HE to McBride re Wilder Book

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HE to Joseph McBride, author of “Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge” (Columbia University Press, 9.24):

“I just wanted to tell you, Joe, how much fun your Wilder book is. I was expecting the usual sequential, chapter-by-chapter approach, and I got that from your very thorough recounting of his youth in Germany. (And you went to Germany for some first-hand digging — respect!)

“But once the Hollywood adventure begins, you start weaving in and out. You don’t abandon a steady, linear, through-line approach, but you don’t exactly stick to it either. The narrative starts hopping around, and I loved that! In your journey with Billy Wilder you become Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time.

“And I love, love, LOVE that possibly accurate story about the waitress being paid to have it off with the square and virginal Charles Lindbergh in that Long Island hotel on the night before his flight, and then, at the end of the film, the same waitress being part of the crowd during Lindy’s triumphant victory parade in Manhattan, and he doesn’t see her waving! What a great ending! I love the young vanity mirror woman who is actually in the film, but the waitress story would have been ten times better.

“I agree about Gary Cooper’s hesitant (wussy?) manner as he got older, and that he was way too old to pay Audrey Hepburn‘s lover in Love in the Afternoon. But what about that Wilder quote that “I got Coop the week he suddenly got old.” Cary Grant would have been a much better fit. Coop looked like he was at least 65 if not 70 in that film.

“I’m still reading, but I’m hoping for fresh anecdotes and stories about the making of One Two Three. In my estimation the amazing velocity and chutzpah in the last half of that 1961 film represents one of Cagney’s greatest performances by far, right up there with Public Enemy and George M. Cohan and Cody Jarrett. Plus I loved the strident, back-and-forth, give-and-take energy between Cagney and Horst Buccholz…what was it exactly that HB said or did to piss Cagney off so much?

“I’m presuming that at one point you’ll offer thoughts about how and why Wilder succumbed to ‘50s conventionality by deciding to become a proficient ‘house director’ between ‘53 and ‘58. He just went along with the flow of things, took this and that job, tried to be Lubitsch in this or that way, etc. But the fact is that after the making and release of 1953’s Stalag 17 and before the writing and shooting of Some Like It Hot in ‘58, Billy Wilder took a four and a half-year breather from the burden of being ‘Billy Wilder.’ For lack of a better or fairer term, he became Paycheck Billy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

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“Dune” Is For Stoners

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I’ve cracked the Dune code. I’ve figured it out. I finally know what it is. Dune is a “mood piece” that puts you into “a trance”, but it would help if you get really effing ripped before seeing the damn thing. Toke up, suck it down, bring your own brownies and gummies.

I began to sense this when a friend who recently saw it said he was a fan of “epically scaled movies, even flawed ones or those that are hard to follow [as Dune] has a number of distinct characters weaving in and out.” What Dune viewers need to do, in other words, is get themselves into a place in which “flaws” don’t especially matter and “following the action” isn’t all that vital. (Whuht?)

You just have submit to Dune, go with it, and see past ALL THAT FUCKING SAND. And you have to see it on a big screen — no watching Dune on iPads or laptops. You have to go big or nothing. You are little, microscopic …not even a granule of sand. Dune is the whole effing desert and it will fill your soul with wonder.

Then I talked to another guy who’s seen Dune and claims he “went into something of a trance and was mesmerized from beginning to end. Seeing it a big screen was fabulous, and I might well see it again sometime just for the immersive pleasure.” In other words, Dune tripped this guy out. Imagine if he’d dropped two Bliss gummies a half-hour before sitting down.

Third person: “Dune‘s not bad. It just makes no sense. But that’s okay — it’s a mood piece. Good to see if you’re really stoned.”

At first 2001: A Space Odyssey failed to “make sense” or add up for certain snooty people (i.e., critics, rationalists). It was derided for being a “shaggy God story”. And then what happened? Younger people started going to it ripped or even tripping, and suddenly the spaciness of it became the all of it. 2001 became a cult stoner movie, and then the marketing guys finally caught on and they changed their slogan to “the ultimate trip.”

This, I’m sensing more and more, is what Dune is or could be. If you meet it halfway by being ripped out of your gourd, you can climb onto its back like a huge sand worm and ride the whirlwind. The next time Warner Bros. has an on-the-lot screening, they need to forego the wine and cheese and pass out edibles instead.

Two Guys? That’s It?

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Late last night the U.S. military announced that it had drone-struck an ISIS-K planner behind the recent suicide bombing near Kabul Airport, thereby turning him instant hamburger. BBC.com: “A Reaper drone, launched from the Middle East, struck the militant while he was in a car with another ISIS member, killing them both, an official told Reuters news agency.”

