From a wise and well-written Spectator piece by former Universal senior production and development vp Barry Isaacson, posted six and a half years ago:
“There have always been bullies in Hollywood; it’s institutionalized, like a form of hazing, but the key difference between the film business and the Marine Corps is that bullying in Hollywood is not meant to inculcate esprit de corps; its purpose, for the bully anyway, is to provide confirmation that the hierarchy is working in his favor.”
HE interjection: This is what I’ve been trying to remind Millennial and Zoomers about recently — that Scott Rudin‘s boss-from-hell personality is an historical archetype that is built into the system. Some responses have been “you’re trying to excuse or rationalize!” No — I’m just saying that a certain kind of tough producer brutality has been normalized over the decades.
Back to Isaacson: I was one of the last generation of studio executives at Universal that reported to the old mogul, Lew Wasserman. Wasserman was a physically imposing screamer who had parlayed with gangsters, bootleggers and union enforcers as a supplier of dance bands to illicit nightclubs during Prohibition, so he could terrorize white-collar employees without breaking a sweat.
“This was particularly useful to him one sweltering afternoon in the Valley, when the air conditioning had failed inside the office building known without much affection as The Black Tower. Wasserman lined up several executives in front of his desk and screamed at them for half an hour. He threw pencils at them. He took off his Rolex and shied it at the head of some fellow in distribution. One man, melting in his suit and tie like the others, fainted and collapsed in a heap on the floor. Wasserman continued screaming for another ten minutes. He was known — again without much affection — as ‘Old Yeller’.
“In the 90s the culture changed. Ancient, heterosexual, tough-as-teak depression-era Jewish alpha males like Lew Wasserman became elder statesman and Hollywood became, a little self-consciously at first, almost literary. A new breed of bully emerged; college educated, middle-class by birth, often gay, or female.
“The nastiest bully I ever encountered was a woman who fancied herself a producer because for about five minutes she was married to a Hollywood VIP. Power in Hollywood is often defined as being the prerogative of those who can say yes, but a middle-level studio executive only has the power to say no, which I had to do to this bully every Monday morning for a year, after the scripts she submitted to me the previous Friday had been laughed out of the executive conference room that morning.
“Upon hearing ‘no’, she screamed, she threatened, she even tried a skeevy form of bullying flirtatiousness — all to no avail. So she called my bosses and whined about me. One Monday lunchtime, after licking my wounds, I was waiting for a table at The Grill in Beverly Hills, a restaurant very popular with the industry expense-account crowd. Noticing my tormentor standing in front of me, my stomach lurched, as it did whenever I had to talk to her, meet with her or think about her. Luckily she was too annoyed not to have been seated right away to notice me, or Kevin Costner — at that moment indisputably the biggest movie star in the world — who was waiting quietly for his table ahead of her in the line. Seconds later, she stalked over to the maitre d’ and yelled ‘Do you know who I am?’
“There have always been bullies in Hollywood. And there is Scott Rudin.
The following is a rough blend of a riff I wrote this morning along with friendo reactions…it’s a bit of a bumpy ride:
Friendo #3: “Here’s the one thing I’d add, and I think it’s crucial. It’s not going to be like this, year in and year out. We’ll have some of that vibe, but this is a fad, a fetish, a current obsession of WWS (woke white supremacy). It’s really a pure expression of white supremacy. That’s one of the reasons it’s so fucking embarrassing. Last night wasn’t just jaw-dropping — it was high camp. ”
Friendo#1: “The awards attendees reflected the huge number of POC nominations, voted upon by the increasingly diverse membership.
“Even so, the event did seem more like the BET awards. And three Black visitors watching in my home were embarrassed by the over-wokeness of the whole enterprise. ‘Trying way too hard’ was the judgement.
“In short, the white woke Academy is still over-compensating for its recent #OscarsSoWhite past.
“Plus there was no FUN…no entertainment, no clips. The nominees looked like wax figures as they were introduced.”
THR‘s Scott Feinberg: “The Oscar telecast producers also leaned into diversity in their selection of presenters, which is admirable, although one can’t help but wonder what middle-America made of the fact that only four of the 18 presenters — Bryan Cranston, Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Joaquin Phoenix — were white males.”
