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Somehow Humanizing Jeffrey Epstein

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Each and every day AI slop is relentless…a 24/7 feature on everyone’s phone, passive brain mush. But here’s an exception — a parody trailer for a droll, light-hearted Jeffrey Epstein satire, written in the voice of Woody Allen and shot by Vittorio Storaro with nice ’90s lighting.

But I can’t find an embed code to save my life, and it’s driving me nuts. Can anyone figure it?

If this was a trailer for an actual movie, I’d pay to see it.

Criterion’s Latest Teal Mischief?

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Three months ago I posted an “uh-oh” riff about Criterion’s 4K UHD Network Bluray. The thought was “dear god, what if the same Criterion vandals who teal-tinted Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut…what if they inject a similar greenish-teal flavoring into Network?” Pure speculation, of course, as the release date was three months off.

But now, with the new Network streeting six days hence (Tuesday, 2.24), a 2.13.26 review from Slant‘s Derek Smith rings an alarm bell.

Smith: “The color balancing leans toward teal, though that’s primarily limited to exteriors seen through the office building windows.” HE: So the amber-ish office interiors are okay, but don’t look too hard through the UBS windows with midtown Manhattan looking a bit…uhm, greenish.

On the same day (2.13) Criterionforum.org’s Chris Galloway notes the folowing: “The studio set sequences lean more neutral, daylight exteriors feel similar but warmer, and nighttime scenes carry a faint greenish tint consistent with other films of the era. Overall, the colors look superb…the best I’ve ever seen this film appear.”

I’ve asked four knowledgable and trustworthy veterans of the Bluray trenches (including DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze and Digital Bits’ Bill Hunt) if they’ve seen the Criterion Network…nope. So let’s hold our horses for now. Nonetheless Smith and Galloway have me sitting up straight.

Duvall Run-Ins Over The Years

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My first encounter with Robert Duvall was in the lobby of Manhattan’s Mayflower Hotel (15 Central Park West, demolished in ‘04). Early ‘80s. Nothing verbal; more of an observance. Duvall was hugely pissed about something as he exited the elevators in the main lobby….”God-dammit!” Everyone froze. We all lose it from time to time. I felt a certain empathy.

The second time was in a backstage press area during a Gotham Awards ceremony in 2010 or thereabouts. I forget what award he’d received or was nominated for; maybe he was presenting. Duvall was posing for the paparazzi and people like me. The usual razzmatazz ensued. I barked out a “yo, Bob!” and said I’d recently re-watched John Flynn’s The Outfit (‘73) and that it was still top-tier. Duvall perked up, turned in my direction and said “yeah, good one!” plus something or other about Flynn or costar Joe Don Baker.

The third time was during the January 2015 Palm Springs Film Festival, at a Variety Creative Impact Awards brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. Duvall was there to promote David Dobkin’s The Judge , which had opened the previous October. I was shooting the shit with Duvall, Variety’s Stephen Gaydos, Leviathan director Andrej Zvyaginstsev, two or three others. At one point I asked if I could snap a group shot. “Yeah, let’s do it,” said Duvall.

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Forbidden Adrenaline Rush

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We’re not allowed to say it, but the possibility of wipeouts is why breakneck downhill racing and bobsledding are high-interest events. I don’t want anyone to suffer agonizing bone snaps, but if I’m being nakedly honest something inside me…something a bit cruel goes “yes!” when a gifted downhill racer wipes out at 85 mph.

I also love it when big-wave surfers lose their luck or their curl groove and get eaten by the wave.

When Old-School, Middle-Aged Clint Had Virility and Confidence

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Over the last two nights I re-watched Wolfgang Petersen‘s In the Line of Fire (’93), which I hadn’t seen in over three decades.

Clint Eastwood was 62 during filming, and he looks like a fit-as-a-fiddle 54 or 55, at the oldest. Such a good looking hombre, in such good shape (the old-guy exhaustion bits are just fake acting) and with such a great haircut. The camera loves him.

