What’s the explanation, then, for the latest “product”? You know, the “big CG dog in Alaska” one? Which I can’t review until tomorrow.

Fantasy Island was, is and always will be rank Blumhouse garbage with a 9% Rotten Tomatoes rating. And yet this weekend it’s making almost three times as much as Downhill, which also had a RT failing grade (40%). Good God, even the dead-and-buried Dolittle made more than Downhill. And as I’ve said two or three times so far, Downhill isn’t half bad.

This isn’t about the movies — it’s about the unfortunate dominance of moronic, zero-taste moviegoers.

I guess in hindsight it wasn’t such a good idea to cast Will Ferrell as the cowardly run-for-cover dad. Your basic popcorn idiot wants to laugh when he/she pays to see a Ferrell film, and audiences could tell from the trailer that this wasn’t his usual-usual. I guess nobody wanted to see a dramedy about marital discord and guilt-tripping on a St. Valentine’s Day weekend. Or…wait, perhaps Joe and Jane Popcorn decided that they agreed with the Hollywood Elsewhere view that the real fault lay with Julia Louis Dreyfus and their two inert pudgeball sons, because they just sat there as an avalanche approached?

No semi-civilized person has ever served tap water to guests (particularly well-heeled Los Angeles guests) at a dinner table. Ever. But if they did happen to do this…well, I wouldn’t react the way Larry David does in this clip. After tasting it, I would simply return the nearly-filled glass of tap water to its proper position and innocently ask my host if he/she happens to have…oh, a Diet Coke or Ginger Ale or something in that realm. That’s why this bit doesn’t quite work. Because the Elizabeth Perkins character isn’t based upon reality.

And anyone who equates the throwing of a softball or the swinging of a tennis racket to stabbing a dummy with a carving knife isn’t eccentric or whimsical or loopy — that person would be psychotic.

From the early to mid ’60s, director-screenwriter Robert Towne had a passionate, occasionally troubled relationship with dancer-actress Barrie Chase, who was the daughter of Red River screenwriter Borden Chase. In 1966, things came to an end when Chase decided to wed Swedish actor Jan Malmsjo.

According to Sam Wasson‘s “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood“, Towne and Chase’s big breakup scene happened high in the Hollywood hills. Here’s page 89:

Although Warren Beatty obtained a co-writing credit on Shampoo (’75), Towne is the primary author. He worked on it for years. Here’s the final scene between Beatty and Julie Christie (i.e., “George Roundy” and “Jackie Shawn”). It happens on a hilltop somewhere in Beverly Hills.

Christie: “You’re going to kill me…”
Beatty: “Honey?”
Chrstie: “What are you trying to do?”
Beatty: “I want you to marry me. I wanna take care of you. I want you to have a baby with me. Hey, I know I’m a fuck-up but I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you happy — I swear to God I will. (Two or three beats.) What do you think?”
Christie: “It’s too late.”
Beatty: “Whaddaya mean ‘it’s too late’? We’re not dead yet. That’s the only thing that’s too late.”
Christie: “Lester’s left Felicia. I’m going [with him] to Acapulco on a 4 o’clock flight. He’s asked me to marry him.”
Beatty: “Oh…honey. (Gently weeping.) Honey, please. Please, honey. I…I don’t trust anybody but you.”

I first began to hate George Lucas 37 years ago, after seeing Return of the Jedi. He had taken what most of us regarded as a great galactic Arthurian saga and ruined it with Ewoks and bonfires and happy songs on the forest planet of Endor. I held onto my hate for decades (when I was writing for Reel,com in ’99 I called him a flannel-shirt-wearing lesbian), but now I love the guy.

Or rather I love John Robert Thompson‘s deepfake Lucas, whom I’ve been following for a while via Collider Videos. His fatalistic cynicism is so pure, so bone-tired, so lethargic, so fuck-it-all. Not to mention his pot belly and sagging breasts.

I would totally pay to see a feature in which deepfake Lucas wise-cracks his way through the development and shooting of the last three Star Wars films, commenting on the goings-on like some kind of sardonic Greek chorus. I’m serious — I would triple-pay to see this. (He could even step in as Adam Driver‘s older-bro confidante during the alleged “thing” with Daisy Ridley.) Because super-loaded deepfake Lucas doesn’t give a shit. At all.

