I’ve read Peter Biskind‘s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” twice, but I somehow never got around to seeing Kenneth Bowser‘s 2003 documentary version, which runs just shy of two hours. A half-hour ago I happened upon an HD YouTube version, and it plays pretty well. Narrated by William H. Macy, it was screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. (I was there but missed it.) Rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

12 and 1/2 months after the 1.26.20 Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, which killed nine people including Bryant, his daughter and the pilot, the National Transportation Safety Board has rocked the world by coming to the same conclusions that any half-informed person would’ve arrived at a day or two after the tragedy.

Once again for emphasis — (a) way too foggy for flying above the Calabassas hills that day, (b) pilot Ara Zobayan was swallowed by spatial disorientation, (c) any competent, half-prudent pilot would have gotten the hell out of there but Bryant, a Type-A personality, was almost certainly generating intense “get there” vibes and so Zobayan pushed into the fog…hard left and a rapid decent at a speed of 160 knots…wham. A reckless journey.

No one is allowed to say that the crash was half Bryant’s fault and half Zobayan’s fault, but when you factor in the “get there” pressure how can you say it was all on Zobayan? Two-thirds pilot, one-third Bryant? 60-40?

In a Variety video chat between Oliver Stone and Da 5 Bloods helmer Spike Lee, Stone mentions that his four-hour JFK assassination doc has (a) been invited to play at the Cannes Film Festival in July, and that (b) he can’t find a U.S. distributor, apparently because of a concern about questionable readings and allegations.

Stone’s description of the situation is a bit vague, but he says that both Netflix and National Geographic have declined to distribute. Here’s part of the convo:

Spike Lee: You’re doing your doc series, right?

Oliver Stone: [I’m] doing documentaries because they’re direct and I can go right to the audience and say this and this. [But even in that realm], I’m having problems. I’m doing one on energy and one on JFK. Four hours [and] very powerful. It’s based on the facts that came out of the [1991] movie. The movie kicked off the assassination records review board for five years. They were not empowered to investigate, but they were empowered to clarify. And they did the best they could with these limitations. The facts that they presented, we go into. It makes the case harder, tighter. It’s about real facts that are shocking to people.

Lee: So you can’t you can’t find a home for this doc?

Stone: Not yet. Not for the American side. Cannes invited us for July of this year. That’s a big step for us because, at least, if it can’t be recognized in America as a document, it will be [internationally].

Lee: I can’t wait to see this four-hour JFK [doc].

Stone: In Europe.

Lee: Netflix said no?

Stone: Yeah. [And] today I just got the word that National Geographic has also said no.

Lee: What was the reason?

Stone: They said they did their fact check. Yeah. Where are you going to find this information except in this film? If they do a fact check, according to conventional sources, of course it’ll come out like this is not true. How can you go and prove that it’s true? It’s very, it’s very tough. You have to have some imagination here.

Lee: I have to see it in Cannes, where I’ll be president of the jury. Let’s have a drink, sir.

While Variety editors debate and dither over the trade paper’s response (if any) to the National Society of Film Critics’ condemnation of its recent behavior in the Carey Mulligan-Dennis Harvey-Promising Young Woman brouhaha, Hollywood Elsewhere is submitting the following for Variety‘s consideration, should they wish to explain themselves more fully:

“Variety acknowledges, understands and respects the position of the National Society of Film Critics in its just-posted (2.9) criticism of Variety‘s 11-months-later apology for a certain paragraph in Dennis Harvey‘s 1.26.20 review of Promising Young Woman.

“If we were NSFC-allied critics instead of Variety editors, we might well agree with and support this morning’s statement wholeheartedly.

“However, Variety respectfully suggests that the NSFC has missed the point in this matter. Because what the NSFC has condemned us for — disrespecting a top-ranked stringer and needlessly bruising his sterling reputation, plus showing a lack of editorial ethics and backbone — happened for what we believe to be a good and noble reason.

“Simply put, we did what we did because we believe that #MeToo solidarity counts more than editorial integrity.

“We are living through a revolutionary era in Hollywood history, one in which women, people of various ethnicities and LGBTQs are righteously claiming a larger share of power and pressure — power that the white-male heirarchy has singlehandedly wielded for decades. Women in particular are standing up, pushing back and challenging sexist norms.

“And so when Carey Mulligan complained a few weeks ago to N.Y. Times columnist Kyle Buchanan about what she (and, frankly, we) judged as a viewpoint with a certain sexist or misogynist undercurrent, our hearts were stirred.

“And so it seemed necessary, important and perhaps even vital to us that Variety should stand alongside Mulligan, offer an unprecedented editorial apology and say “classic editorial journalistic ethics are well and good and we’re certainly not abandoning most of them, but women need to stick together in this, an era of #MeToo solidarity and change…we’re with you all the way, Carey. And don’t worry about Harvey and his fuddy-duddy defenders…they’ll get over this little speed bump and we can all go back to business as usual.

