Last March the intemperate, hyperventilating woke jackal mob did their best to bring about my death. It was partly about HE having posted an insensitive comment, albeit one that might have been mentioned by any half-attuned industry insider who knows how Oscar-voting sentiments tend to work on deep-down levels. It was mainly a matter of indelicate timing.

I naturally apologized for this transgression, despite (a) my not having actually written a damn thing myself (I’d posted an excerpt of an email chat) and (b) my having quickly removed the post when the Twitter banshees went nuts.

I was reminded a few days ago that a similar thing happened in late November 2014, in the immediate wake of an announcement by the Ferguson grand jury that no charges would be filed against Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown.

Right after the Ferguson Grand Jury verdict was read, and just before a Disney-lot screening of Into The Woods, I tweeted that a possible “strike a match rather than curse the darkness” response to this otherwise tragic event might be a surge of industry Best Picture support for Selma. Yup — another instance of the wrong HE tweet at the wrong time. But all I said was that symbolically lighting a candle rather than lamenting the ugliness might be a good thing in the end.

The Twitter community didn’t dig it. I was all but roasted alive for saying this. Many people tweeted that I sounded like an insensitive asshole. How dare I suggest, after all, that there was (or might be) linkage between Ferguson and Selma‘s Oscar chances.

But at heart I had tweeted a positive sentiment. I was thinking, you see, of Martin Luther King’s words about how only love can eradicate hate. I was thinking that standing by a film about human dignity, compassion and human rights would serve as a positive response to the Ferguson situation.

Okay, I didn’t say it in quite the right way. But I was trying to suggest that in a roundabout fashion this would be a way of showing love and respect for the right things and the right people.

A couple of days later Selma director director Ava DuVernay pointed out a direct connection between her film and what had happened in Ferguson.

She did so in an Eric Kohn Indiewire interview with Selma director Ava DuVernay and Fruitvale Station director-writer Ryan Coogler about their support of the Black Friday Blackout.

For me, the stand-out portion was when Kohn asked DuVernay if she saw “any direct connections between today’s climate in the immediate aftermath of Ferguson in the story of Selma.” DuVernay responded as follows: “Yes, absolutely. It’s the same story repeated. The same exact story.

“An unarmed black citizen is ‎assaulted with unreasonable force and fatal gunfire by a non-black person who is sworn to serve and protect them. A small town that is already fractured by unequal representation in local government and law enforcement begins to crack under the pressure. People of color, the oppressed, take to the street to make their voices heard. The powers that be seek to extinguish those voices.”

I don’t agree with each and every line of what follows. Some of it is too blunt and strident, and the opening line should read “Hollywood critics monolithically adhere to authoritarian leftism.” But certain passages, I regret to say, are somewhere between close to the truth and dead-on. The part that mentions Variety editors having apologized for critic Dennis Harvey‘s review of Promising Young Woman…that’s what got me. I’m not a huge fan of the author, but as I was reading this I had to ask myself “what if this had been written by someone I’m mostly okay with?”

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“You are Goochee, you need to drehss the paht.” — Al Pacino‘s Aldo Gucci.

Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci (UA Releasing, 11.24) seems an appropriately chilly nest-of-vipers flick along with a healthy serving of Italian wealth porn.

Set in 1995 (which is not indicated by Blondie‘s “Heart of Glass“) and based on Sara Gay Forden‘s “The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed,” it’s about the murder of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver, who stands 6′ 2″) by his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga, who is 13 inches shorter).

Famous Reggiani line: “I’ve never worked in my life and I’m certainly not going to start now”.

I had a nightmare about this last night. And I’m still very sorry that College Republicans, an allegedly fact-based road saga about the adventures of young Karl Rove and Lee Atwater in the early ’70s, never became a film. Here’s Wes Jones’ script.

I saw Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater last night, and except for the “wait, what the fuck just happened?” section during the last 25 or so minutes it’s not half bad.

It’s longish (140 minutes) but not in a punishing way, plus unusual and complex and definitely, absolutely not a “Liam Neeson goes to France to crack heads and get his daughter out of prison” film.

All the critics have said that it’s four or five flicks in one — a criminal investigation thing, a fish-out-of-water thing (muttering, slow-on-the-pickup dad in Marseilles), a family relationship thing, a romantic relationship film, a fatalistic character piece.

But you know what? I liked that it has its finger in several pies and that it’s all over the map. French films follow this meandering path all the time…a little this, a little that, a detour, a change-up, a sudden acceleration followed by a slowdown, a little romance, something else unexpected happens, etc.

What Stillwater is, basically, is a film that says (a) if you’ve fucked up before, you’ll probably fuck up again because some people are just fuck-ups or are simply lacking sufficient brain cells to figure stuff out and do things right, and (b) life is fucking brutal, man.

It’s about Bill Baker (Matt Damon), a somber-mannered, goateed, cap-wearing, flirting-with-fat, not-especially-brilliant bumblefuck dad from Oklahoma, visiting Marseilles for the eighth or ninth time to visit his imprisoned daughter (Abigail Breslin), who’s serving nine years for the murder of her girlfriend. Only this time Bill becomes involved in a long-range effort to clear her name after (possibly) exculpatory evidence comes to light.