HE: I’m hesitating to share an impression that millions probably had last night. I’m even hesitating to mention it to you guys. The impression (I’m emphasizing the “i” word as opposed to something more specific) is that the Oscars had suddenly become much more diverse, dominantly so, and that the lethal nightmare of police bullets was hovering or massing just outside Union Station.
It wasn’t all that, of course, with a healthy but modest amount of palefaces (Glenn Close, Laura Dern, Reese Witherspoon, Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Carey Mulligan) sprinkled into the smallish, Greek amphitheater dinner cafe. But still…
The fact is that for the last 90 years (or since the telecast began appearing on home screens in the early ‘50s) the Oscars have largely reflected an industry that has…well, actually not mirrored but under-represented the racial makeup and character of this country — currently around 61% Anglo, 13% to 14% African American, 18% Latino, 5% or 6% Asian percentage and a smattering of other tribes. The truth of the makeup of the film industry was probably honestly reflected in the mostly-white complexions of those who attended in decades past…
But all in a flash, Americans who watched last night were suddenly contemplating a new mandated reality, and in strikingly visual terms — an African American Oscar community that was happy to be there and to celebrate diversity and achievement but was also grieving over the deaths of so many African Americans by hair-trigger cops.
For those relatively few Americans who watched the show it almost certainly came as a bit of a shock…trust me, for those accustomed to the notion of the 61-39 split and those who live in the suburbs and rural areas where the Anglo percentage is almost certainly higher, and even to those who reside in mostly white and largely gay West Hollywood…
And especially for movie mavens who’ve been watching since the JFK, LBJ and Nixon eras, the visuals in last night’s show said “roll with it, America…this is the progressive vision of 2021 America…of diverse, progressive, inclusive Hollywood and the America it believes in…a culture that is now (to go by visual impressions) half Black — not 13% or 14% African American but seemingly or possibly 50%…a culture in which progressives have decided that the experience of African Americans has been under-represented and under-respected for too long, and that for the best of reasons it’s time to (am I allowed to think this?) over-represent the POC experience (not to mention the #MeToo perspective and the LGBTQ current), in part due to a general urban-liberal consensus that hinterland white folks and especially older alpha white males are bringers and enforcers of evil (racism, murdering cops, Trump supporters, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Fox News watchers, U.S. Capitol occupiers, mask refusers, Republican-controlled legislatures that are now conniving to suppress voters of color by passing new-styled Jim Crow laws) and that the stain and toxicity of white privilege has to be trimmed, Twitter-whipped, schooled, diminished, Critical Race Theory’ed and Robin D’Angelo’ed in order to make the US of A into a more just, compassionate, fair-minded society.
All of this came WHOMPING out of TV screens last night, and on top of (a) the decision to emphasize origin stories and warnings of police shootings in the acceptance speeches, (b) the absence of film clips, (c) no red carpet gowns, (d) no sassy humor, (e) no singing or dancing as well as Chloe Zhao wearing Chinese pigtails and white sneakers and the whole odd feeling of alternate Union Station rules and regulations, including Frances McDormand’s vaguely surreal wolf howl…
It was a strange, at times sodden or sad, and even a mildly alienating night of 170 stars or more precisely attendees…I hate to even think this but I fear that if I, an eccentric if reasonable left-center WeHo fellow, felt a teeny bit jarred by the import of last night’s show then many millions of older Joe and Jane Bumblefucks out there also felt a tiny bit “whoa!”-ed out by the Soderbergh Oscars, then I fear that the midterm elections of 2022 will be affected by this impression. I hate to say it, but I fear it.
Friendo #3: “All true, and all brilliantly stated on your part. And, of course, no one else would say it so honestly. Everyone in America saw it the way you described it. Period.
“Yes, McDormand and Hopkins won the top two acting awards, but were the votes that supported them a reflection of the idea that the industry is ‘ambivalent’ about diversity? Or were they a reflection of the fact that their competitors simply didn’t deserve to win?
