If only Jay Sebring, in addition to being a dynamic hairdresser to the stars in the late ’60s, had been a little bit of a gun nut, he could have been the hero who saved the lives of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski on the night of August 8, 1969. If he had owned, say, a Walther PPK or a Baretta or one of each and had kept them loaded, he could’ve shot Tex Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel right between the eyes.
After which Sebring could’ve written his own ticket in this town, you bet. He could’ve been the pistol-packing hairdresser, Mr. Cool who stood up to the psychos, the new Steve McQueen. But he was too much of a groovy, light-hearted alpha guy to own a gun, and so his life came to a horrible end that night. For the last half-century (and I know this sounds cruel), Sebring has been little more than an indistinct also-killed, and it’s a damn shame.
It never hurts to pack a little heat because you never know what’s coming.
The Big Sleep‘s Agnes Louzier, the bitter femme fatale who once claimed to have never met up with a really smart guy, never one who was “smart all the way around the course,” passed a week ago at age 96.
In real life Agnes’s name was Sonia Darrin. The Big Sleep was Darrin’s only significant film, although she did appear in the semi-respectable Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (’43).
Wiki excerpt: Darrin costarred in 12 films between ’41 and ’50. She married William “Bill” Reese, a theater set designer and marketing services company president. The couple had four children (three sons and a daughter), and lived in Manhattan. Their youngest son is the former child actor Mason Reese.
Darrin lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for over 50 years.
Agnes Louzier: “A half-smart guy, that’s what I always draw. Never once a man who’s smart all the way around the course. Never once.” Philip Marlowe: “I hurt you much, sugar?” Agnes: “You and every other man I’ve ever met.”
I ran into Marc Christian at a Hollywood supermarket sometime around ’87 or ’88…something like that. I didn’t say anything (why would I?), but I remember noticing that he was tall. I also recall thinking “poor guy, been through some fear and difficulty over the last few years.” Christian was Rock Hudson‘s lover from ’82 to ’84 or thereabouts, or whenever it was that he learned that Hudson had AIDS and that Christian might be at risk of contracting the disease himself. To go by this interview with Phil Donahue, Christian was clearly a mature, intelligent fellow. He died 11 years ago (11.5.09) at age 56. No, not of AIDS but, according to Elaine Woo’s L.A. Times obit, of “heavy smoking.”
Let’s also say that you’ve managed to persuade gentle erotic mood-spinner Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) to direct your Scotty film. But you still need to find the right screenwriter[s] to make Scotty’s story into an engaging, playable thing.
In all honesty, would you hire Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, a couple of edgy straight guys who’ve done little more than wallow in adolescent, arrested-development stoner comedies since they broke through 13 or so years ago…would you hire Rogen and Goldberg to write your Scotty movie, a fair amount of which would have to include some guy-on-guy action…dicks, boners and such?
If your answer is “uhm, no…that’s probably not a great idea,” I would share your viewpoint. If your response is “yeah, hiring the writers of Longshot sounds intriguing and could definitely work,” I’d love to hear an explanation.
The apparent intention is to make Scotty’s story into…what, a satirical period comedy? Or at least to goof it up to some degree? I’m not saying Scotty Bowers didn’t live his life with a certain twinkle in his eye, but Rogen-Goldberg never wrote a line or a gag that didn’t reflect stoner Millennial mindsets and attitudes. Plus their sexual conveyances have always been unrelentingly straight. How are they supposed to make bisexual currents in 1940s and ’50s Hollywood come alive?
If you were Jack L. Warner in late 1945 and planning to produce Night and Day, a film about the life of Cole Porter, who would you hire to write it? Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, right?
Fleming reports that Tyrnauer and Altimeter Films partner Corey Reeser will produce alongside Rogen and Goldberg’s Point Grey Pictures. Searchlight’s Richard Ruiz will oversee the project.
“In introducing the nomination ceremony on Tuesday, Television Academy chairman and chief executive officer Frank Scherma touched on the extraordinary times we are living in amid a global pandemic and a cultural reckoning with racism. ‘This year we are also bearing witness to one of the greatest fights for social justice in history,’ he said. ‘And it is our duty to use this medium for change.’
“Viewers will be watching to see if that change extends to not just nominations, but also wins for people of color.”
HE to Select Friendos: Do you think yesterday’s Emmy noms included sufficient numbers of POC filmmakers and performers? Put more bluntly, were there any POC creators and performers who didn’t get nominated? Perhaps a few but none that I noticed. And what about the trans community along with the LGBTQs?
“Seriously — the Emmy noms represented such an avalanche in terms of virtue-signalling ‘play it safe’ p.c. theology…such an emphasis upon POC and LGBTQ contributions that one is tempted to ask, ‘Is there any interest these days in determining the finest work being created, or is it ALL about kowtowing to the current socio-political SJW correct-think?’
