored or even mentioned in any historical film is the level of hygiene available to the main characters. I realize that nobody wants to hear this stuff, but can I at least write one short article about it? We’re all so accustomed to living in total hygienic splendor (huge bathrooms, dynamic showers, exotic soaps, dandified deodorants, perfumes, facial cremes, hair gels) that we tend to forget or ignore how unclean and smelly things were in the old days, especially before the 19th Century.

It follows that historical films, none of which have ever been captured or projected with Aromarama-like technology, have never gotten into this. Until fairly recently (i.e., before intensely realistic pics like The New World and The Revenant) everyone in every historical film from whatever century has always been presented as looking relatively clean and well-groomed, and by inference agreeable smelling. But the fact is that most people stunk like animals in centuries past.

As I mentioned four years ago there wasn’t even a White House bathtub with hot running water until Abraham Lincoln’s first term. And when you’re talking about ancient Rome and especially Judea, which will be represented a few weeks hence in Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur, forget it.

By our standards almost everyone except the wealthiest ancient Romans almost certainly had odor issues to varying degrees. And don’t even mention plumbing or toilets. The upper-crusters of 2000 years ago who routinely visited the luxurious Roman baths had no toilet privacy and no toilet paper, and they all shared an assortment of vinegar-soaked sponges that were used, cleaned and re-used over and over. (I know and I’m sorry.) Some kind of toothbrushes were used by the Roman 1%, but minty toothpaste and alcohol-based mouthwash were of course non-existent.

How hygienic were the nomadic Jesus Christ and his disciples? Are you kidding me? They might have waded into a nearby river or in the Sea of Galilee from time to time or occasionally washed themselves next to a well, but they never saw any kind of soap their entire lives, they didn’t even know what a toilet seat looked like much less a hygienic sponge, and they certainly never owned toenail clippers or saw a pedicurist. (I wonder if Pontius Pilate was acquainted with that level of luxury?)

But all of this seems so gross to movie audiences it’s mostly not even hinted at, much less alluded to. And so almost all historic milieus are presented as relatively clean and fragrant and well-scrubbed as any pricey 20th or 21st Century home or restaurant or high-end health club. Or at least tolerable by our present standards.

Of course, our sense of aroma toleration changes with the eras. It wasn’t all that long ago when the smell of cigarette smoke was everywhere; now that’s all but gone, even in European environments that used to reek of unfiltered Gauloises as recently as 15 or 20 years ago.

“The same thing with the race…with the CRT [critical race theory] thing. I feel like it’s disingenuous when the liberals say, you know, ‘We just want to teach history.’ And like, no one’s against…well, I’m sure there some fuckin’ rednecks who are against [this] but most reasonable people are not against realistically teaching history. It’s not like you can’t mention slavery. They’re telling you about something else that is going on.

“I’ve read too many reports, too many first-person reports from teachers who say, ‘I can’t go on teaching like this because this is insanity what I’m doing in this classroom, separating kids by race and oppressors and non-oppressors. And they’re little kids.”

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The fabled “Summer of Love” happened from May to September of ‘67…okay?

…and do you care that three big awards ceremonies are happening this weekend? The Directors Guild Awards are happening Saturday, and we all know that’s a lock for The Power of the Dog‘s Jane Campion along with The Lost Daughter‘s Maggie Gyllenhaal for First-Time Feature. Then comes the BAFTA awards on Sunday afternoon (12 noon Pacific) but that organization has been more or less woked and Stalinized to death so nobody cares. Then comes the Critics Choice awards on Sunday evening, but they’re also on their own little orbit. Not even nominating Parallel Wives‘ Penelope Cruz for Best Actress constitutes some kind of aesthetic blockage, no?

I’d like to be able to lie and get away with it, but the truth is this: If I could somehow become the recipient of a sizable amount of Russian cash, I would probably take it and run like a thief. I feel ashamed to admit this.

Kremlin-backed millionaires “can rinse their dirty money clean by buying up the most expensive houses in London,” says @JonathanPieNews, a fictional newscaster created by the British comedian Tom Walker. “It’s how the U.K. makes money.” https://t.co/8JBC3lueAv pic.twitter.com/NAoV7ib0pD

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) March 11, 2022

If Vlady knows “Blueberry Hill” and has the courage to sing it front of a celebrity audience, he could certainly do “Jailhouse Rock.” Imagine!

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Remember the legendary Jen Yamato, one of Hollywood’s leading advocates for Presentism and Tribal Representation, complaining to Joel and Ethan Coen in 2016 about Hail Caesar, which is set in 1951, being almost entirely cast with white people?

Yamato: “I asked the Coens to respond to criticisms that there aren’t more minority characters in the film. In other words, why is #HailCaesarSoWhite?”” In response to which Joel and Ethan basically called Yamato an idiot who knew nothing about how stories are written.

“It’s an absolute, absurd misunderstanding of how things get made to single out any particular story and say, ‘Why isn’t this, that or the other thing [included]?’’ Joel said. ‘It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how stories are written. So you have to start there and say, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Well, wokester “presentism” is back with an ardor and a vengeance, it would seem. Certain Twitter psychos are complaining that Christopher Nolan‘s currently shooting Oppenheimer is guilty of the same thing. As Cleavon Little might have said in Blazing Saddles, “Hey, where all da black and Asian people at?”

The reason that the cast of Oppenheimer is seemingly all Anglo Saxon is presumably because history tells us that the Manhattan Project principals were entirely Anglo Saxon. Yes, I realize that the real reason is that Nolan is a racist who is foursquare against casting actors of color — he’s not fooling anybody! But at the same time the history of the Manhattan Project has been researched and reported, and it is what it is.

Yolando Machado? Mett Jen Yamato!

On 6.18.91 the late Johnny Carson was slapped in the mouth by a Celebes ape — aka a crested black macaque or black ape. His name was “Doc.”

Everyone has seen this clip, I presume,. but the best part, I feel, isn’t the slap but the mimicry stuff that begins around the 3:40 mark.

This is how Hollywood Elsewhere relates to all animals — I talk to them in their language. I meow, I whimper, I moan, I make little noises with my mouth. Basic emotional tone is what matters, but you also have to reach out.