Deepfake Lucas: “Everyone thought that the prequels were bad. Everyone thought those were the lowest-rated. As it turns out, what you don’t reaiize is that The Rise of Skywalker is actually the lowest rated. Hah-hah…sorry, I can’t suppress my laughter. It just feels so good.

“J.J. comes to me, crying…called me up like a little bitch. ‘Oh, George, I need your help.’ I said, ‘Oh, now you need my help? Well, I’m sorry but I don’t make those movies any more.’ Then I called him back and said ‘stop crying, don’t be a little bitch…what’s the problem?’ And he said, “Rian Johnson just totally destroyed [the saga with] this last film and I don’t know how to pick up the pieces.’ And he started hashing things out, and then Kathy Kennedy came along and said ‘well, we’re gonna go this way’, and I said ‘okay, I’m out…I’m out.’ That was the last time I talked to them.”

Michael Bloomberg’s campaign has officially denied published reports that he’s considering asking (good God) Hillary Clinton to be his running mate for the 2020 presidential election — “We are focused on the primary and the debate, not vp speculation.” Even if he had briefly flirted with this idea, I’m sure Bloomberg has completely discharged it by now. If he goes with a woman it would probably be Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams.

Sometime in the summer of ’84 I began working for hotshot publicists Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson, who’d recently become partners. One of our activities was handling promotion (i.e., not unit publicity) for Tim Burton and Paul Reubens‘ Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, which shot in the late summer and early fall of that year and opened in August ’85.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

My son Dylan didn’t declare this painting to be self-portraiture, but everyone presumed it was on some level. He was 19 or 20, as I recall. My heart went out. I never forgot it, wanted to see it again, asked my ex if she could send me an image. It arrived last night.

Painted by Dylan Wells at age 19 or 20, sometime in ’08 or ’09.

Posted on 12.18.07: “Throwing a bag of Mexican takeout food at a cab is not what anyone would call a mature or attractive thing to do, but that’s what I did last night after a Boston Checker almost hit me as I was crossing Commonwealth Avenue in slushy snow. I have to be honest and say it felt right for about three or four seconds. Then I felt like an idiot.

I turned to my left and saw a pair of killer headlights half-screeching and half-skidding towards me. Instead of leaping out of the way I went into a dead-freeze, deer-in-the-headlights mode. The cab stopped — no exaggeration — with less than six inches to spare.

Anyone who’s ever escaped getting hit like this knows that the usual reaction is rage. I think I said something really cool and clever like “what the fuck are you doing, asshole?” Their cab driver screamed something back in the same vein. That tore it — he almost kills me and then he yells at me? That’s when I threw the Mexican takeout, which hit the passenger-door window.

The cabbie, double-riled by the bean dip and guacamole splattered over the rear door and window, hit the brakes and jumped out, and I went into mock Sideways mode (Thomas Haden Church swinging the club on the golf course) and howled like an animal. The driver jumped back in and drove off. End of dignified altercation.

I doubt I’ll be seeing Ricky Tollman‘s Run This Town (Oscilloscope, 3.6). Mainly because of Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen, The Politician), who has one of those faces you can’t help but fantasize about punching or at least slapping. In this trailer Platt seems to radiate a certain dim-witted, candy-assed uncertainty and open-mouthed ambivalence, and hanging with him for 99 minutes would almost certainly be too much to bear. I hate this guy.

Pic follows Platt’s Bram Shriver, a Toronto reporter whose professional prospects are enhanced when he’s fed a cellphone video of then-Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (Damien Lewis in a fat suit) smoking crack. You’ll notice that the trailer never gives you a good look at Lewis’s obese mayor. To go by Joe Leydon‘s South by Southwest review (4.16.19), there’s a reason for that.

Posted on 4.16.19: “It doesn’t help at all that Mayor Ford — who looms large, literally and physically, despite his status as a supporting character — is played by a heavily latexed Damian Lewis in a less-than-convincing fat suit. Lewis so closely resembles Mike Myers’ Fat Bastard character in the Austin Powers franchise that it’s practically impossible to fully appreciate his spot-on portrayal of a man with an unstable id checked only sporadically by an image-conscious superego (Donald Trump, anyone?).”

Has a fat suit ever worked in a dramatic film? Yes — John Lithgow‘s Roger Ailes in Bombshell. Other instances?

They’d rather go down in flames waving their purity flags…