“Did you notice what the top film of 2020 was as of last month, according to Jordan Ruimy’s critics poll? Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods. What does that tell you?
“HE reaction: ‘Was the nation’s recent cultural and political uprising (George Floyd protests, Black Lives Matter, a repressive response on Donald Trump‘s part) a factor in critics supporting Lee’s film, especially given Lee’s artful, montage-like editing that blends past and present turmoils? That’s my suspicion but you tell me.’
“My actual suspicion is that the critics in Ruimy’s poll were submitting to the moment, or more precisely the progressive imperative. They’re playing it safe because we’re living through a climate of terror, and nobody wants to be accused of anything, much less go to the guillotine.
“You can count on your fingers how many critics are telling it really straight and true these days, and how many are (a) reviewing films positively because the films say the right things or espouse the right kind of p.c. values, and (b) reviewing films somewhat negatively because they say the wrong things, etc.
“In the old pre-COVID days the percentage of critics who could be counted upon to state opinions without regard to political correctness was fairly low. Now it’s even lower.”
Even if I didn’t know that Samuel Bronston and Henry Hathaway‘s Circus World (’64) was a financial calamity (North American gross of $1.6 million vs. production costs of $9 million) that ended Bronson’s high-rolling career…even if I didn’t know this I could still smell a misconceived effort from the trailer.
That awful narration, the flatness of tone and lighting, the obviousness…God!
The idea was to somehow recreate the box-office appeal of Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Greatest Show on Earth (’52). It didn’t happen, in large part due to lead actors who didn’t blend.
56 during filming in ’63, John Wayne had become too bulky and too past-his-prime** to play Rita Hayworth‘s circus impresario lover, and Hayworth wasn’t doing too well herself with her alcohol problem and (alleged) early-onset Alzheimers.
No, I’ve never seen Circus World. I might give it a shot if I could see it gratis, but otherwise I’m cool with reading the bad reviews and imagining the shortcomings.
** Duke was also too old to play Angie Dickinson‘s boyfriend in Rio Bravo (’59), which was shot in ’58 when he was 51. Ditto Capucine‘s lover in North To Alaska (’60), which rolled film when he was 52 or thereabouts.
I’ve said this once or twice before, but the primary problem with The Godfather, Part III, which nobody ever liked and which is still regarded as the dishonorable bastard child of the Corleone saga, is that it didn’t respect the established arc of its main character.
Al Pacino‘s Michael Corleone was a somber, soft-spoken, cold-hearted iceman in The Godfather, Part II (’74), a guy consumed by his own dark and guarded impulses at the finale.
But when he returned as a gray-haired, crew-cutted Don in The Godfather, Part III (’90), Vito Corleone‘s youngest son had undergone a personality transplant. He’d become a reflective, fair-minded, at times shoulder-shrugging fellow who was no longer a coldly calculating shark but a thoughtful, moderately reasonable and even amiable head of a crime family.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) asks the dishonorable Attorney General Bill Barr about federal officers descending on protesters near the White House ahead of Orange Plague‘s Bible-holding photo up, etc. Good conflict.
Why does the political atmosphere seem slightly more excitable or extreme in the Pacific Northwest than elsewhere? Consider the possible or partial influence of the graduates of the elite Evergreen State College, a liberal arts school located in Olympia, Washington.
“Every April from the 1970s until 2017, Evergreen held a daylong event called ‘Day of Absence’, inspired by the Douglas Turner Ward play of the same name, during which minority students and faculty members voluntarily stayed off campus to raise awareness of the contributions of minorities and to discuss racial and campus issues.
“In 2017, the Day of Absence was altered after students of color voiced concerns about feeling unwelcome on campus following the 2016 U.S. presidential election (i.e., Trump’s victory over Clinton) and a 2015 off-campus police shooting. For that year’s event, white students, staff, and faculty were invited to attend an off-campus event at a church that fit 200 people, or about 10% of the white student body. An event for students of color was held on the Evergreen campus.
“Bret Weinstein, a professor of biology at Evergreen, wrote a letter in March to Evergreen faculty, protesting the change in format, stating “on a college campus, one’s right to speak — or to be — must never be based on skin color.
“The incident attracted national attention, with the New York Timeswriting that Evergreen “found itself on the front line of the national discontent over race, speech and political disagreement” and that the national exposure led “right-leaning websites to [heap derision] on their newest college target.”
“In late May 2017, student protests — focused in part on the comments by Weinstein — disrupted the campus and called for a number of changes to the college. Weinstein says he was told that campus police could not protect him and that they encouraged him not to be on campus, which caused Weinstein to hold his biology class in a public park. Weinstein and his wife, Professor Heather Heying, later resigned and reached a $500,000 settlement with the university, after having sued it for failing to “protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence.”
