Yesterday I read portions of the late Slim Keith’s 1990 autobiography “Slim,” or more precisely the chapters that cover her marriage to legendary director Howard Hawks.

According to Slim HWH was a generous provider but not much of a husband. He was emotionally brusque. Aloof to a fault. He was mainly focused on his career, carousing, motorcycles, hunting, horses, gambling and always the company of his hotshot Hollywood friends.

The Grey Fox was distant and rote in matters of intimacy (wham-bam). He apparently liked the “idea” of Slim more than who she actually was. HWH mainly valued her as the ultimate “Hawks woman” archetype — a frank manner, social elegance, sophistication, brains and arm-candy glamour.

He completely ignored their daughter Kitty when she came along, and never nurtured any kind of relationship as she grew up.

HWH was a total hound, Slim claims. By ‘45 she had told Ernest Hemingway or Leland Hayward (or both) that she couldn’t stand him.

Plus he wasn’t that much of a pilot or a sailor, she says. (Sea-sickness, air-sickness.). And Hawks always exaggerated his stories.

When the split finally happened he accepted that they didn’t have much rapport. Their marriage was basically a dead shark during the filming of Red River.

Hawks should have married someone less willful and independent. They just weren’t a match

I never knew that their Hog Canyon ranch home (in Bel Air?) was a close copy of the Connecticut country home in Bringing Up Baby. But I love that it was.

I haven’t been offered the opportunity to see Sam Levinson‘s Malcom & Marie (Netflix, 2.5). Shot on 35mm black-and-white film, it says here…sold on this aspect alone. On the other hand the trailer feels simultaneously thin and exhausting. Then again it’s only a trailer.

Levinson wrote the screenplay in six days, and rested on the seventh. John David Washington and Zendaya costar, and no one else. Pic was shot inside the “Caterpillar House” in Carmel between 6.17 and 7.2.

Boilerplate: “A filmmaker (Washington) returns home with his girlfriend (Zendaya) following a celebratory movie premiere as he awaits imminent critical praise and financial opportunities galore. The unexpected happens as revelations about their relationships begin to surface, etc.”

…what your country didn’t do to you or for you…ask what kind of spoiled, submental jerkwad coward you might be deep down. From one drawlin’, baseball-hat-wearin’ personality (aka Corey “The Buttercream Dream” Forrester) to a community of rightwing, red-hat-wearin’ dudes who might share the same accent but that’s about all.

Couldn’t say it better pic.twitter.com/NxCkxeOQZX

— Leslie Jones 🦋 (@Lesdoggg) January 10, 2021

I’ve read a lot about Rock Hudson over the years, but until this morning I’d never read Boze Hadleigh‘s q & a with the guy, titled “Scared Straight.” It was apparently based on interviews Hadleigh did with the middle-aged Hudson in ’77 and ’82. It was published in a January/February ’87 issue of GQ.

Hudson died of AIDS on 10.2.85. Hadleigh had apparently persuaded the closeted star to talk frankly about his sexuality, career and related Hollywood politics with an understanding that it wouldn’t be published until Hudson changed his position or had passed on, whichever came first.

THR‘s Scott Feinberg posted four screen captures from the article earlier today — capture #1, capture #2, capture #3 and capture #4.

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Hats off to Arnold Schwarzenegger for assessing the current situation and expressing at just the right pitch.

My only reservation concerns the musical score. Aside from the questionable decision to use music at all, it’s too pronounced, too pushy. It’s almost as if Chris Nolan and his Tenet team mixed it. I was reminded of Marc Shaiman‘s patriotic uplift music when Michael Douglas delivers his big cathartic speech at the end of Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin‘s The American President (’95). Ditto the scoring of Anthony Hopkins‘ courtroom speech near the end of Amistad.

That said, Schwarzenegger comparing the 1.6.21 Capitol Hill riot with “Kristallnacht“, or the Night of Broken Glass, is dead on, especially when he recalls memories of the disruptive actions of his Nazi-supporting alcoholic father, Gustav. Key quote: “I know where such lies lead.”

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Devin Nunes on the sudden death of Parler…hah! I know I shouldn’t be gloating, but it feels so good. Just let me enjoy the slapdown. A good portion of the Parler loonies are were on the same seditious wavelength as the “chans” — 8chan, 4chan, endchan — and certain sub-Reddit groups. Ejecting those jerkwads from Google, Apple and Amazon platforms seems like a reasonable reaction for now. The nutters pushed it too far — this is their punishment, and to hell with their lunatic denial rants either way.

Devin Nunes says Republicans have no way to communicate now pic.twitter.com/3XBIwSUcLl

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 10, 2021

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny: “The ban on Twitter is a decision of people we don’t know in accordance with a procedure we don’t know. In my opinion, the decision to ban Trump was based on emotions and personal political preferences. Don’t tell me he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t ban anyone.”

Announced earlier today, the National Society of Film Critics awards struck me as fairly predictable in a dweeby, scholarly, wokester-friendly sort of way.

