As noted several weeks ago, Matt Ross‘s Gaslit (STARZ, 4.24) is the story of the colorful Martha Mitchell, the wife of former Attorney General John Mitchell and a Southern belle blabbermouth who was told to shut up about what she suspected about Watergate and yet refused to zip it.

I’m presuming that the idea behind Gaslit is to celebrate Mitchell’s feisty, temperamental personality and independent streak. But I’m hoping that the film will also acknowledge that Mitchell didn’t play her cards all that well, and that she died destitute at a relatively young age (57). Sad but true.

The limited miniseries is based on Leon Neyfakh‘s “Slow Burn” documentary

Julia Roberts plays Martha, and a barely recognizable Sean Penn plays husband John. Costarring Dan Stevens, Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham and Darby Camp.

From Martha Mitchell’s Wiki page: “Following the 6.17.72 Watergate break-in, Attorney General John Mitchell “enlisted security guard Steve King (a former FBI agent) to prevent his wife Martha from learning about the break-in or contacting reporters. Despite these efforts, the following Monday, Martha acquired a copy of the Los Angeles Times.

“Martha learned that James W. McCord Jr., the security director of the Committee to Re-elect The President and her daughter’s bodyguard and driver, was among those arrested. This detail conflicted with the White House’s official story that the break-in was unrelated to the CRP, and raised her suspicion.

“Martha unsuccessfully made attempts to contact her husband by phone, eventually telling one of his aides that her next call would be to the press.

“The following Thursday, on 6.22.72, Mitchell made a late-night phone call to Helen Thomas of the United Press, reportedly Mitchell’s favorite reporter. Mitchell informed Thomas of her intention to leave her husband until he resigned from CREEP. The phone call, however, abruptly ended. When Thomas called back, the hotel operator told her that Mitchell was ‘indisposed’ and would not be able to talk. Thomas then called John, who seemed unconcerned and said, ‘[Martha] gets a little upset about politics, but she loves me and I love her and that’s what counts.’

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Nothing is real until Putin decides to actually call it quits and withdraw from Ukraine. However…

Obituary protocol requires that when a person dies you can never give him/her the “Bob Clark treatment**.” 15 years ago I was slapped around for precisely this offense.

When William Hurt passed last Sunday (3.13) I had nothing but love and fond memories in my heart and my copy reflected that. But the feelings of Hurt’s former live-in lover, CODA costar Marlee Matlin, were presumably mixed, certainly to go by her memoir “I’ll Scream Later.”

Matlin wrote that Hurt was a bit of a brutalist. Emotional and physical abuse (i.e., bruises) and even an incident of domestic rape while Hurt was filming Broadcast News, happened between them, most of it generated by Hurt. Hurt and Matlin were both apparently guilty of “considerable” drug abuse.

I’m also presuming that some #MeToo brigade types (like The Daily Beast‘s Amy Zimmerman) are persuaded that Hurt-in-his-heyday was an abusive prick and could even be described as satanic.

Hurt and Matlin were lovers for roughly a three-year period — late ’85 (when filming began on Children of a Lesser God) to sometime in mid to late ’88. They lived together for two years. Born on 3.20.50, Hurt was 15 years older than Matlin, who was born on 8.24.65.

Wiki excerpt: “In 1986, after Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Children of a Lesser God, Hurt reportedly asked her to consider what it meant to win the Oscar after just one film, when others won only after many years of hard work.

“‘What makes you think you deserved it, Marlee?’, Hurt allegedly asked in the limo after the Oscar telecast. ‘There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you. Think about that.'”

That wasn’t a very nice thing to say in the wake of Marlin’s big win. Hurt’s point, I presume, was that she won more for social-political-cultural reasons (i.e., the novelty of her being a deaf actress) than for the skill and chops that went into her performance.

But all Oscar wins are about “the narrative”, of course, and especially about being across-the-board likable. It was nonetheless mean of Hurt to try and denigrate her achievement.

In response to Matlin’s accusations about Hurt, particular those that aired on CNN on 4.13.08, Hurt issued a statement: “My own recollection is that we both apologized and both did a great deal to heal our lives. Of course, I did and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we have both grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good.”

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Six episodes of that good David Simon Baltimore hardcore ghoulash that so many HE loyalists swore by in the form of The Wire. Plus come classic Serpico slash Prince of the City soul-searching action. Jon Bernthal (much slimmer), Treat Williams, Wunmi Mosaku, Jamie Hector, McKinley Belcher III, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Josh Charles, Dagmara Domińczyk, etc. Directed by King Richard‘s Reinaldo Marcus Green. Launches on 4.25.

