So Variety‘s Kris Tapley recently told Meryl Streep that her Bridges of Madison County costar Clint Eastwood said he’d vote for Donald Trump. “I didn’t know that,” a “visibly surprised” Streep said. “I’ll have to speak to him. I’ll have to correct that! I’m shocked. I really am. Because he’s more…I would have thought he would be more sensitive than that.”

Clint “down with the pussy generation” Eastwood, director of Sully (Warner Bros., 9.9).

Actually, Clint didn’t endorse Trump in that Michael Hainey Esquire interview. When Hainey asked him point blank if he’s endorsing Trump, Clint responded in the negative. “I haven’t endorsed anybody,” he said. “I haven’t talked to Trump. I haven’t talked to anybody.”

6:02 pm update: When Hainey pushed Eastwood later in the chat to choose between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Eastwood said he’d have to “go for” Trump. But he was being goaded. Hainey was testing Eastwood’s mettle. He was saying to him, “Are you a man or a mouse? Are you going to stand by your crusty, old-guy, Walt Kowalski-ish conservative principles or fold like a wuss and vote for Clinton?” Eastwood had to man up and say “Trump” but he didn’t mean it. And I didn’t really believe it.

Back to original piece: If Clint endorsed anyone he endorsed Sully, the real-life airline pilot played by Tom Hanks in Clint’s forthcoming film (Warner Bros., 9.9). Esquire quote: “It’s a madhouse out there. You wonder, what the hell? I mean, Sully should be running for president, not these people.”

I recognize there are millions who are behind Donald Trump precisely because of his use of racial slurs, not in spite of them. Because this brands him as one of them, and because they regard the 2016 election as an Alamo-like last stand of the Oxycontin-swallowing, working-class rural white man against the forces of politically correct deballing and aggressive multiculturalism (African Americans, gays, Hispanics, Muslims, transgenders-in-the-wrong-bathroom, etc.) that are transforming a once-great country into a place that rural dumbshits no longer recognize. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, whom I despise, was right when he said Trump has to stop improvising and start delivering carefully phrased speeches. If Trump continues with the rude-bad-boy act, he might not just lose but take a lot of Republicans over the side with him. Here’s hoping he ignores McConnell from now through 11.8.16.

In the frilly, elitist, politically correct realm of HE judgment-bringer Glenn Kenny, you’re either a pusillanimous lefty who’s terrified of saying anything that might vaguely smack of being out of step with the Twitter Stalin brigade or you’re a crude, insensitive right-wing thug. Hence he’s described me to the Toronto Globe & Mail Calum Marsh as “William F. Buckley crossed with Daffy Duck.” Yup, that’s me, all right — a William F. Buckley who believes in Bernie Sanders. Kenny has been dining out on his HE dart-throwing for some time now. There’s no dealing with him in any kind of rational way when it comes to political-cultural topics. Kennyisms!

Kenny qualifies via email: “Calum Marsh kind of fucked up my quote. The Buckley-Daffy Duck thing had nothing to do with what you actually say or believe but referred to how you increasingly sound on the Oscar Poker podcast.”

Did you know there’s something basically buoyant and charmed and perhaps even a little bit holy about being a non-white person these days? Did you know there’s something fundamentally corrupt, ass-draggy, wrong-minded, retrograde and dark-souled about being a white person, and particularly a white male? You didn’t? Well, then you need to pay attention because as perverse as this may sound, both generalizations are more or less true in our current conversations.

It’s certainly time for the 20th Century American white-guy dynasty to give way to multicultural plurality and a fairer, less elitist way of figuring out incomes and disparities — no one’s disputing that. But it’s also permissible, I think, for urbane, educated, well-dressed, high-information white guys to say, “Look, I am who I am…I was born like this and my family is my family and there are shards of honor in our history, and I’m not going to whine and whimper and apologize for being who and what I am.”

This is where we are, oh ye motherfuckers. This is what things have come to in this age of politically correct, finger-pointing, banshee-wailing stormtroopers kicking down doors at 4 am and dragging politically incorrect miscreants into the street and throwing them into the back of Army trucks. White guys have to stand up and plead for understanding…”We aren’t all bad, really…there are a few good things about being white, and we demand a certain measure of respect,” etc.

The reign of terror in post-revolutionary France happened over a ten-month period (September 1793 to July 1794), and was marked by mass executions of “enemies of the revolution.” I don’t want to go out on a crazy limb but a distant cousin of this mentality is alive and well in Park City right now, and thriving among the general community of p.c. goose-steppers who are excited/delighted by the love shown for Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation. Over the last 12 hours or so it’s been hinted a few times that my being a Birth disser (at least as far as the over-praise is concerned) isn’t good for my social, political or financial health, and that I should think about getting with the program.

The elite Sundance festivalgoer support of this film is an expression of liberal enlightenment as well as a pushback against the OscarsSoWhite mentality that has caused to much recent consternation. I’m mentioning the “terror” analogy because, as noted, I’ve heard from a few descendants of Maximilien Robespierres over the last 16 hours, or since I posted my negative review of Parker’s film. These people have hinted that my critique is possibly racist in origin (“What’s your real agenda, Jeff?”), and that I’m saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and that there must be something wrong with me not to want to join in celebrating this wonderful, Oscar-bound film, and do I want to risk missing out on a Phase One campaign buy from Fox Searchlight?

