In late December 1974 I caught my first screening of The Godfather, Part II. It was fairly cold that day in Connecticut, and I clearly recall that the theatre, located somewhere north of downtown Stamford, was closed when my sister and I first arrived around 1 pm, and that the manager arrived a few minutes later and hurriedly opened the place up, and that the theatre was damn chilly inside. We kept our overcoats on.

My second viewing was back in Los Angeles the following month. I attended a mid-evening weekday show with a friendly acquaintance (i.e., not quite a friend) named Mitch. The showing might have been at the National Theatre in Westwood, and if not there then at a small theatre on Wilshire Blvd. near 14th Street in Santa Monica.

I was enthralled with Francis Coppola‘s film, of course, but Mitch was muttering about how cold and frosty Al Pacino‘s performance was. (He preferred the younger, more open-hearted Michael Corleone in The Godfather.)

And then Mitch did the unthinkable. He fell asleep! During The Godfather, Part II! He went out roughly a half-hour before the ending, and was snoring to boot. I got up and sat four or five rows closer to the screen so I wouldn’t hear his bear noises. I was furious with the guy. He had nodded off as an expression of critical disapproval by way of boredom, or so I believed, and I found that intolerable.

And so the film ended, and Nina Rota‘s music filled the theatre during the closing credits. And then the lights came up and I got up and walked by the still-dozing Mitch. The natural joshing “guy” thing would have been to nudge him awake and say “congratulations, asshole — you missed the last half hour” or something along those lines. But I was too consumed with disdain so I walked to the rear of the theatre and just stood there, thinking “fuck that guy, what a douche.”

I wasn’t going to leave on my own (we had driven to the theatre together), but I damn sure wasn’t going to wake him up. Mitch had to understand what a crime it was to fall asleep on a film that was obviously first-rate, and that would go on to win the Best Picture Oscar of 1974.

The theatre had been roughly one-third filled, and of course eventually the lights were turned all the way up and whole place was emptied out and only slumbering Mitch was left. Eventually the ushers started moving through the aisles and cleaning the place up. I stood my ground and watched as an older usher slowly roused Mitch with a couple of shoulder taps. He got up, sleepy-eyed and foggy-headed and a bit stumble-footed, and made his way up the aisle. He was seething.

“The fuck you leave me there for?”, Mitch said. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I should have said “Sorry, man, but you needed to be lightly punished for falling asleep during a great film.” Instead I lied and said, “I don’t know, you looked so comfortable…I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

Mitch had been a comme ci comme ca pally but was nothing close to a good friend. I never saw another film with him — I can tell you that much.

Last night I rumble-hogged over to the Grove and caught Guillermo del Toro‘s black-and-white version of Nightmare Alley (subtitled “Vision in Darkness and Light”). I generally felt that the whole thing looked too dark and muddy. Not each and every shot, mind, but a good portion of it. Especially the travelling circus section, which accounts for the first…what, 35 or 40 minutes?

I’m sorry but my eyes want what they want, and they wanted more light, more contrast and less shadow and murk.

Plus I had an even worse time with Bradley Cooper‘s Stanton Carlisle character. I didn’t care for his slimey company the first time around (I saw it in Manhattan in late December), but “monochrome Stan” was somehow even worse. I was sitting there going “I don’t like you and your fucking moustache and your fucking cigarette habit” — the actual subject of Nightmare Alley is unfiltered cigarette addiction — “and I really wouldn’t mind it if someone killed you with a pick-axe. In fact I’d prefer it. I don’t like hanging out with scumbags.”

Yes, the ending in which Stanton has a good hearty laugh about how he’s screwed his life up and is doomed to misery…this is still the best scene in the whole film.