“Anthony Hopkins in The Father gives a much greater performance than Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey.” Frances McDormand in Nomadland gives a performance that’s vastly more accomplished than Viola Davis‘s [huffing and puffing] in Ma Rainey.”
HE: “Except that Frances McDormand wasn’t the best — Day was. So it’s never really about that. It never really has been. It’s about what makes you feel good by voting for this or that nominee. Plus this was the first time since the mid ’90s that the winners of the Globe and SAG didn’t take the Oscar. So you see something was radically different. What’s funny sort of is that the Globe voters were being chased around and called racists and yet their wins were more inclusive — Andra Day (who deserved to win) and Boseman. Tough call with Hopkins, who was very, very good.
Friendo #3: “Yeah, but newcomers like Andra Day never win, and Frances McDormand was much, much better than Viola Davis.”
Jordan Ruimy: “The Oscars overdid the inclusivity portion of the ceremony. My semi-woke sister was complaining to me via text last night about how they were shoving a message down our throats.”
So according to Esquire‘s Tom Nicholson, a British writer, the top two Best Picture Oscar winners — the most highly placed, best liked and most revered by today’s standards — are Moonlight and Parasite. This is how things are right now.
I’m telling you right now Nicholson needs to be straightened out and maybe even slapped around. This kind of thinking…words fail. I worship Hitchcock’s Rebecca but it can’t be proclaimed as the fourth-best…stop it! Amadeus and The Shape Of Water in the top 20? Get outta here! And Moonlight at #1? This is almost too asinine to take potshots at. Nicholson’s list is beyond ridiculous — an expression of woke mental illness.
Herewith is my own Best Picture Oscar Winner list, and I’m certainly going to use the criteria that most…okay, a significant percentage of winners have fulfilled or satisfied to some degree, at least in an aspirational sense in addition to the usual political motives and moment-in-time considerations…
Not just (a) films that sought to achieve (and in some cases DID achieve) a stand-alone, movie-craft refinement or at least a kind of declarative, honed-down clarity or wholeness on their own terms, or…
(b) Films that captured or reflected something poignant (at least in passages) about the times in which they were made, but most fundamentally…
(c) Political winners-of-the-moment that hit or touched certain emotional G-spots that moved large swaths of the culture (not just the Hollywood community but moviegoers all over), movies that said “this, to some extent, is a concise, respectable and in some cases profound presentation of who and what we are, or at least what we’ve recently been through or would like to be…this Best Picture winner contains pieces of our saga, shards of our collective soul, elements of who we believe we are or would like to be deep down.”
The difference between then and now, of course, is that the “large swaths of nationwide movie culture” aspect has been removed — today’s Oscar nominees are totally about the uncertainties and preferences of a small community of terrified political sidesteppers who don’t know what to say or think but are totally terrified by what might happen if they say (or even think) the wrong thing. The sentiments of the rest of the country has been a side issue for a good 20 to 25 years…be honest.
Reasons to disagree or tell the Esquire guy to go fuck himself…
In some respects Gone With The Wind is a racist relic, obviously, but it still matters and is, in fact, still great because of the last half of Part One (the agony of battered Atlanta to “I’ll never be hungry again!”) and because it is NOT, in a deep-down sense, a saga of the Civil War but a reflection of the deprivations and terrible hardships of the Great Depression. And so I will certainly include Gone With The Wind somewhere in the top 30….you can beat me with bamboo sticks all you want but Hattie McDaniel‘s Mammy, at least, was a vivid and passionate human being who took no shit from anyone, least of all from Scarlett O’Hara.
Green Book is not a great film, but I will not dismiss or degrade it in any way, shape or form. It also belongs in the top 30.
And I must again remind that the last third of Moonlight (and particularly the casting of Trevante Rhodes) doesn’t work at all (sustained for years by one adolescent handjob on the beach!) and that it won largely if not entirely because of a collective, politically-driven, industry-centric need to refute the #OscarsSoWhite meme.