Steven Gaydos: “Of all the movies Jeff Wells has seen at festivals, all the politically correct tomes targeted to the ‘hipsters’ in attendance, all the overreactions to so-so pics and all of the rapturous sonnets to cinema that are far too generous to what’s on the screen, somehow THIS film made by an African-American about the African-American experience is the epic affront to his sensibilities, the bridge too far, and ‘one of the biggest self-congratulatory circle jerks and politically correct wank-offs in the history of the Sundance Film Festival.” Phew! That’s a tough honor to achieve. So glad the militia crowd is supporting your tough ‘stance’ on this clickbait Alamo.”

Sasha Stone: “When people say ‘thank you for fighting against the tide’ I wonder what they really mean by that.” Me: “Will you STOP with your bullshit racial-attitude baiting? You’re no different than the glee club that rose to its feet last night at the Eccles and went mad with delight.”

One of the biggest self-congratulatory circle jerks and politically correct wank-offs in the history of the Sundance Film Festival happened late this afternoon when Nate Parker‘s heartfelt but sentimental and oppressively sanctimonious The Birth of a Nation ended and the entire audience rose to its feet and began cheering wildly, even ecstatically.

This is a sentimental, briefly stirring, Braveheart-like attempt to deify a brave African-American hero — Nat Turner, the leader of a Virginia slave rebellion in August 1831. But a black Braveheart or Spartacus this is not. Nor is it, by my sights, an award-quality thing.

It will almost certainly be nominated, of course, because it delivers a myth that many out there will want to see and cheer, but don’t kid yourself about how good and satisfying this film is. It’s mostly a mediocre exercise in deification and sanctimony. I loved the rebellion as much as the next guy but it takes way too long to arrive — 90 minutes.

Parker, the director, writer and star, sank seven years of his life into this film, and invested as much heart, love and spiritual light into the narrative as he could. But the bottom line is that he’s more into making sure that the audience reveres the halo around Turner’s head and less into crafting a movie that really grabs and gets you, or at least pulls you in with the harsh realism, riveting performances and narrative, atmospheric discipline that made Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave an undisputed masterpiece.

As noted, Parker doesn’t seem to even respect the fact that he needs to deliver the historic rebellion (i.e., horribly oppressed African-Americans hatcheting white slave-owners to our considerable satisfaction) within a reasonable time frame, which would be 45 minutes to an hour, tops. Kirk Douglas and his fellows broke out of Peter Ustinov‘s gladiator training school around the 45-minute mark.

I’ve spent most of the morning listening to Camille Paglia YouTube videos — an interview she did seven weeks ago with Reason.com’s Nick Gillespie, a lecture she gave during the 2012 Chicago Humanities Festival and a 1996 interview she did with Politically Correct‘s Bill Maher. I’ve been a rapt admirer of her contrarian puncturing…her radical, libertarian, anti-leftist-Stalinoid views since the early ’90s. I don’t agree with everything she says, but she’s one of the few truly unshackled, bold-as-brass cultural critics, and I love her obviously valuable, fully considered opinions mixed with her shoot-from-the-hip, motor-mouth way of speaking. She’s always a turn-on. A mind like a bullwhip.

Italian actress and world-renowned sex symbol Laura Antonelli is gone. She’s been found dead in her home in the outskirts of Rome at the relatively young age of 73. There’s no way to talk about the power Antonelli exerted as one of the most lusciously proportioned, bodaciously ta-ta’ed, hungered-for actresses of the early to late ’70s without sounding like a sexist dog (certainly in the eyes of the politically correct, femme-militant types). Most of the Italian-made movies she starred or co-starred in were light sexploitation junk, but during a three-year period from ’74 to ’77 Antonelli appeared in some quality-level stuff, most notably Luchino Visconti‘s L’Innocente (’76). Other standouts were Malizia, Lovers and Other Relatives, Till Marriage Do Us Part, Wifemistress and The Divine Nymph — all made when Antonelli, born in ’41, was in her early to mid 30s.

Giancarlo Giannini, Laura Antonelli in Luchino Visconti’s “L’Innocente (’76).

I distinctly recall sensing that legendary critic Andrew Sarris had gone to some effort to stifle his libidinal longings for Antonelli while reviewing her films, and how I always empathized with that effort.

Antonelli got hit with a cocaine rap of some kind in the early ’90s (when she was 50 or thereabouts) but the conviction was later overturned. I know she got fat when she hit her late 60s but I’d rather not think about that now. Antonelli was exquisite in her day. I only wish she’d made a few more good films, which might have happened if she’d learned English and tried to get into the American film community and ignite a few opportunities. We all have our prime time, our window of opportunity. The truth? Antonelli didn’t work it like she could have. She stayed in Italy and, in a sense, paid a certain price for that.