Two comments from yesterday were spot-on, as it turned out

Michael Gebert: “These straight conversions of a movie shot for color rarely work well. It’s worth looking at Warner Archive’s disc of Doctor X, which was shot in both two-strip Technicolor and black-and-white, but it’s not a conversion– the black and white version is plainly lit differently, to work in black and white with proper highlights and shadows. while the color is shot to deliver the novelty of color. (There were even two cinematographers — Ray Rennahan, who shot Becky Sharp, the first three-strip Technicolor feature, as well as Duel in the Sun, The Court Jester and others, did the color version.)”

Brenkilco: “You’re not going to get anything like the chiaroscuro of a ’40s noir, specifically lit for monochrome and photographed on black-and-white filmstock, by draining the color out of a digital movie originally shot in color.”

We all understand that discussing women’s facial work is totally verboten these days, as the Renee Zellweger vs. Owen Gleiberman facial work kerfuffle of June 2016 made clear. While HE is willing to play along, it has long been my position that expert, quality-level work should be respected. (I can say this as a recipient of certain Prague-based procedures myself.) Consider this before-and-after of Marilyn Monroe. Obviously an excellent adjustment — one that requires appropriate praise for plastic surgeon Michael Gurdin, who obviously knew what he was doing.

Last night I read Lila Shapiro’s “Joss Whedon Exposed.” It had been described as an urgent must-read. It’s certainly long and well-written in a semi-dramatic sort of way, and seemingly thorough as far as these types of articles (i.e., saga of a reputed shitheel) tend to go.

Over the last two or three years (longer?) there’s been an emerging consensus among co-workers that Whedon, once regarded as a feminist-minded creative producer & show-runner who understood and celebrated women, has behaved in a cruel, callous, dishonorable way (including sexually), and that he’s now, to quote the “Vulture” subhead, “an outcast accused of misogyny.”

Shapiro’s piece, based in large part on an interview with Whedon that happened last spring, reiterates and expands upon these claims. The basic thrust is “Whedon, a bad man, has become a toxic figure whom many if not most producers and distributors and streamers don’t want to work with any more, but his full, harmful toxicity hasn’t been fully understood, not really, and so Whedon must continue to be lashed & shamed for these failings.”

It led me to conclude that as powerful Hollywood types go, Whedon may have behaved as badly as Kirk Douglas’s Jonathan Shields character did in The Bad and the Beautiful. (Or worse.) He may have been as cruel and exploitive as Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, Daryl F. Zanuck, Jack L. Warner, David O. Selznick and other producer kingpins may have been in their day. (Or something like that.) Hollywood has long rewarded or at least not interfered with powerful abusive types for many decades, and sometimes the karma snaps back and the chickens come home to roost . And…?

The Apple TV+ marketing guys have apparently pressured Ridley Scott into changing the title of his Napoleon Bonaparte biopic. Formerly called Kitbag — one of the coolest-sounding titles ever for a sweeping canvas historical biopic — it’s now called Just Plain Old Fucking Napoleon. I’m kidding — it’s called Napoleon. This is according to producer Kevin Walsh, who told Deadline all about it. (Hat tip to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, who posted his own report several minutes ago.)

The trailer for the black-and-white version of Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley (which I’ll be seeing at 7:30 pm) suggests that the images are a little too dark and murky. It doesn’t seem to “pop” the way the 1947 Edmond Goulding + Tyrone Power + Lee Garmes version does. Then again I haven’t actually seen it so let’s hold off.

Yvette Mimieux has left the earth. Due respect for an actress who broke through in the early ’60s (The Time Machine, The Light in the Piazza, Toys in the Attic) and who went for broke and gave it hell when she starred in Jackson County Jail (’76), a somewhat schlocky but tough Roger Corman film that mostly holds up by present standards. (I happened to re-watch it only two weeks ago.) Hugs and condolences for friends, fans, colleagues, family.

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Last night Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell, Cobra Kai) posted an angry Twitter rant about Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott‘s 2021 award picks, which were posted last weekend (“And the 2022 Oscar Nominees Should Be…“).

At one juncture Hauser called Scott and Dargis’s preferences “psychotic”, but what he really meant was that he found their selections overly precious and wokesterish, or too far off the planet earth for his tastes.