Daniel Craig‘s James Bond doesn’t really defeat Dave Bautista‘s Mr. Hinx — he gets some much-needed help from Léa Seydoux‘s pistol-packing Madeleine Swann, and then Hinx is accidentally yanked out of the train by a rope and some barrels.

Sean Connery gets some assistance from an exploding talcum-powder briefcase and a small knife, but otherwise decisively defeats Robert Shaw‘s “Red” Grant.

The From Russia With Love battle lasts 3 minutes and 40 seconds, and yet it seems shorter than Spectre’s train fight, which lasts roughly two minutes and 45 seconds.

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The six-day Oscar voting period begins tomorrow (Thursday, 3.17) and ends the following Tuesday (3.22) at 5 p.m. This. Is. It. And here’s how the the Best Picture situation seems as we speak.

Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog hasn’t a prayer, of course, although her Best Director Oscar is assured. The top two contenders (i.e., the ones most likely to take the prize) are Reinaldo Marcus Green and Zach Baylin‘s King Richard and Sian Heder‘s CODA. So what will it be? The tennis movie or the singing-and-signing movie?

On 2.27.22 (two and a half weeks ago) the Best Picture Oscar odds shifted dramatically. The Screen Actors Guild handed its Best Ensemble Award (“Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture”) to CODA, and suddenly this low-budget, musically-driven family film had the heat. And yet, many reminded, CODA‘s lack of a Best Editing nomination suggested it may not win, as the correlation between Best Picture and Best Editing Oscars stretches back decades.

And then, six days after the SAG awards (3.5.22), King Richard‘s Pam Martin won the ACE Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film — Dramatic. Suddenly the narrative switched again — the Best Picture race was now a neck-and-neck between King Richard and CODA. Because of the merits, of course, but also because no one really likes The Power of the Dog. We know that.

It is noteworthy and coincidental that CODA and King Richard are about families engaged in tough struggles — the determined and pugnacious Richard Williams (Will Smith) pushing his athletically gifted daughters, Venus and Serena Williams (Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton), to succeed as professional tennis players, and CODA‘s Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) trying to overcome her own hang-ups and ambivalence in order to go her own way as a singer, the final goal being to gain admission to Boston’s Berklee School of Music.

Question: Which is the more fully engaged family film? Which is more realistic and less fanciful? Which is more reflective of the hard-nosed world the way it actually is than the way it seems by the terms and language of a sentimental fable? 

King Richard is no sentimental fable — it’s a family film that never quits, never fiddles around, never loses focus, doesn’t know from serendipity.

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90 minutes ago I was pedaling south on La Cienega (I have a nice bicycle) when I noticed a block-long line of mostly teenage girls. Okay, 20somethings.

I pulled over, walked up to a 50ish dude standing by one of the girls (a dad, I presumed) and said, “May I ask what this is?” He gestured to his daughter and she said “oh, it’s for hair styles.”

“Hair styles?” I said. “People are having their hair done?”

“Hairy Styles,” she repeated, a little more clearly this time.

“Oh, Harry Styles…sure!” I quickly replied. “Dunkirk, dresses and pearl necklaces.”

It was the young girl’s fault. You don’t pronounce Styles’ first name so it rhymes with “hairy.” You pronounce it Hahrry. Like Harry Truman or Harry and the Hendersons or “a little touch of Harry in the night.” But she could have been thinking of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape. Not that she was.

I’m not questioning the Muslim identity thing, but her pipsqueak voice sounds so “Valley” — she has the vocal-fry speaking voice down cold. She could be any mousey, low-self-esteem teenager in any region of the country. Same manner, same vibe. In short, she’s done everything she can to blend in and assimilate with all the other vocal-fry girls.

Cruel perversity runs through Adrien Lyne‘s Deep Water (Hulu, 3.18). That’s what you feel more than anything else….the cold-blooded cruelty.

Based on a 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel and adapted by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, the film is about Vic and Melinda Van Allen (Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas), a youngish, quite wealthy couple who’ve fallen into a very weird and toxic chapter in their relationship. They’ve agreed that Melinda is free to fuck around on a consensual, wide-open basis — an arrangement that Vic is ostensibly okay with although he’s clearly not. You can sense his suppressed rage from the get-go.

It’s also obvious that Melinda is (am I allowed to say this?) a horrible person and a total sociopath. She must sense that Vic is at the very least conflicted about their arrangement, and yet she takes up with three boyfriends in succession without blinking an eye, and she even invites these guys to social gatherings that she and Vic attend as a couple.