And I will certainly not give Parasite a high ranking because of the stupidest plot turn in the history of Best Picture winners…because of that drunken family of con artists deciding to admit into the home THE ONE PERSON ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET WHO COULD & ALMOST CERTAINLY WILL BLOW THEIR SCAM OUT OF THE WATER…cut the shit and admit that Parasite won because the industry wanted and needed to celebrate a filmmaker of color as well as a charming genre purveyor (monsters! a giant pig! a runaway train!)…a director who was a much better fit in these times of necessary wokeness than Martin Scorsese and his aging goombahs and his “Wild Strawberrries with handguns”…nope.
A little more than three years ago Andrew Sullivan, then a New York “Intelligencer” columnist, lamented how rabid campus wokesterism was becoming increasingly prevalent in various liberal workplace environments, and how “the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse.”
The article was titled “We All Live on Campus Now” (2.9.18). I re-read it this morning, and it’s kind of horrifying to realize that the Cultural Marxist insanity that Sullivan saw as a gathering manifestation has now become a ruling doctrine, certainly on Twitter and in big-media circles.
“The idea of individual merit — as opposed to various forms of unearned ‘privilege’ — is increasingly suspect,” Sullivan continued. “The Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment — untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights — are now routinely understood as mere masks for ‘white male’ power, code words for the oppression of women and nonwhites. Any differences in outcome for various groups must always be a function of ‘hate,’ rather than a function of nature or choice or freedom or individual agency.
“And anyone who questions these assertions is obviously a white supremacist himself.”
The culture, he explained, “is now saturated with the concept of ‘your own truth’ — based usually on your experience of race and gender. It is now highly controversial for individuals in one racial/gender group to write about or portray anyone outside it — because there is no art that isn’t rooted in identity. Movies are constantly pummelled by critics not for being bad movies but for being ‘problematic’ on social justice. Books are censored in advance by sensitivity readers to conform with ‘social justice’ protocols.”
Anyone paying attention to the here-and-now will tell you that wokester terror hasn’t ebbed in the slightest since early ’18, and, despite Trump being out of the White House and Biden policies doing a lot to calm people down, is probably even stronger. This is not opinion or conjecture. This is reality.
But not on HE comment threads. For every time that the worrisome presence of woke social Marxism (which is roughly equivalent to the spectre of German aggression in 1938 from a British perspective)…every time woke baddies are mentioned there are certain denialists and pooh-poohers who always pipe in with the same crap…”you’re being tiresome,” “stop obsessing”, “calm down already” and “threatened much, Jeff?” They know who they are**, and I’m getting really sick of their bullshit.
A friend wrote this morning that “the weird thing in all of this is the number of people — i.e., more than half of Jeff’s posting readers — who do not get it because they simply cannot see what is going on. They are such lockstep, go-along-with-the-crowd personalities that they think Jeff is talking about some fantasy in his head, rather than a genuine universe of real ideas that can no longer be expressed in the public square of mainstream media.
“Every time one of them says ‘Give it a rest, Jeff!’ I think: Here is someone who is truly, definingly clueless. The house is on fire, and they just think it’s a warm day.
** seasonalaffleckdisorder, victorlazlo5, Hud+Homer+Alma+Lonnie, etc.
Early this morning Collider‘s Jeff Sneiderbroke the news that Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, which I’ve been doing cartwheels over since I first caught it in the summer of ’17, will open via Lionsgate in mid May — select theaters and on digital/VOD platforms on Friday, 5.14, Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, 5.18.
According to the IMDB Above Suspicion‘s principal producers are Mohamed AlRafi and Tim de Graye, whose film companies are called 50 Degrees Entertainment LLC and White Knight Pictures. Despite the curious distribution strategy orchestrated by these fine fellows, there remains a commercially fertile market for what any avid cineaste would call a truly excellent film.
“There are still plenty of people who don’t torrent movies,” Sneider writes, “and [who] would be willing to pay to check out this cinematic curiosity.”
Due respect but that is an unfair and inaccurate way to describe Above Suspicion. It is, no lie, a jug of classic, grade-A moonshine — a brilliant, tautly paced, perfectly written action thriller that plays deep down like an emotional tragedy, and is boosted by an ace-level performance from Emilia Clarke.