Scott-Dargis are renowned for their politically attuned taste buds and cock-eyed eccentricity. They reside on a distant planet, and it’s fair to say that in a certain light they’re hated. Remember “DSU,” the derogatary term (Dargis-Scott Universe) that someone invented for them a few years back? Remember their “25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century” piece (posted on 11.25.20)? 85% informed by virtue-signalling, wokeitude, etc.

I mentioned the Dargis-Scott picks yesterday and had a Hauser-like reaction (“Differing Degrees of Apartness“). I said that “even within their bizarre arena of N.Y. Times woke-itude, Scott and Dargis may be even more eccentric than Armond White, and that’s saying something.” On 1.17 Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman posted a similar response, noting that their picks were “ridiculously elitist.”

What is clearly needed in the N.Y. Times‘ film coverage is a third critic, a counterweight type who isn’t so fickle and high falutin’, and isn’t always box-checking for the participation of women and BIPOCs. A critic who just likes a movie or doesn’t like a movie for reasons of cinematic merit alone, and who isn’t so fucking fancy-pants about it. A film-world equivalent of a Bret Stephens or a Ross Douhat. Someone who could pen an occasional movie column called “Down to Earth.” Perhaps an anonymous critic who could file under the name “Clem Kadiddlehopper.” You know what I mean. An anti-wokester, cut-the-bullshit type like myself.

Not that the Times-sters would even glance in my direction, were such an idea to be given the slightest consideration. I am my own man, but I am also, in a manner of speaking, a dead man. Which is the source of my freedom. Because I don’t give a damn about anything. Well, I do when it comes to my granddaughter, Sutton, but what has she got to to do right now with truth and clarity in the realm of motion pictures? Basically I regard the woke Stalinists as nothing short of deranged, and I know that we’re all living through dark times.

In terms of choosing the best or most award-worthy films and performances of 2021, most film aficionados (including professional film critics) are fairly conventional thinkers — easily seduced and led along, committed to familiar and unexceptional viewpoints, etc. Then there are the free thinkers who occasionally (but not always) assess films from a perspective of an earth-orbiting spacecraft or one circling around the moon. And that’s fine. The third category could be described as beyond earth’s gravitational pull but still tethered to the critic’s understanding of cinematic value, based on a lifetime of neurotic filmgoing.

And then there is the fourth category — film lovers who have lifted off the planet so often and gone so far around the bend and outside of our solar system, caused for the most part by extra-passionate wokeness (which includes a rapt belief in the wondrous and transcendent benefit of watching any and all films about POC characters, POC history and starring POCs) or anti-woke views, and who seem oddly committed to contrarianism for contrarianism’s sake (i.e., the Armond White syndrome).

Due respect but after pondering A.O. Scott‘s recently posted list of the most award-deserving films of ’21, I have to acknowledge the possibility that even within his bizarre arena of N.Y. Times woke-itude, Scott may be even more of an eccentric than White, and that’s saying something.

Yesterday Lysa Heslov, wife of The Tender Bar producer and co-writer (and longtime George Clooney pally) Grant Heslov, broke industry protocol by rebuking a couple of Facebook contributors who had posted negative assessments about the film.

Heslov’s main point was that the naysayers were mean and unconstructive, especially about an unpretentious small-town film that had been made from the heart. Last night I summarized what had happened. This morning I posted a thought about the difficulty of making even a mediocre film.

“It’s very hard just to make a decent or passable film that isn’t too bad,” I wrote. “Art isn’t easy, and it’s very difficult to cobble together even a moderately decent dramatic screenplay.

I know this from having struggled to write scripts in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. I also know this from having been a mediocre drummer in a no-great-shakes blues band. It’s very hard and uphill in a grueling sort of way to make a film that most would call moderately appealing.”

Seriously — the next time you catch a so-so or mildly disappointing film, you need to say to yourself “man, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears just to make that thing watchable…the filmmakers deserve at least a modicum of respect for that effort.”