Okay. Kardashians

The Kardashians are vacationing in Greece, walking around skimpily clad on a boat in the sun even though Khloe had melanoma. Unless she was wearing a moo moo and a wide brimmed hat (she wasn't), she was risking her life.

And Rob Kardashian wisely hopes that Kim's sex tape will haunt her for the rest of her life. He complained that his mother only cares about his sisters. He's the only one without a spin-off reality show, his name doesn't start with a K, and now he's crying out for help by becoming more and more overweight.

I usually appreciate self-pity in rich people, but Rob, well----he's still just a lousy, stinking Kardashian. Surely he has no feelings.

I knew a guy who ran into a burning building to save some people, but he was drunk and the people turned out to be cats. Maybe if any of the Kardashians ran into a burning building to save some cats I would be less repulsed by them.

Kardashians, science fiction

If you made a movie set in the distant future, and you want to show how much things have changed, have an intellectual---a scientist or a philisopher or something---named Kardashian.

Then have the hero say, "I may not be from a family of respected geniuses like YOU, Dr Kardashian, but I know one thing----"

Or have a President Kardashian.

"He's from one of the most respected, dignified families in America! Why, they're the closest thing to royalty we have!"

One more Kardashian thing

Rob Kardashian has put on weight. He's up to 250 pounds. Rumor has it that his mother wants him to gain even more weight so she can get him a deal with a weight-loss plan and rake in more money.

Rob decided it would be a good idea to tell reporters that his penis looks smaller now that he's a tubbo.

I didn't know this, but apparently the guy has a line of socks. I didn't know there was such a thing. He flies around the world to promote his socks. His mother was upset because Rob broke up with his girlfriend after some sort of Twitter fight, then he started eating a lot and neglecting his sock line.

And apparently the youngest daughters who have now become models themselves---one of them is dating Will Smith's son even though the young fellow is fourteen. He's also friends with Justin Bieber who tweeted that he was having his worst birthday ever because his 14-year-old friend couldn't get into a bar in England.

And Will Smith was starting a "school" based on the "principles" of Scientology. Denies he's a Scientologist himself, though. He's just an idiot.

One reason Katie Holmes dumped Tom Cruise was that she didn't want her daughter to grow up an ignoramus like Tom's two other children who were home schooled by Scientologists. They knew nothing about current events, they knew nothing about any religion other than Scientology. They know nothing about other cultures. They're as dumb as Tom Cruise himself.

Horrible people. Just look at them!

Kardashians, the Mossad, Robert Kardashian's Diary

Years ago, the Israelis sued in U.S. court to block the publication of the book by a former Mossad agent, By Way of Deception, which revealed some rather disgusting facts. In 1982, the Israelis knew about the plan to bomb the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, but didn't inform the Americans. They wanted the bombing to happen to damage US relations with Arab countries.

Shortly before the book was to go on sale, the Israelis went to court to stop it. They went to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael J. Dontzin who issued an order banning the book in the United States, the first time a book has been banned in this country at the request of a foreign government. Dontzin happened to be a former president of the pro-Israeli "Jewish Lawyers Guild" which must have played some role in his otherwise inexplicable decision. The group, according to its website, "confers awards to jurists who exemplify the qualities of Benjamin N. Cardozo and Golda Meir." Dontzin's stated reason for the ban was that the book would be "detrimental" to the Israeli state.

Dontzin's ruling was overturned two days later.

Trouble for the Israelis was that this made it impossible for them to deny that the author was in fact a Mossad agent.

The L.A. Times reported:

Also lending weight to this book's credibility is the fact that Israel has gone to such unprecedented lengths to prevent its publication. One attorney representing Israel inadvertently gave additional support when he said Ostrovsky "prefers his credibility to the lives of others."

Some have argued that Ostrovsky was both too junior and too new to learn all that he is reporting, but the author claims that he was able to access Mossad computer files containing information on past operations. The attorney representing Israel in a way confirmed this when he admitted that even as a low-level employee, Ostrovsky could have had "access" to important secrets.

 And now? Now we have the Kardashians...

It seems that the widow of Robert Kardashian has been offering bits of her late husband's diaries for publication. They reveal that Kris Jenner was a terrible mother, leaving the kids alone while she ran around with her new boyfriend, Bruce Jenner. Rob got himself locked in the car for hours while his mother was gallivanting around.

So. The Kardashians have filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement, that the Kardashian children inherited their father's diaries and therefore owned the copyright on them. For some reason, Kris Jenner, who would have no claim to the diaries, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

So the Kardashian "children" admit in court that the quotes from the diaries are authentic. Are they admitting that that their mother stunk as a parent, or are they denouncing their late father as a pathological liar unable to tell the truth even to himself in his own personal diaries?