Capt Bill Urban of Central Command: “The unmanned airstrike occurred in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties.”

Most of your ISIS-K fanatics are believed to be in hiding in this province, which lies east of Kabul.

This may have been a surgically precise response and the ISIS-K target may well have well been the Osama bin Laden behind the suicide bombing, but as many as 169 people, including 13 U.S. troops, were killed in Thursday’s attack. To my way of thinking that means at least 169 ISIS-K guys had to die, and preferably double that. Two doesn’t get it.

Incidentally: Apparently Donald Trump wasn’t mistaking ISIS-K for “ISIS-X”, as he called it. He was imagining or speculating that ISIS-X would be the next iteration after ISIS_K has had its heyday.

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Thompson Reshuffle

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All I said in yesterday’s riff about Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson putting Dune at the top of her Gold Derby slate of Best Picture contenders…all I said was that (a) I’ve been seriously dreading sitting through Denis Villeneueve‘s film for many months now, being no fan of dense, multi-part sci-fi sagas taking place in distant exotic realms and blah blah, and that (b) this prejudice coupled with a friend’s dismissive reaction to Dune resulted in my not trusting Thompson’s vote of approval, especially given the fact that (c) Thompson saw it at a lah-lah Warner Bros. lot screening augmented by wine, cheese and crackers.

I just don’t trust Anne’s response, is all. I feel that it’s better to wait for the reactions of free-thinking, clear-light people who have no investment or agenda or any kind, or better yet sci-fi haters.

That doesn’t mean that Anne isn’t a sharp, wise, intelligent observer — she certainly is that. But she occasonally tends to be overly obliging (she was oddly supportive of Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life when everyone else was saying “this again? more wackadoodle?”) and the phrase “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” arguably applies depending on your temperament or point of view so that’s all I’m saying. We all have our way of seeing things and working the town, etc. Anne’s judgment is fine, and she’s a first-rate human being. I’ve known her for a very long time.

Yet Another Cyrano

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Remember Jared Gilman, the bespectacled 10 year old in Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom (’12). Well, he’s 21 or 22 now, and he looks like a slightly fleshy Sean Lennon, and he’s playing the Cyrano role in Scott Coffey‘s high-school remake of Cyrano de Bergerac, titled It Takes Three.

The question, of course, is why in the world would Gilman’s character want to help a flagrantly shallow Nowhere Man (David Gridley) seduce a sensible, thoughtful, introspective woman of quality (Aurora Perrineau). Why would anyone want to be a party to that? To what end? I took one look at Gridley and immediately hated his guts.

It Takes Three will begin streaming on 9.3.

RFK’s Killer May Walk

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Creased and silver-haired Sirhan Sirhan, the former Palestinian militant who murdered U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on 6.5.68 and thereby brought about the election of Richard Nixon and the terrible Vietnam War carnage that followed, was granted parole today.

AP report: “Two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of Sirhan Sirhan’s release and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars.

“The decision was a major victory for the 77-year-old prisoner, although it does not assure his release.

“The ruling by the two-person panel at Sirhan’s 16th parole hearing will be reviewed over the next 90 days by the California Parole Board’s staff. Then it will be sent to governor Gavin Newsom, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it.”

If you were Newsom, would you approve Sirhan’s release? Be honest.

“Sirhan’s lawyer, Angela Berry, argued that the board should base its decision on who Sirhan is today.

“Prosecutors declined to participate or oppose his release under a policy by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, a former police officer who took office last year after running on a reform platform.

“Gascon, who said he idolized the Kennedys and mourned RFK’s assassination, believes the prosecutors’ role ends at sentencing and they should not influence decisions to release prisoners.”

HE viewpoint: I’m not sure how to respond to the possibility of Sirhan being set free. It seems odd, to say the least. But if (and I say, “if”) someone were to approach Sirhan after he gets out and shoot him in the back of the head, my reaction would be “well, that’s harsh but it’s also biblical retribution…an eye for an eye, a bullet in the brain for a bullet in the brain.”

I wouldn’t applaud his murder should it happen, but if it were to occur I couldn’t honestly condemn it. Imagine if Lee Harvey Oswald had lived and been convicted and jailed, and was now being paroled at age 82. How would you feel about that?

Sprawling Malick Masterpiece

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Herewith are four reviews of four Terrence Malick films that opened between 2012 and 2019 — To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song and A Hidden Life. Plus a July 2012 essay about how Malick’s enablers have done him no favors. It’s quite a saga.

1. “Malick Enablers Doing Him No Favors,” posted on 7.14.12:

According to a 7.10 posting by terrencemalick.org’s Paul Maher. Jr., Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder — an Oklahoma-set romantic drama he shot in late 2010 with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain and Javier Bardem — has scared away distributors, who have presumedly been shown the film in its entirety or in portions.