He’s playing a kind of Clint Hill figure named Frank Horrigan — a haunted Secret Service agent who was riding right behind JFK in Dallas on 11.22.63, and who can’t shake the guilt pangs…a deep-down feeling that after the first shot he could’ve leapt on top of the Presidential limo and saved the day by taking Oswald’s head-shot bullet.

Did I just say that? Yes, I did. The brain-matter blowout shot didn’t come from the grassy knoll.

Frank, in any event, finally puts that Dallas nightmare to bed at the very end.

Horrigan is an old-school sexist who thinks of Renee Russo‘s Lilly Raines, a fellow Secret Service agent, as political “window dressing.” No film made today would even flirt with using a character like Frank, who even in the early ’90s was skirting the edge of uncoolness.

Lilly sees Frank for the dinosaur that he is, but she still finds him charming and even fuckable. (Not an incongruent notion, Russo being 38 at the time.) They don’t quite “do it” in the course of the film, but they’re together at the finale.

Bill Clinton had just been elected when ITLOF began filming in late ’92, and that was a long time ago, you bet. The technical aspects feel quite creaky and analogue-y. The computer screen fonts are positively prehistoric.

John Malkovich, 39 during filming, has enormous fun playing the bitter, unhinged, wackjob assassin, alternately known as Mitch Leary, Joseph McCrawley, James Carney and Booth.

There’s a great bit in a third-act scene in which he’s getting dressed for a swanky black-tie party at L.A.’s Hotel Bonaventure. Petersen and dp John Bailey (who became AMPAS president) deliver an insert shot of Malkovich’s hairy pot belly, and he slaps it twice…pohp, pohp!

In The Line of Fire is a flush-looking, slightly above-average, big-studio action thriller…nothing more or less than that. A diverting, highly competent popcorn thing.

RoPo Pitchforkers, Beware!

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Oh, and that forthcoming, yet–to–be–shot movie based on Samantha Geimer ‘s “The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski”, a 2013 account of the media maelstrom that had dominated and permeated Geimer’s life from 1977 until the date of publication (and which still hangs over Geimer’s head as we speak)?

If it’s at all true to Geimer’s 13-year-old book, Marina Ziolkowski’s film won’t be a “Roman Polanski is evil and still deserves to be punished” thing — it’ll be a condemnation of the Polanski pitchforkers, many of whom have posted rabid RoPo condemnations on HE for many, many years.

Geimer quoted in a 2023 Le Point interview:

HE’s Favorite Silent or All-But-Wordless Performances

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In this order & off the top of my head…

Geza Rohrig in Son of Saul (‘15)

Robert Duvall in To Kill A Mockingbird (‘62)

Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (‘64)

Holly Hunter in The Piano (93)

Ryan Gosling in Drive (‘11)

Andy Serkis in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (‘11)

Jackie Gleason in Gigot (‘62)

Bart the Bear in The Bear (‘88)

DISQUALIFIED:

Sandra Bullock in Gravity (‘13), due to shouting “Aagghh! Aagghh!” too many times.

Tom Hanks during the island survival portions of Cast Away (‘00), due to yelling “Wilson!” too many tunes..

The Soft, Willowy Slenderness of Youth

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…begins to fade when dudes hit their late 20s. Faces tend to thicken a bit, especially if you’re partial to fatty foods and bending the elbow**. This is why a 30-year-old Paul Mescal can’t convincingly play a 21- or 22-year-old Paul McCartney.

In the below snap Mescal is wearing an early 1964 soup-bowl, no-sideburns Hard Day’s Night haircut. The early 20something illusion simply isn’t there.

** I distinctly recall being vaguely horrified by the slight but noticeable thickening of my own facial features when I hit 30. My Burger King diet and my nocturnal slurpings of Jack Daniels and ginger ale had taken their toll.