“The Girl From Lonesome Holler,” posted on 7.24.17: “Above Suspicion, which is based on Joe Sharkey’s 1993 true-life novel, is a triple-A, tightly-wound, character-driven genre flick (i.e., rednecks, drug deals, criminals, lawmen, murder, car chases, bank robberies) of the highest and smartest order.
“Most people would define ‘redneck film’ as escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero.
“Noyce’s Above Suspicion is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these films, or at least a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude.”
Sneider is a savvy reporter with a good heart, but calling Noyce “an underrated director” is another off-kilter description. Noyce has been consistently proving his grade-A feature chops since the late’ 70s, and there isn’t an actor, screenwriter, agent or producer in this town who doesn’t know this.
Noyce’s theatrical highlights include the brilliant Newsfront, the classic Aussie breakouts Heatwave and Dead Calm, a hugely successful pair of Jack Ryan thrillers (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger), the notorious Sliver and a great run of variations that followed — The Saint, The Bone Collector, Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American, Catch a Fire and Salt.
Roger Ross Williams will produce and oversee the series, and will also direct the first episode. Shoshana Guy will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Kathleen Lingo, editorial director for film and TV at The New York Times, will also executive produce as will Caitlin Roper. The series will be made in collaboration between Lionsgate Television, The New York Times, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films.
HE on 7.30.20: “Don’t tell me that slavery and racism is and always has been this country’s central definer. The 1619 Project’s revisionist zealotry rubs me the wrong way in more ways than I’d care to elaborate upon.
“Slavery has always been an ignominious chapter in the first 245 years of US history (1619 to 1865) and racism has stained aspects of the culture ever since, but to assert that slavery and racism (which other cultures have shamefully allowed over the centuries) are THE central and fundamental definers of the immense American experience strikes me as abridgetoofar.
“One stone in the shoe is the 1619 Project’s contention that the American revolution against England was significantly driven by colonist commitment to maintaining slavery.
“Many factors drove the expansion and gradual strengthening and shaping of this country, and particularly the spirit and character of it — immigration, the industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations and excesses of the wealthy elites, the delusion of religion, anti-Native American racism and genocide, breadbasket farming, Abraham Lincoln, FrederickC. Douglas, the vast networks of railroads, selfishness & self-interest, factories, construction, the two world wars of the 20th Century, scientific innovation, native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) and rock, American literature, theatre and Hollywood movies, sweat shops, 20th Century urban architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, major-league baseball, Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig, family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic, fashion, gardening, native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, hot dogs, the shipping industry, hard work and innovation, the garment industry, John Steinbeck, George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, JFK, MLK, Stanley Kubrick, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Malcom X, Taylor Swift, Charlie Parker, Elizabeth Warren, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, barber shops & manual lawnmowers, the auto industry, prohibition & gangsters, the Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that, status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), popular music (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles), TV, great American universities, great historians, great journalism (including the NationalLampoon and Spy magazine), beat poetry, hippies, the anti-Vietnam War movement, pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes and Studio 54, 20th & 21st Century tech innovations, gay culture, comic books, stage musicals, Steve Jobs, etc.”
The evening’s highlight, I meant, came when Once maestro Glenn Hansard sang a portion of Woody Guthrie‘s “This Land Is Your Land” a capella. Everyone was humming along and the feeling in the room was quite beautiful, which is to say patriotic in the best sense of that term.
During the recent presidential inauguration (1.20.21) of Joe Biden, Jennifer Lopez performed some verses of Guthrie’s as part of a medley with “America the Beautiful”.
But now it appears that this heartfelt Guthrie narrative — i.e., “Woody was a beautiful guy and a serious humanitarian socialist, and we all love this song for its values” — is coming to an end. The new narrative is basically that “This Land Is My Land” is a racist-white-man song that dismisses the historical rights of Native Americans and Mexican Americans, and is basically a tribute to white American expansionism and suppressing native voices, etc.