Reese Witherspoon

I'm with Reese Witherspoon. Her husband was arrested for drunk driving, so the backward Georgia cops arrested her for getting out of the car and standing there as they did this. That's a crime now? An innocent person who hasn't committed any crime can't stand there without being arrested by these simians? They claimed that standing and watching was "disorderly conduct".

They should start making those movies again about Northerners travel to the South and end up falsely accused and put on a chain gang or simply murdered by corrupt cops. Hollywood should boycott Georgia and film only in Northern States.

Cheap Kardashians and Kardashian substitutes.

I'm not proud of this, but I bought a copy of The Star for it's front page news about Bruce Jenner planning to divorce his wife, elderly LA pimp Kris Jenner, formerly Kris Kardashian.

I should have just googled it instead of buying the stupid thing. I haven't seen their reality show in years. I used to watch it when there was nothing else on in the early morning, back when I had cable or satellite in my room. Now I'm down to a Roku.

According to The Star, Bruce hasn't slept with Kris for years, their marriage is a sham and he is tired of living a lie. And he's a cross dresser. He broke the news to the kids who all supported him, all having become increasingly alienated from their horrible mother, except for Rob, the son, who was generally ignored over the years.

Rob ran like a little girl to his mother and told her the news. Bruce is going to dump you! She promised revenge, perhaps by talking about his alleged cross-dressing.

If Bruce is a transvestite, good for him. Only interesting thing about him.

So, here's my advice to the independent film community.

Rob Kardashian obviously is wracked by feelings of inferiority. He's below average. His name doesn't even start with a K. He's the Jack Osbourne of his family. He's like Jan Brady. He's like that youngest daughter on Little House on the Prairie who never did anything. He's like that girl on Family Matters whose character was dropped from the show and no one noticed. He's like that little kid they brought in on Married with Children who disappeared without explanation.

What I'm saying is, if you want a cheap Kardashian for your film or video project, get Rob Kardashian.

"You see? I'm a star, too!" he'll cry as he watches your low budget exploitation film and his dreams of success begin to evaporate before his eyes.

Of course, he'd cost far more than he's worth. But there must be some unsuccessful Kardashian cousins somewhere.

Kardashian isn't a name they made up. It's Armenian. Find some unrelated actress named Kardashian. Or just find someone willing to use the name. They couldn't have trademarked it. Give her a first name that starts with K. Karla. Korine. Kelly. Kolleen. Kora. Klaudia. Kristy. Kami. Koo. Wouldn't matter what she looked like.

How about a Bob Kardashian. Bruce Kardashian. Robby Kardashian. Brody Kardashian.

If you don't want to use the name Kardashian, how about Kezerian. Khorozian. Kherlakian. Khederian.

If you don't want to demean an actor by forcing her to use "Kardashian" as a stage name, name the character "Kardashian".

You won't fool anybody. The idea is to make a potential buyer pause an extra second or two when considering your movie. Maybe they'll turn away in disgust. Maybe they'll watch it out of disgust. Like when I bought that lousy tabloid.

Stupid raccoons

If I could, I would break up the fight between two raccoons going on high up in a tree a couple of blocks from here. I hope they're just killing each other and not killing an innocent squirrel. I eat meat so I can't really criticize them for being horrible, vicious carnivores, but they are.

They're way up there, too. One was backed out as far as it could go in a limb and the other one had it cornered. They fought for a while then backed away.

I didn't know what the noise was. I had gone outside at about 6 AM and heard it. It was an animal in distress, so I went out trying to find it, and saw these two fighting in a tree. I wonder if one is rabid.

They're always wrong

The "terrorism experts" are pretty much always wrong. They thought that the World Trade Center truck bombing must have been done by Serbians, they thought that the Oklahoma City bombing was the work of Arabs----one of them said that the bombers were trying to cause the maximum number of casualties, which he said was "a middle eastern trait". Turned out to be an American trait.

For the Boston Marathon bombing, they figured it was right-wingers--violent tea baggers. The bombing was on tax day, and it was Patriots Day and it was in the city where the Boston Tea Party happened.

Hell, maybe the young fellows who did this were tea partiers. It would still make more sense than them doing it because they were Chechens.

The Czech Republic has issued a statement explaining that Chechnya and the Czech Republic are two different places.

Retweet

Tweeted by J Elvis Weinstein:

"Honey, it's 3am, stop trying to scrub the blood from your hands and come to bed."
 -- Mrs. LaPierre

Anne Frank, Justin Bieber

Oh, come on. Like what did other people write in the guest book at the Anne Frank House that was so great?

Justin Bieber spent an hour there and wrote in the guest book, "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."

He should have stopped at the first sentence. But now the poor boy is under attack accused of bad taste and making it all about him.