“In other words, when we decided to apologize to Mulligan and Focus Features for the tone and phrasing in a single, allegedly inflammatory paragraph in Harvey’s review, our thinking was fundamentally driven by political rather than ethical or critical considerations.

The fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger felt compelled to post a drive-by vaccine video is, of course, a tacit acknowledgement that there are tens of millions of morons out there who don’t want to take the stab, and so maybe it couldn’t hurt to remind them that the “good” Terminator knows what’s safe and what’s best, etc.

It’s been roughly six and a half weeks since Variety editors threw longtime critic Dennis Harvey under the bus by posting an apology for his 1.26.20 review of Promising Young Woman, which had been edited by Variety‘s Peter Debruge and had sat on the Variety website for 11 months without anyone saying boo.

Variety grovelled because Carey Mulligan had complained about a certain paragraph in the review to N.Y. Times columnist Kyle Buchanan on 12.23.20.

“I read the Variety review because I’m a weak person,” Mulligan told Buchanan. “And I took issue with it. It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse.” And so Variety rushed right in, apologized to Mulligan (and by inference to Focus Features) and posted the following above Harvey’s review:

Variety‘s apology, tacked on to Dennis Harvey’s 1.26.20 review after Carey Mulligan’s complaint to N.Y Times profiler Kyle Buchanan in a 12.23 article

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A few of us (myself, The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield, Collider‘s Jeff Sneider, author and former Variety critic Joseph McBride, The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw, World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy, “Across the Movie Aisle” podcasters Sonny Bunch, Alyssa Rosenberg and Peter Suderman) have tweeted, written and podcasted about Variety‘s appalling behavior over the last few weeks, but today — today! — the National Society of Film Critics finally stepped up and did the gutsy thing.

Okay, so they could’ve done it sooner. Okay, so they needed to think about about the ramifications and consider all the angles and dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s for the last five or six weeks. But at least they grew a pair and manned up. HE salutes their courage, and so does Pike Bishop in heaven. Here’s their statement:

FROM THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS REGARDING VARIETY’S APOLOGY FOR ITS PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN REVIEW (dated 2.9.21)

“We, the members of the National Society of Film Critics, wish to register our alarm at Variety’s shabby treatment of our colleague Dennis Harvey.

“On Jan. 26, 2020, Variety published Harvey’s review of the movie Promising Young Woman from the Sundance Film Festival. (Full disclosure: The review was edited by Peter Debruge, Variety’s chief film critic and a member of the NSFC.) While praising the film, Harvey wrote that Carey Mulligan, “a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice” as the movie’s “many-layered apparent femme fatale” protagonist, noting distancing aspects of the character’s costuming, hairstyling and vocal delivery. He went on to praise Mulligan’s performance as “skillful, entertaining and challenging, even when the eccentric method obscures the precise message.”

“On Dec. 24, 2020, almost a year later and in the thick of awards season, Mulligan noted her objections to Harvey’s review in a New York Times profile: ‘It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse.’

“Mulligan, like any artist, is within her rights to respond to criticism of her work, just as we are within our rights to assert that nothing in Harvey’s review — which focuses on the actor’s stylized presentation, not her attractiveness — supports her claim. But differences of opinion in the evaluation of a film or a performance are not at issue here.

“What concerns us is Variety’s subsequent decision to place an editor’s note at the top of the review: “Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimized her daring performance.”

“If Variety felt the language in Harvey’s review was insensitive and insinuating, it had the option of working with him to fix that in the editing process before it ran. There are also ways Variety could have acknowledged and responded to Mulligan’s criticism, rather than simply capitulating to it and undermining its own critic in the process. The imposition of a subjective value judgment (‘her daring performance’) as a flat editorial perspective, as if it were a matter of inarguable fact rather than opinion, is particularly inappropriate.

“We believe the editor’s note should be removed.

“Like any journalism, film criticism often displeases those being written about. And, like any journalists, film critics must have the support of their publications when that displeasure, usually coming from people far more powerful than any journalist, is made known — especially when that publication claims to report on the industry those powerful people inhabit. It is appalling that, in this instance, Variety chose to side with that power rather than supporting its writer.”

The current NSFC chair is L.A. Times critic Justin Chang. The executive Director is Liz Weis.

Vincent Hanna: “So you never wanted a regular type life?”

Neil MacAuley: “What’s that, barbecues and ball games?”

Hanna: “Yeah.”

The blessing of tapping out a daily column 10 or 12 hours daily (if you include watching films at home) and generally running around and hitting film festivals (obviously pre-pandemic) was that it didn’t include life’s usual-usuals — okay, maybe an occasional barbecue or a ball game (although the last time I attended a game at Dodger Stadium was sometime in the late ‘90s) but generally it was about operating my own steam engine and living off the fumes of that.

That all came to a crashing halt 11 months ago, of course. And now, in the words of Martin Sheen’s Cpt. Willard, “I wake up and there’s nothing.”