Maher again: “72% of GenZ say they’d like to be an online celebrity, and 54% of GenZ and Millennials say they would become an influencer, ‘given the opportunity’. If, you know, it wasn’t too much work, like making a sex tape. Speaking of which…
[Starting at 4:40] “I can’t be in this time when we’re madly on the hunt for anything with the slightest whiff of white privilege, and then feel badly for…Paris Hilton? Quite the reverse — maybe it’s Paris who owes us an apology. For being Patient Zero for today’s vapid, entitled, famous-for-nothing culture. She kind of birthed the world in which every 15 year-old with a phone aspires to be an influencer. She’s the face that launched a thousand little shits.
“Paris led directly to the Kardashians and then to housewives and teen moms and Heidis and Snooki…a generation of young girls who look up to the ‘role models’ who managed to turn an unenthusiastic blowjob into an empire. Young people who think talent…’my talent is being me! And you wanting to live my life.’ Kylie Jenner is a billionaire based on her ability to sit near a pool.”
Novak tells Feinberg that her much-whispered-about relationship with Davis had more to do with (a) Davis aggressively pursuing Novak — inviting her to join him for a Thanksgiving dinner with his parents in Los Angeles in late November 1957, and then surprising her by showing up when she invited him out of politeness to a family Christmas gathering in Chicago a month later, and (b) Novak not wanting to discourage Davis out of concern that a racial motive might be inferred if she flat-out rejected his advances.
Feinberg’s article also contains a between-the-lines inference that while Tony Curtis may have slipped Novak a Mickey Finn during a late-night after party at his Beverly Hills home (which he shared with then-wife Janet Leigh), Davis may have been “in on it” and perhaps was the guy who drove Novak back to her home, where she woke up in her bed stark naked the next morning, not having the slightest clue what had happened.
Feinberg excerpt: “One day, Novak left Paramount studios — still in her [Judy Barton] wig and green gown from Vertigo — to attend a charity dinner, where Tony Curtis invited her to an afterparty at the home he shared with Janet Leigh. Hearing that [director Richard] Quine would be there, she said yes.
“When she arrived, Quine [with whom Novak was involved to some extent] wasn’t there. But Davis was, and he offered to help her take off her wig.
“‘By the time he got it off,’ Novak recalls, ‘Tony Curtis had brought me a drink. I don’t know…I only had, I think, one drink there. But that’s the last thing I knew. I do not know anything afterward, cross my heart, hope to die. Don’t know what happened after that or how my car got back in front of my apartment.”
“Does Novak think someone spiked her drink? ‘I really do,’ she said. “I didn’t think of it then because people didn’t talk about things like that, but I could never figure it out…I’ve never blacked out in my entire life.’
“She adds, ‘I think Tony Curtis did it. I don’t want to think Sammy did that.’ And when she awoke the following morning? ‘I’ll just tell you the honest truth: I didn’t have my clothes on.'”
The “tell” is Novak saying “I don’t want to think Sammy did that.”
Friendo: I just watched this remarkable conversation again, taped on 5.11.68. Portions of it sound like it happened last night.
HE: Yeah, “portions.” Brando suggested that everyone should donate 1% of their incomes to MLK’s organization — an idea that melted the second it passed his lips. Like many superstars Brando was living in his own world. Compassionate and kind-hearted and far-sighted but at the same time isolated, pie in the sky, affluent indulgence, Tahiti man.
If a 96 year-old Brando was somehow still with us, he would probably be seen more for his historic failings and foibles than his views on racism, and even if he was respected by Millennials and Zoomers he’d certainly be no fan of cancel culture fanaticism. Marlon might’ve even become a regular HE commenter. His handle could’ve been “budomaha” or “Jor-El.”
The May ‘68 reality was a full worldwide tilt (convulsive Paris protests, Prague spring, spillover from January’s Tet offensive in Vietnam, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash“, LBJ dropping out) and driven by Herbert Marcuse, Howard Zinn, the expanding psychedelic Beatles brand and the exposing of Sexy Sadie, the New Left, the wonderful abundance of cheap pot and LSD, great music and nonstop libertine celebrations. The US was engulfed that year by upheaval, confrontations, anti-war demos, urban riots, SDS, burning cities, RFK’s murder…’68 was the most tumultuous year of the 20th Century.