I never liked comment books. You can't erase or scribble out. You have only one chance to say something good.

People are posting comments attacking Bieber. The people at the Anne Frank House are defending him.

It made me think of the speech that Gerda Weissman Klein gave at the Oscars. She was the subject of a short documentary, "A Survivor Remembers":

"I have been in a place for six incredible years, where winning meant a crust of bread and to live another day. Since the blessed day of my liberation I have asked the question, 'Why am I here? I am no better.' In my mind's eye I see those years and faces of those who never lived to see the magic of a boring evening at home. On their behalf I wish to thank you for honoring their memory, and you cannot do that in a better way than when you return to your homes tonight to realize that each of you who knows the joy of freedom are winners. Thank you on their behalf with all my heart."

I don't know what Bieber meant. My guess is that Anne Frank just wanted to live a normal life like the ordinary girls now flocking to Justin Bieber concerts. I don't know if Bieber saw a connection or if he just wondered if she would have liked his music, or if he just couldn't think of anything to write. 

Jonathan Winters, RIP

"You come into this world, not knowing who you are, and sometimes, if you live long enough, you go out not knowing who you are."

--Jonathan Winters

If I were smart I'd give up trying to write about people who've just died. I never pull it off. I usually end up saying rude things.

Jonathan Winters died a few days ago on April 11th.

I have his old records. If you see him in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, watch the restored version that has a pretty good scene with him, where he explains his reason for wanting the money. And I liked him in The Loved One and Viva Max, and The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming.

He was hospitalized twice for nervous breakdowns. Like other creative people, had to warn them not to use any treatments like eletroshock therapy that would damage his memory and hurt his ability to improvise.

It was interesting to see him in The Loved One. It was different seeing him in a vaguely high brow black comedy with John Gielgud and Rod Steiger.

Frankly, I didn't like him on Mork & Mindy. Of course, I didn't like Mork & Mindy. And they kept cutting to shots of Mindy and Conrad Janis laughing at his and Robin Williams' antics. The basic premise, that on Mork's planet, people age backwards, didn't amuse me.

But I'm watching a documentary now, Certifiably Jonathan. It begins. We see Winters sitting in a make up chair preparing to go on a local talk show. He talks with the make up artist.

"Caroline, the short time you've been here, have you met a man of your dreams?"

"I'm married to him."

"Are you married?"

"Yes."

"How long have you been married?"

"Twenty years."

"Twenty. Well, there's no sense in getting out now. I always tell people if it's seven or eight, get out now and try to get someone new. Well, after twenty, it's a disease that doesn't go away. I've been married fifty-five."

"You have!"

"People say, 'That's wonderful', and I said, 'You try it'."

Billy Jack

You know the old movie, Billy Jack? Hippie kids at the Freedom School on the Indian reservation battle crooked, racist locals with the help of Billy Jack, a "half breed" Indian who uses his Green Beret skills to fight discrimination and protect a pregnant girl from her abusive deputy father.

There's a city council meeting where they discuss the problem of the Freedom School. An older girl from the school tells the council that one of the younger children would like to read a quote to them and see if they can tell them who said it. She reads:

The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might. And the republic is in danger. Yes! danger from within and without. we need law and order! Without law and order our nation cannot survive.

And who said this? Was it Nixon? Was it Agnew? George Wallace perhaps? NO! It was-----ADOLPH HITLER!

It was a fake quote. Hitler never said it.

Watching the thing when I was a kid, my first inkling that something was amiss was the scene where Billy Jack decries the lack of gun control in America even though he shoots and threatens several people with a gun over the course of the movie.

That was the same scene where he seems to refer to "Jack and Bobby Kennedy" as pacifists.

And why were they friends with the local police chief?

It was pretty much a right-wing movie. It was pro-cop. It shows the hippies are anti-sex and anti-drug, and all they listen to is folk music. Most of the actors playing Indians are obviously white. Why is there only one boy at the school? He believes in some Indian deity because it left him a bow and arrow when he was a child.

The "villain" in the movie is the somewhat more liberated Bernard Posner. In his first scene, he refuses his father's order to shoot wild horses they're slaughtering for dog food. Apparently he was the villain because he was disobedient. And----well----they did make him a serial sex offender, too. Disobey your father and this is what you will become!

Bernard was much hipper than the hippies---they come to town and go to the malt shop to buy ice cream. One of them is terribly rude to Bernard and in his hurt, he acts out in a racist manner. Then Billy Jack beats him up. The pacifist hippie children are unfazed by the violence and are untroubled that a couple of men are lying unconscious on the ground in front of them. I'm not the least bit violent, but I'm not a pacifist, and I would be traumatized if grown men started fighting in front of me.