In other words, the same buyers who were going “what the eff is this?” after seeing The Tree of Life are again throwing up their hands and muttering to themselves in the general vein of “here we go again,” “life is too short,” “Jesus H. Christ” and “not me, babe.”

As Maher puts it, “Possibly the difficulties of The Tree of Life and its polarizing effect on the box office may be an underlying issue.”

Maher’s source is either closely affiliated with or working for Film Nation, and of the female persuasion. I’m listening to Maher because he’s a Malick fan, and like any webmaster running a kiss-ass website his default tendency is to praise Malick and otherwise shine favorable lights upon his accomplishments.

Not only is To The Wonder not being released in this country any time soon (although it may open in Europe a few months hence), but “the possibility of any trailer or publicity-related material coming out in the fall of 2012 is still vague, possibly unlikely,” Maher writes. He also reports that “when asked for any kind of teaser image or information, I was told [by my FilmNation source] that there still is nothing in the public domain that they could release.”

What the eff does that mean?

Malick taking two years to cut a film together is SOP (Days of Heaven was in the editing room from ’76 to ’78) but he can’t be moved to even issue a selection of still images from To The Wonder? Or allow a one-sheet to be created? Or put together an appetite-whetting teaser of some kind?

I’ve been saying for years that Malick needs a tough ballsy producer who isn’t afraid to get in his face and read him the riot act and goad him into adhering to a semi-reasonable editing deadline (i.e., between a year and eighteen months, let’s say) and perhaps even influence the shaping of his films in a way that won’t flagrantly agitate the thick-fingered vulgarians in the distribution business, at least to the point that they’ll make semi-serious bids on his finished films, which has not apparently happened on To The Wonder, per Maher.

The fact that To The Wonder is allegedly homeless nearly two years after principal photography is the proof in the pudding. Terrence Malick needs an intervention. He needs a strong partner and counsel who can save him from himself.

More to the point, the indications are overwhelming that Sarah Green and Nick Gonda, Malick’s producers on (a) To The Wonder, (b) the film formerly known as Lawless and (c) Knight of Cups, do not believe in the tough-love approach used by Bert Schneider, Malick’s producer on Days of Heaven. Malick’s endless dithering and dilly-dallying indicates that Green and Gonda are not forcing the issue and have decided to serve him in a passive, whatever-Terry-wants sort of way. They appear to be hand-holders, friends, toadies, facilitators, go-alongers, enablers.

In a 5.18.12 interview with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock, FilmNation’s Glen Basner said he “hit it off with Sarah Green and Nick Gonda, two of the producers of [To The Wonder]. We were very like-minded people and maintained a friendly relationship. They were looking to make his next movie more outside the system, allowing Terry to have a process that works best for him, and we devised a way to finance the movie that met all of those needs.”

In other words, Malick says “jump” and Green and Gonda say “how high?”

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Bond Bloat

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Cary Joji Fukunaga‘s No Time To Die (UA Releasing, 10.8.21), allegedly the most progressive, anti-sexist, #MeToo-supporting, diverse-minded Bond film in the 59-year history of the franchise, runs 163 minutes. That’s two hours plus 43 minutes. That’s long, man.

The next Bond film needs to run at least three hours, and it needs to include an overture, an intermission and exit music. And it needs to open with reserved seat engagements in New York, Los Angeles and London. Seriously — this would make it into something more than just another Bond flick.

The lengthiest Bond film before Die was Spectre (’15) at 2 hours and 28 minutes — 17 minutes shorter. Casino Royale (’06) was four minutes shorter than Spectre — 144 minutes. Skyfall (’12) was one minute shorter at 2 hours and 23 minutes. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (’69) was one minute shorter than Skyfall, and License to Kill (’89) was a whopping 2 hours and 13 minutes — ten minutes shorter than Skyfall.

Dr. No (’62), the first Bond film, ran 109 minutes, or 54 minutes shorter than No Time To Die. From Russia With Love (’63) ran six minutes longer — 115 minutes. Goldfinger (’64) ran 110 minutes. What were they thinking?

No Time To Die will have its grand Swiss premiere on Tuesday, 9.28 at the 17th Zurich Film Festival, concurrent with the Löndon premiere. The screening will begin on 9 pm at the Zurich Convention Center (1200 seats).

Counter to the Narrative

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Michael Moore/Substack on “The Miracle of Kabul”: “What’s happening in Kabul right now is a miracle. President Biden has saved the lives of over 100,000 Americans and Afghans after the Taliban won the war and Kabul fell. Yet he has been pilloried by pundits and armchair generals, and his approval rating has fallen.