He decides to move full-time to Marseilles, and in so doing gets platonically involved with Virginie (Camille Cottin), a theatre actress, and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud). And then romance seeps in.

Here’s a Stillwater discussion I had this morning with a friend…

HE: Stillwater is definitely a decent film. Four or stories or movies in one. Then it takes a crazy-ass turn near the end and there’s no trusting it. But it has a good meditative ending on a front porch.

Friendo: Oh, bummer.

HE: It’s not a bummer — it just has a weird third act or final half-hour. It’s worth seeing. It’s a real middle-class movie about human beings. It’s curious and atypical and well acted.

Friendo: So did the daughter do it or what?

HE: My impression was that even though fortune eventually smiles, she might have actually [redacted]. Maybe. Plus Damon’s bumblefuck is a tough guy to hang with and identify with and gradually come to like. Always with the fucking hat and the short-sleeved plaid shirt, always with the fucking goatee, always with the yokel accent, always swallowing his words and vowels. And a Trump voter on top of everything else.

Friendo: Sounds kind of like a ’70s or ’80s movie.

HE: It is, and it’s very nice to see a complex, character-driven thing in an AMC gladiator arena. Stillwater is like a French movie…tedious stuff, surprising stuff…this happens, bad things happen, this or that emotion pops through, then it’s back to an investigation, then it’s back to a family thing, then the cops come and then they leave.

In a 7.29 Medium piece titled “Who Owns My Name?,” the notorious (convicted of murder but later exonerated) Amanda Knox justifiably complains about Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon‘s Stillwater (Focus, 7.30).

Her understandable beef is that the film, loosely inspired by Knox’s conviction for the November 2007 murder of roommate Meredith Kercher (which was later overturned and then invalidated in 2015), has brought renewed negative associations back into her life. Once again she’s being regarded far and wide as an allegedly immoral woman with a shady past.

Even a term like “notorious” (which I’ve just used) is hurtful, Knox is arguing, because it implies there’s something wanton or dicey about her, when in fact she was wrongly accused and convicted by Italian authorities. Kercher’s actual confessed murderer is a sketchy dude named Rudy Guede.

In reviews and discussions of Stillwater, many critics and columnists have mentioned Knox’s 2007 murder conviction but not her 2015 exoneration. You have to admit that Knox has a point.

Medium excerpt: “’We decided [to] leave the Amanda Knox case behind,’ McCarthy tells Vanity Fair. ‘But…take this piece of the story — an American woman studying abroad involved in some kind of sensational crime and she ends up in jail — and fictionalize everything around it.”

“Let me stop you right there. That story, my story, is not about an American woman studying abroad ‘involved in some kind of sensational crime.’ It’s about an American woman NOT involved in a sensational crime, and yet wrongfully convicted.”

I was told the other night that two branches of the ArcLight (Hollywood and Sherman Oaks) will re-open in October. So I asked someone in a position to know everything and he said (a) the Sherman Oaks Arclight has reopened as a Regal theatre (they announced a major remodel but without a firm completion date) but (b) there’s no date in place to re-open the Hollywood Arclight.

HE reaction: The absence of the Hollywood ArcLight and the Dome is a profound spiritual tragedy for Los Angeles movie culture…truly a gaping wound. The failure of somebody or some outfit to come up with some kind of strategy that will allow it to re-open is just…mystifying. How can the industry allow this to happen? How can everyone just wash their hands? It’s so wrong.

As we speak Jungle Cruise (Disney, opening today) has a cruddy 61% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and an even lower 49% from Metacritic. I won’t be sitting through this sure-to-be-spirit-numbing film until late this afternoon, but I’ve been sniffing its approach for months. Here’s my final general impression reaction:

I understand some critics giving a passing grade to Jungle Cruise because, after all, what’s the point of complaining about hack filmmaking of this magnitude? Just ease up and roll with it — not worth the trouble, right?

But it’s clearly proclaiming its allegiance to nothing-ness and the sensibility of easy-lay audiences who don’t know any better (or don’t WANT to know any better)…whose taste in mainstream entertainment has been systematically degraded over the last few decades by films with a similar ‘80s-flavored, CG-propelled, Spielberg-and-Lucas-on-steroids attitude…this is a movie clearly crafted by forces of expedient corporate Satanism.

The basic idea seems to be “are we proud of our emptiness…you BET we are! Proud and having fun with it! We don’t give a damn about anything but making family-friendly money so why should you, the audience, have any beefs on your end?’

Everything I feel in my gut and can sense from the punishing trailers tells me Jungle Cruise is pure escapist soul cancer.

What doth it profit a man to wave through such a thing? A film that obviously doesn’t give a hoot about anything in terms of true-blue movie transportation…a film that’s having such a good time farting in the faces of people like myself?