Their friends see what’s going on, of course, and they all say “bruh, this is fucked up, and no offense but your wife is the cause of it…she has some real problems…why are you going along with this?”

The deal seems even worse when you realize they’re raising a young daughter.

The first thing that comes to mind (after the “God, what a monster she is!”) is why — why has Vic agreed to Melinda boning all these guys? Is it because he can’t get it up with any regularity? That doesn’t appear to be an issue, but then you ask “okay but why did they get married and have a daughter if Melinda has an insatiable sexual appetite that can’t be suppressed?”

No sensible, self-respecting dude would marry a woman like this. Remember that Blood, Sweat & Tears song, “Lucretia McEvil”?

The reason he’s down with it, we’re told, is that Vic gets turned on by Melinda slamming ham with the boys, and this intensifies their marital sex life. But it’s clear that he’s mainly pissed about the whole deal. 95% of the time Vic seethes and glowers, and 5% of the time he has good sex with Melinda when she isn’t in the mood for one of the boyfriends.

Their arrangement, in short, is fundamentally mystifying and frustrating from an audience POV. And this is only one of the Deep Water irritants. I’ll mention others tomorrow, Thursday and Friday,

Originally posted on 7.12.19 on HE Plus: “I became an amateur stage actor between ’75 and ’76, when I was living in Westport, Connecticut. My big move to Manhattan was about a year and a half off. The usual nocturnal distractions prevailed, of course — catting around, partying, movies. But I also wrote program notes for the Westport Country Playhouse Cinema. And I acted in front of paying audiences.

“First I played the timid ‘Dr. Spivey’ in a Stamford Community Playhouse production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which I mentioned to Ken Kesey when I interviewed him in Park City in ’98 or thereabouts), and then a macho backwoods type named ‘Marvin Hudgens’ in a Westport Playhouse production of Dark of the Moon.

“Sandra, a pretty married woman of 34, was also in Dark of the Moon. She and hubby Burt, a balding oil-company attorney, lived in a nice clapboard colonial not far from the playhouse. She was one of those ‘passionate with a capital p’ types — a lover of theatre, intense eyes, great cheekbones. Plus she was a part-time dominatrix with all the necessary gear (black bustiere, fishnet stockings, a leather cat-o-nine-tails whip, tall spike-heeled boots). Every so often she would visit Manhattan and get into scenes with submissives.

“Sandra was playing a sexy witch in Dark of the Moon, and it wasn’t much of a reach. Fierce energy, quite the firecracker.

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An Industry Professional Responding to Sunday’s “Normcore Bill at Le Petit Four“, which mentioned an ill-advised impulse to briefly greet Bill Maher in the restaurant’s back room:

“I vaguely know Bill [Maher]. I represented the writer-producer of [details redacted]. It seemed to me that Bill was exuding misanthropic vibes from time to time.

“He was standing next to me one evening about three years ago at the CAA valet after a reception for Julia Roberts, so I chatted him up. He was incredibly tense at first but relaxed when I praised his show as well as Politically Incorrect. I said ‘You seemed visibly nervous when I said hi…I bet a lot of crazy people come up to you?’ Maher relaxed and laughed and said “Yes, and they want to argue about something from the show. I never know what to expect. “

“He doesn’t like fans as a result. And he’s a bit of a grumpy guy to begin with.

“The unfortunate 21st century new rule is not to approach an on-camera celeb in public if they’re wearing a hat or are trying to obscure their face or hair etc. Unless they’re an old friend or someone you’ve worked with.

“You read Twitter. There are too many mean and crazy people out there.”

The ’22 Cannes Film Festival (5.17 to 5.28) has officially announced that both Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount, 5.27) and Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (Warner Bros,., 6.24) will have big splashy debuts on the Cote d’Azur. But then we suspected this weeks ago.

I have vague qualms about both. It can be safely presumed that neither will deliver serious heat. The possible competition titles that I’m most excited about are Alejandro G. Innaritu‘s Bardo, Cristian Mungiu‘s R.M.N., Ruben Ostlund‘s Triangle of Sadness, James Gray‘s Armageddon Time and Kantemir Balagov‘s Monica.

Posted on 3.4.22: World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has compiled a list of (seemingly) likely titles for Cannes ’22.

Other possible out-of-competition titles: Bullet Train, Nope, Lightyear. Perhaps George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing (rumored to be something of a slog) will play OOC instead of competition.

Here’s the general rundown:

Here’s Variety‘s Cannes projection.