And what did it all produce in the end? Middle-class horror and a conservative pushback, the election of Nixon and the creation of anti-left domestic operations, the murder of Fred Hampton and a prolonging of the war until the final US withdrawal in April ‘75.
Brando obviously believed in civic consciousness and doing the right thing, but his personal life was mainly (to go by Peter Manso) about whims and urges and appetites. His career had been downswirling since Mutiny on the Bounty. He reignited in ‘72 and ‘73 with The Godfather and Last Tango. Then he went down again. He looked pretty good in ‘68 but by the mid ‘70s he’d became an irrevocably rotund Buddha figure — a prisoner of late-night ice cream raids, driven on some level by self-loathing.
But yes, certainly, of course…sitting on Johnny Carson’s couch that night he sounded clear-eyed and morally righteous and ahead of the curve.
Friendo: And then the assassination of Bobby Kennedy a month later. But what’s interesting here is the noncontroversial Carson drinking the Kool-Aid, which was huge and also a risk for him as the King of Late Night, appealing as he was to his core conservative audience of golf-playing, plaid-pants-wearing milquetoast breadwinners and their Susie Homemaker wives.
The official 2021 Oscar poster has been unveiled, and it mostly conveys a feeling of vague fear — a hodgepodge of different design concepts intended to “say” as little as possible about anything.
It certainly says nothing at all about what’s happening in Hollywood culture right now, and particularly about the woke psychology among the vanguard of Academy voters — a collective owning up to past and current sins (toxic white masculinity, systemic racism, predatory old-boy behaviors that suppress women) by advocating a certain corrective favoritism.
I’m not much of a designer but I’d also love to see an Oscar poster (unlike the below Francis Bacon nightmare) that visually conveys the power that women and POCs are currently, justifiablywielding along with (here’s the tricky part) some nebulous conveyance of cancellation terror a la ’50s blacklisting. Something in that realm.
Brody: “DiCaprio is the most paradoxical of actors. A star since he was a teenager, he built his career around his charisma and his gift for mimicry; in most of his early performances, he seemed to be impersonating a movie star, and slipped frictionlessly into his roles as if they were costumes, regardless of the physical difficulty they involved. With The Wolf of Wall Street, he finally achieved his cinematic apotheosis. In the role of Jordan Belfort, a super-salesman and super-con-man whose hedonistic will to power is one with his consuming fury, DiCaprio seemed to tap deep into himself, even if in the way of mere fantasy and exuberant disinhibition. He so heatedly embraced the role’s excesses that they stuck to him; he flung himself so hard at its artifices that he shattered them and came through as more himself than he had ever been onscreen; he and his art finally met.”
Jordan Ruimy: “Richard Brody is the Armond White of ultra-progressive cinematic Bernie Bros.”
I saw Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 12.25) for the second time last night, and it felt just as wild and manic as it did the first time. (And without an ounce of fat — it’s very tightly constructed.) And yet it’s a highly moral film…mostly. Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and all the rest are never really “in the room” with these depraved Stratton Oakmont brokers. They’re obviously juiced with the spirit of play-acting and pumping the film up and revving their engines, but each and every scene has an invisible subtitle that says “do you see get what kind of sick diseased fucks these guys were?…do you understand that Jordan Belfort‘s exploits redefined the term ‘asshole’ for all time?”
Why, then, did I say that Wolf is “mostly” moral? Because there’s a subcurrent that revels in the bacchanalian exploits of Belfort and his homies. It broadly satirizes Roman-orgy behavior while winking at it. (Or half-winking.) Unlike the Queens-residing goombahs in Goodfellas, whom he obviously feels a mixed affection for, Scorsese clearly doesn’t like or relate to the Stratton Oakmont guys. But the 71 year-old director also knows first-hand how enjoyable drug-abuse can be for cocky Type-A personalities in groups, and he conveys this in spades. Wolf is clearly “personal” for Scorsese. Like everyone else who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, he is believed to have “indulged” to some extent. (Whatever the truth of it, 1977’s New York, New York has long been regarded as a huge cocaine movie.) One presumes that Scorsese is living a sensible and relatively healthy life these days, but boy, does he remember!