And has there ever been an alleged movie star more deeply and systematically opposed to starring in a good, well-crafted movie (i.e., crisp, professional, tightly written) than Dwayne Johnson? All this glib opportunistic Republican wants to do is stay in shape, toss off knowing “ironic wise-ass” dialogue and star in shitty, financially successful films. The man has nothing inside him but ambition — he’s all about the hustle and the stock options. He and Chris Pratt are cut from the same cloth.

I understand and respect the apparent fact that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow lawsuit against Disney, which was filed this morning, has merit.

Her filing said that her agreement with Disney’s Marvel Entertainment guaranteed an exclusive theatrical release, and that her salary was based in large part on the box-office performance of the film. So Disney’s decision to stream Black Widow day-and-date with theatrical constituted, she claims, a wanton breach of the agreement.

In essence ScarJo was paid $20 million but she wants more. She feels that Disney screwed her out of a lot of dough, and the alleged screwing basically happened because of Covid.

For sure, other big-name qctors whose big-studio films have been (or will be) opening theatrically and streaming concurrently will be looking to see how ScarJo’s lawsuit turns out.

Disney’s response: “”There is no merit whatsoever to this filing. The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Disney has fully complied with Ms. Johansson’s contract and furthermore, the release of Black Widow on Disney+ with Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20M she has received to date.”

That said, I should probably confess that my interest in financial conflict stories (i.e., “You owe me more money”) is limited.

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Jared Leto was almost certainly interested in the role of Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci (UA Releasing, 11.24) because he wanted to be the total transformation guy — fat suit, shaved head, moustache. His costars — Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons — were almost certainly irked, annoyed, resentful, etc.

Imaginary Irons to Pacino: “Jesus, look at that, will ya?..always something with Leto, isn’t it?…extreme makeup, ‘look at me’, hippie hair, guy never quits.”

Imaginary Pacino replies to Irons: “You wanna talk about never quits, what about Driver? Jesus H. Christ, is there anything he hasn’t starred or costarred in lately? Not to mention that other Ridley movie, the medieval one. And that horse cologne ad….c’mon, man.”

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This morning Glenn Kenny tweeted about a Carroll Park encounter with a Black dude who behaved in a way that indicated (a) mental or emotional instability, (b) a garden-variety hair trigger temperament, or (c) a combination of both. The dude in question “feigned” a fall, fell into Kenny’s lap and in so doing squashed a raw egg. The dude apologized, Kenny said “it’s okay, it’s okay” and the dude replied “I KNOW it’s okay.”

My interpretation is that “I KNOW it’s okay” meant one of two things — the dude was/is an asshole who gets into confrontational situations with strangers if he’s in a bad mood (some street wackos are like this), or he meant “you can’t say shit to me…whatever I do or say you have to sit there and fucking take it…new rules.”

If it had been me I would have figured “okay, just another anger-management asshole, New York City’s full of them” and let it go. But Glenn called the fuzz and reported this jerk, and then — here was his mistake – he tweeted about it. Kenny surely understands that white guys aren’t allowed to call the cops in any dealings with any person of color about anything because it…well, doing so might imply something about the way they see the world. Not in my opinion, of course, but in the minds of certain Twitter jackals. So Kenny had to apologize or walk it back or something in that vein.

HE rewrite of Kenny apology: “I, Glenn Kenny, do hereby apologize to the Twitter comintern for not turning the other cheek after that dude fell into my lap. The next time something like this happens, I will smile and say ‘thank you’ and maybe even buy the guy a cappuccino.”

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“The current laws of civility mean that no, it can’t be exactly what it once was” — Gawker editor Leah Finnegan, quoted in Katie Robertson‘s 7.28.21 N.Y Times piece titled “Gawker: The Return.”

The nickname for the revived site, of course, is New Gawker, although it’s using the same old gawker URL.

What Finnegan means by “the current laws of civility” is that if you’re editing or writing a gossip site in mid-2021, you have to be really careful. You have to totally tiptoe around everyone and everything and I mean very daintily, with ballet shoes on. You can’t talk shit (i.e., post snarky or even meanish comments) about anyone except for members of that one ethnic group that anyone can take a dump on any time they want — older white guys.

Otherwise our current wokester laws, edicts and stipulations, taken together, constitute a climate that is dead set against even the slightest scent of irreverence.

Finnegan: “We are here to make you laugh, I hope, and think, and do a spit-take or furrow your brow.”

Spit-takes? As in real spit-takes? Not in this Stalinist climate. Either way you can’t go home again.

Friendo: “I predict New Gawker will become another arm of cancel culture. Another megaphone for people who want to amplify targets. We’ll see if [this prediction] turns out to be right.”

Bustle Digital Group’s Bryan Goldberg, who bought the Gawker name three years ago for $1.35 million, quoted by Robertson: “If there is one website that could get me sued into oblivion, then it is almost certainly Gawker. Let’s face it — do we think that Bustle or Nylon Magazine is going to pick a petty and ill-conceived fight with a deca-billionaire? Probably not.”

“Deca-billionaire” refers to Peter Thiel, the powerful Silicon Valley hotshot who became enraged at Nick Denton‘s previous Gawker for mentioning his sexuality and resultantly funded a Hulk Hogan invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, which shut Gawker down.