It’s like all the NSFC members live in the same, closed-off little village, which they do in a way, and they pass notes to each other about which films they’re allowed to like and which ones they need to dismiss. They’re like monks living in the Abbey of St. Martin in the French countryside, shuffling around in brown robes and sandals and milking goats in the barn.

The deserving Nomadland won Best Picture and Best Director (Chloe Zhao), but the only awards that made my blood surge were (a) Sound of Metal‘s Paul Raci winning for Best Supporting Actor and (b) Collective winning for Best Foreign Language Film. A part of me wishes they’d given the Best Director trophy to Small Axe‘s Steve McQueen rather than Zhao, but not altogether.

Best Picture: Nomadland
Runners up: First Cow, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Best Actor: Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods
Runners up: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Runners up: Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Runners up: Amanda Seyfried, Mank; Youn Yuh-jung, Minari

Best Supporting Actor: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
Runners up: Glynn Turman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Chadwick Boseman, Da 5 Bloods

Best Director: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Runners up: Steve McQueen, Small Axe; Kelly Reichardt, First Cow

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Parler, the crazy-rightwing Twitter, has been eliminated from Apple, Google and Amazon platforms. Too much hate, lunacy, toxicity and dangerous wacko fantasy. But why were the anti-wokester Bari Weiss and Michael Tracey complaining yesterday about Twitter having “nuked” several thousand of their followers?

Regrets and condolences on the passing of director Michael Apted, 79.

I know I’m expected to hail the long-running Up documentary series as Apted’s greatest achievement. It may well be, but my favorite Apted film has always been Coal Miner’s Daughter (’80). Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones are perfect in that biopic; ditto Levon Helm as Loretta Lynn‘s coal-miner daddy.

Apted’s hot streak was from the early ’70s to late ’80s, and the highlights were Stardust, Agatha, Coal Miner’s Daughter, Continental Divide (arguably John Belushi‘s best film), Gorky Park and Gorillas in the Mist (which I wouldn”t mind seeing again). I can’t remember a single, stand-out element from Apted’s Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (’99).

We’re all familiar with the progressive attitude that ignores the health implications of obesity and insists that positive self-defining and social acceptance of all shapes and sizes is far more important than losing weight or at least staving off morbid obesity.

We all get this, but declaring on the cover of Cosmopolitan that obesity is “healthy” is not only untrue but…I’m sorry but the word that comes to mind is “ludicrous”. Nobody wants anyone to be fat-shamed or suffer emotional distress due to being stigmatized, but we all know that obesity ushers in all kinds of health risks (diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers).

And yet the forces of progressive positivity and correct-speak, currently represented by Cosmopolitan editors, are proclaiming otherwise.

The irony is that body-shaming is alive and well if a formerly overweight famous person loses weight. Consider the negative reaction that Adele got last spring when she shed all that BMI.

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Nobody ever cats around on his or her partner in an upfront, honest way. They never do it with permission or pre-affair clearances. The horse always comes before the cart. Nobody ever says to his or her partner “I think we need to be apart for a while and decide what we really want” and then falls for someone else. 99% of the time the hunka chunka comes first, and then the cuckold smells it and accusations ensue, etc.

In a 1.8.21 People piece about the recent romantic triangle between the now-together Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles and Wilde’s cuckolded partner Jason Sudekis, Alexia Fernández and Melody Chiu report an old familiar tale…same as it ever was.

It all happened during the shooting of Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling, which Wikipedia describes as a “psychological horror film” set in the 1950s.

Excerpt: “While an insider told People [last] November that Wilde and Sudekis had split ‘at the beginning of the year‘ after seven years together, another source with knowledge of the situation refutes the claim, saying ‘Olivia and Jason were very much together as recently as [last October].”

Wilde fired the film’s lead actor Shia Labeouf (poor behavior, clashes with crew members) and replaced him with Styles. An affair between Styles and Wilde ignited fairly quickly once shooting began. The usual hints and signals were generated, and Sudekis gradually got wise.

People again: “Jason [explains] that the timeline that Olivia and Harry would like people to believe—that she and Jason split ages ago, long before she became involved with Harry — is simply not accurate,” says [a] source.

“She began filming Don’t Worry Darling in [the early fall], and by October, Sudekis began to get the impression that she wanted out. By November, they’d announced their split.”

And that, says the source, “is how quickly it happened, and none of it happened until she began filming with Harry.”

Any relationship counselor will tell you that infidelity is sometimes as much of a symptom of relationship troubles as a cause of them.

Then again sometimes a married actor will simply conclude that a certain costar is a hotter, more desirable partner than the person he/she is married to, as Brad Pitt apparently decided when he began cheating on Jennifer Aniston with Angelina Jolie.

Or when Elizabeth Taylor dumped Eddie Fisher when she fell for Richard Burton during the making of Cleopatra.

Or when Meg Ryan betrayed Dennis Quaid when she and Russell Crowe had an affair during the filming of Proof of Life.

Any way you slice it there’s no neat and tidy way to break up with your spouse after you’ve catted around behind their back. Especially with People and Hollywood Elsewhere writing about the blow-by-blow. Always messy, always hurts.