Jerry Seinfeld‘s comments during an ESPN interview about how politically correct agendas are stifling stand-up comedy (particularly on college campuses) feeds right into A.O. Scott‘s 6.5 N.Y. Times piece, titled “Adjusting To A World That Won’t laugh With You.” “We’re…in the midst of a humor crisis,” Scott writes. “The world is full of jokes and also of people who can’t take them. It can seem, if you dip into social media or peruse the weekly harvest of Internet think pieces, that comedy swings on a fast-moving pendulum between amusement and outrage. We love jokes that find the far edge of the permissible, but we also love to turn against the joker who violates our own closely held taboos. In the blink of an eye, social media lights up not with twinkles of collective liking but with flames of righteous mob fury. We demand fresh material, and then we demand apologies.”

Last night in London Idris Elba spoke with Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye prior to the BFI premiere of a documentary, Mandela, My Dad & Me, that Elba made with director Daniel Vernon. Baz, of course, asked about Elba possibly playing James Bond down the road, and Elba’s answer was quoted this morning by Vulture‘s Nate Jones. “Honestly, it’s a rumor that’s really starting to eat itself,” he said. “[But] if there was ever any chance of me getting Bond, it’s gone. Daniel Craig actually set the rumor off. About four years ago, he said, ‘Idris Elba would be a great Bond,’ and then it started to creep. I blame Daniel.”

This article won’t be 100% complete until somebody can Photoshop an attractive female-ish wig on top of Elba’s head. Anyone?

It hit me this morning that there’s one way to get the Elba-as-Bond thing going again, but it would have to be done in league with the producers. You may laugh but I’m not completely kidding: Elba portrays a transgender 007. And not just transgender but gay transgender (i.e., into women a la Lana Wachowski). That way the character would cover all the politically correct bases — the LGBT community, African-Americans and African-British, women (at least to the extent that the new 007 would not be “male”). And there’d still be something for the steak-eaters with Elba’s she-Bond still bedding hot women of all races. This is not to imply in any way that Elba’s trans-Bond would be any less formidable as a secret agent. She could totally kick ass in all the usual ways, and why not?

When former Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal suggested last year that Elba should/could be the next 007, she was essentially saying “to hell with that 1950s Ian Fleming concept of the character — the studly, martini-sipping white male from Scotland. It’s time to recreate Bond according to the rules and visions of our current politically correct realm.” And one of these rules is that it’s becoming less and less “acceptable” for heroic figures in any film or franchise to be portrayed by straight white guys. White guys are…God, is there anything they’re good for these days? They’re regarded worldwide as too jaded, too uncool, too corrupt, too disdainful of women, and too dismissive of African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and the LGBT community, etc. They’re assholes and nobody wants them around.

Over the last 12 years there have been, by my count, three significant films about journalistic screwups at major publications, two of them concerning the N.Y. Times. 2003 saw the release of Billy Ray‘s Shattered Glass, about the exposure of several fabricated news stories by New Republic staffer Stephen Glass. Ten years later Samantha Grant‘s A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at the New York Times, a documentary, was released. And on 4.17 Rupert Goold‘s True Story, a truth-based thriller based on a memoir by discredited N.Y. Times reporter Michael Finkel, will hit theatres. I’m now betting that within a couple of years we’ll be watching a fourth movie in this vein, one about the staggering screw-up by Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdel and her editors in the UVA rape story of 2012, which has now been retracted and discredited. The Rolling Stone saga has the potential to be All The President’s Men in reverse — not a story of a liar or a plagiarist but an entire news organization turning a blind eye to basic journalistic essentials because the news story presented a politically correct legend — i.e., campus rapes are commonplace and college authorities rarely seem to do enough to adequately condemn or prevent them.

The moviegoing public will never be that interested in films about journalistic malfeasance, but Shattered Glass, at least, was a gripping, above-average melodrama about faking it in order to get ahead. It regarded an anxious American go-getter mentality that lusted for fame regardless of how that fame is achieved, and in so doing seemed to put its finger on something unsettling in the culture. In my view there’s something just as unsettling contained in the story of Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdel and her editors in the reporting and almost total lack of fact-checking of the UVA “Jackie” story, which has now been retracted and discredited. It’s basically a tale of a reporter who so believed in the politically correct legend contained in a story about a gang rape of a woman named “Jackie” at the University of Virginia that Erdel (and her asleep-at-the-wheel editors) decided that the “facts”, ignored or unexplored as they seem to have been, weren’t as important as the general story it told, and how that story supported a description of a deplorable problem (i.e., campus rape is definitely prevalent today) that the p.c. crowd wanted to call attention to in a big way.

So what’s the verdict on the Get Hard outrage? Some HE regulars must have seen it last night. Is saying “take it easy, this is way overblown” a semi-legitimate view or not? Does the politically correct anger seem excessive or more or less appropriate? Is Get Hard a rough equivalent of Eddie Murphy‘s “Mr. T in a gay bar” joke?

“I’m sadly very familiar with the aesthetic that drives this film. Hollywood will always pay lip service to the gay community but when it comes down to the bottom line, they are still going to dredge up those old derogatory tropes and stereotypes. Gay panic is one thing and rape jokes are another and to put these two things together is especially pathetic on the part of the studio.