“On this day of chaos, misery and suicide bombings, I want you to hear why President Biden has made a bold, courageous and smart move and why he deserves our thanks.”

It doesn’t really start until the 16-minute mark, and really the 23-minute mark. I have to say that Moore is way too generous in his descriptions of the Taliban. These guys are medieval hillbillies who will make life miserable for Afghan women.

Moore: “Everybody saying this is a bad idea to withdraw. Biden said ‘no, we’re leaving and that’s that.’ And he would not walk it back.”

Warm Milkshake

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Yesterday afternoon I passed along an old story about my cat, Mouse, crapping on the back of my neck, and I don’t mean the usual squeeze-outs but a warm stinky milkshake — an anxiety discharge. She was freaked out by the movement of the car, and leapt onto my shoulder and dumped the chocolate malted onto my neck and onto my blue workshirt.

The boys were with me, and we were driving east along Franklin Avenue. (It was sometime around ’03.) Jett was sitting shotgun and saw what was happening and began howling with laughter, and then the smell hit all of us…”aaagghhh!” My first instinct was to stop the car and leap out. I hurriedly tore my shirt off and used it to wipe the brown ooze off my neck and upper back as I arched my back. I was outside my mind as I went “eewwgghh, eewwgghh” like Humphrey Bogart when Katharine Hepburn is trying to burn the leeches off his back in The African Queen. I was searching for a garden hose or a sprinkler system of some kind but couldn’t find one. I threw the shirt away — I didn’t want it near me. It was awful.

Mouse had done this as a deliberate “fuck you” for subjecting her to the trauma of car travel. When cats don’t like something or more particularly when they don’t like you, they really let you know it.

Gotta Get Outta This Place

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Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, who only spitballs about the Oscar potential of films she’s seen and who, like many others, takes great delight in getting early peeks at expensive, highly anticipated films, has put Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune (Warner Bros., 10.22) into her top slot on Gold Derby’s Best Picture prediction list.

That’s it, I said to myself. I have no more faith in Dune than I did in Blade Runner 2049 before seeing it (less actually), and I’ve never cared for the idea of investing in dense, multi-part sagas taking place in distant exotic realms and requiring enormous reading investments, and so it is now the solemn duty of all good souls and concerned cinefiles who stand with HE to say to Anne Thompson “what you like or what you think will be Best Picture nominated means nothing to us because we don’t trust you…we may become Dune fans down the road but for the time being we’re going to search for ways to diminish Dune just to spite your enthusiasm for it.”

Thompson was invited to see it the other day at the Steve Ross theatre on the Warner Bros. lot, you see, and there was wine and cheese and whatnot served in the lobby, and it was all very lah-dee-dah.

A friend who attended the same screening says Greig Fraser‘s cinematography is quite mesmerizing and that you can coast along on that aspect to your heart’s content. But there was absolutely no following the story for this person, not having read the original 1965 Frank Herbert novel or any of the sequels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune,Chapterhouse: Dune) and having no recollection of the disastrous 1984 David Lynch version, and that the plotting was too complex and that it seemed as if everyone was speaking some kind of foreign tongue, and that this sense of being lost and adrift had not, to put it mildly, coagulated into anything that amounted to the Right Best Picture Stuff…at least in this person’s opinion.

Let this be a moment in award-season history…a moment in which the little people in the bleachers rose up against the Anne Thompsons of the world, sitting in their pricey mezzanine seats along the first-base and third-base lines while sipping Chardonnay and munching fine cheese-and-cracker combos while the little people cope with their soggy popcorn and hot dogs and plastic cups of beer.

Big Drive

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Three years ago I drove to Telluride with hotshot Variety music reporter Chris Willman. The first day we drove all the way from Los Angeles to Gallup, New Mexico — call it ten hours or more if you take leg-stretching breaks. We stayed at the historic El Rancho Hotel. The remainder of the trip took four and a half hours — relatively painless by comparison.

Next Tuesday morning (8.31) Tatiana and I and the cats are following the exact same route — interstate 10 to 15 to 40 and due east. The idea is to leave super-early — 6 am or thereabouts. Crash again at the El Rancho, and push on the next morning around 9 or 10 am.

The 2021 Telluride Film Festival begins on Thursday, 9.2, but you have to get your pass, buy groceries and get squared away the day before. Five days of screenings, although I anticipate leaving town by 2 or 3 pm on Monday, 6.6.

The Gallup-to-Telluride trip is estimated at 3 hours, 45 minutes. Call it four, four and a half hours with gas stops and whatnot. Leave at 9 am, arrive at 1:30 pm, 2 at the latest.