I don’t know why I just wrote that. The column isn’t nothing. The daily discipline and discovery and occasional tumult of Hollywood Elsewhere is damn near close to everything. Without it the emptiness would eat me whole like a blue heron swallowing a live chipmunk.

But the current, indisputable fact is that the special joys of this kind of life — the fun, the surge and the Don Logan bolt and buzz of it all…the laughs and encounters, the luscious flavors and intrigues, the traveling and the airports and cavernous European train stations, the occasional set visits, cool parties, subway intrigues, Academy screenings, small screenings, all-media screenings, press junkets, visiting the homes of friends near and far, noisy restaurants, walking the crowded streets of Rome, London, Paris and Hanoi, writing in crowded cafes, hitting the occasional bar with a pally or two, the aroma of exotic places and the hundreds upon hundreds of things that just happen as part of the general hurly-burly (including the generally ecstatic idea of a world without masks)…all of that is fucking gone now, and it probably won’t come back for another eight to twelve months, if that.

Plus there’s the terror of wokester culture and the notion that there are more than a few people out there who wouldn’t mind slipping a blue plastic bag over my head.

I haven’t felt this consumed by ennui and despair since junior high school. But at least I still have the daily grind, and for this I feel very lucky. And so this NY Times article about the serious pitfalls of letting your work overwhelm or dictate your life…my immediate reaction was “are you kidding me?”

My favorite line in the whole piece:

For 35 or 40 years my basic response was, I felt, nicely phrased by William Holden’s Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch: “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Now I’m not so sure. No roller coaster, no life. Well, I have a “life” (Tatiana’s persistent faith and disciplines and laughter, getting chewed out for my endless failings, restful nights, good stuff to stream, old films that look and sound great, our two cats and the comfort and assurance of the day-to-day) but the thrills and adventure are all but gone.

Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill: “These are the bad times.”

But at least Trump is finished and the vaccines are starting to give people a slight sense of hope, or at least an idea that life in this long dark tunnel will eventually open up, oxygen and sunlight-wise.

What words best describe the sickening, cowardly Republican Senators who will refuse to convict Donald Trump for igniting the 1.6.21 insurrection? They know he launched the attack on the U.S. Capitol in roughly the same fashion that Osama bin Laden drove the 9.11 attacks and tiny Charles Manson was the bearded demon general who sent killers to 10050 Cielo Drive in August 1969. They know this, but they’re going to ignore this because they don’t want to get primaried by looney-tune righty usurpers.

We all understand and even accept that he won’t be convicted, but when his serpent gremlin followers try to claim he’s been “vindicated” in the aftermath…that’s when my blood will begin to boil.

When you assemble an actual trailer, give me a ring.

Actual photo that served as the basis of the famous Goodfellas painting and Joe Pesci ‘s artistic assessment (“one dog lookin’ one way, another dog lookin’ another way and the guy sayin’ ‘whadaya want from me?’”).

The 2021 Critics Choice Awards nominations were announced this morning. Congrats to David Fincher and the 12 noms gathered by Mank. Come one, nearly come all…almost everyone’s invited…spread it around…may the best contenders win, or at the very least show up. Will the March 7th show happen “live” with actual bodies, tables, food, drinks, red carpet, etc.? Of course not.

Boldface HE indicates winning preference; # indicates HE runner-up preference. Note: Not all the nominees are listed here.

BEST PICTURE
Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Mank (Netflix)
Minari (A24)
News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures) / HE
One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) / #
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)

BEST ACTOR
Ben Affleck – The Way Back (Warner Bros.) / #
Riz Ahmed – Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) / HE
Chadwick Boseman – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Tom Hanks – News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Anthony Hopkins – The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)
Delroy Lindo – Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Gary Oldman – Mank (Netflix)
Steven Yeun – Minari (A24)

BEST ACTRESS
Viola Davis – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Andra Day – The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu) / #
Sidney Flanigan – Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features)
Vanessa Kirby – Pieces of a Woman (Netflix)
Frances McDormand – Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
Carey Mulligan – Promising Young Woman (Focus Features) / HE
Zendaya – Malcolm & Marie (Netflix)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Chadwick Boseman – Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Sacha Baron Cohen – The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix) / #
Daniel Kaluuya – Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.)
Bill Murray – On the Rocks (A24/Apple TV+)
Leslie Odom, Jr. – One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
Paul Raci – Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
SPECIAL HE WRITE-IN VOTE: LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.) / HE

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Maria Bakalova – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Amazon Studios)
Ellen Burstyn – Pieces of a Woman (Netflix)
Glenn Close – Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
Olivia Colman – The Father (Sony Pictures Classics) / HE
Amanda Seyfried – Mank (Netflix) / #
Yuh-Jung Youn – Minari (A24)

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Ryder Allen – Palmer (Apple TV+)
Ibrahima Gueye – The Life Ahead (Netflix) / #
Alan Kim – Minari (A24)
Talia Ryder – Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features) / HE
Caoilinn Springall – The Midnight Sky (Netflix)
Helena Zengel – News of the World (Universal Pictures)