I shouldn't be attacking Billy Jack. It wasn't a bad movie. Kids back then would go to it over and over. And that was the target audience. A movie with realistic racist brutality would have been too much for a tweenage audience.

I read an interview with another low budget director, Larry Cohen. He explained that, for movie violence to work, there has to be some balance. It can't be one sided or it comes across as sadism.

They seemed to realize this in Billy Jack. In an early scene, a runaway teenage girl is returned to her father. She's extremely snotty. She informs her father she's pregnant.

"I’ve been expecting this," he said. "How long?"

"Maybe six weeks."

"All right. Where’s the father?

"Where’s the father? That’s funny. I don’t even know who the father is."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"  
 
"It MEANS, concerned father, that I was passed around by so many of those phony maharishi types who kept telling me that love is beautiful and all that bullshit----in other words, concerned father, I got balled by so many guys I don’t know if the father’s gonna be white, Indian, Mexican or black!"

Even the kids in the audience could understand when the father slugs her.

They hustle her off to the Freedom School to hide her.

"Another beating like that and she'll lose the baby!"

She loses the baby anyway in a horseback riding accident at the Freedom School. She should have stayed home and avoided further beatings by not being a horrible brat.


Of course, the mixed messages of the movie could be a sign of sophistication. The abusive father still cared about his daughter. The violent racist Bernard Posner still hated his violent racist father.

There was the Italian movie, Night of the Shooting Stars, which had an extremely happy, adoring fascist father and teenage son happily working together being violent fascists. It wouldn't have been too realistic or instructive if Bernard Posner and his father had been this way.

The guys I knew who hated their fathers were all exactly like them. Probably a good idea to point this out to young people in the audience. It's not enough simply to hate your horrible parents----you have to actually be different from them.

Hair dye problem

Watching a '60s movie, a comedy I've never heard of called Love in a Goldfish Bowl.

I'll turn it off in a minute.

The studio dyed the actors' hair the same color. It made it easier for them to match wigs and hair pieces. But the romantic couple having the exact same hair color makes them look like brother and sister which is deeply disturbing.

I've never seen a boy with hair that color.

What Margaret Thatcher did to the BBC

Here's an article by Tariq Ali from Counterpunch.com, November 12, 2012, on the lousy state of the BBC and who's to blame:

An Atmosphere of Fear

The BBC’s Culture of Self-Censorship

Is the BBC in such a petrified or paralysed state, so badly decayed, that it is beyond repair? Are all hopes of inner movement or structural reform misplaced?

To read the national press this would appear to be the case. I’m not so sure. Hysteria has now reached absurd proportions, as has the level of public discussion on the issues at stake. George Entwistle, his predecessor Mark Thompson and Helen Boaden, director of news, are reminiscent more of middle-level bureaucrats in Honecker’s Germany than creative-minded managers. Entwistle has fallen on his sword. More might opt for hara-kiri, but on its own this will solve very little.

There is an underlying problem that has confronted the BBC since Sir John Birt was made director general in Thatcher’s time. His predecessor (bar one) had been sacked effectively on Thatcher’s orders in 1987 for not “being one of us”.

A reliable toady, Marmaduke Hussey, was catapulted on to the BBC board as chairman. His first task was to sack director general Alasdair Milne for “leftwing bias”. Thatcher was livid that the BBC had permitted her to be grilled on the Falklands war on a live programme by a woman viewer from Bristol who successfully demolished the prime minister’s arguments.

Thatcher disliked the BBC’s coverage of the Falklands war and the miners’ strike and highlighted a number of other documentaries that were considered “too leftwing”. A faceless bureaucrat replaced Milne till the appointment of John Birt, a dalek without instincts or qualities, who transformed the BBC into the top-heavy managerial monster that it has become.

Birt feared that the Tories would privatise the BBC. He pre-empted this by institutionalising private sector methods and dumbing down the BBC so effectively as to destroy any notion of diversity within British television. The number of managers assigned to broadcast units became a sad joke and instead of considered argument management-speak, lampooned fortnightly by Private Eye, became the norm. Not wishing to offend Thatcher, the BBC gave Murdoch much of what he wanted to stabilise Sky. Cricket, for instance, was no longer available to those who paid the licence fee.

When New Labour won, a New BBC was already in place. Blair and his spin doctors Campbell and Mandelson turned out to be even worse control freaks than Thatcher. Together with their subordinates, they regularly harassed producers complaining about what they perceived to be anti-government bias. Radio 4′s Today programme became a favourite Blairite target. Simultaneously they were crawling to Murdoch at regular intervals, hobnobbing regularly with the editors and staff of the Sun and happily inhaling the stench of the Murdoch stables.

After Birt’s departure there was some improvement. Greg Dyke did have some instincts. For one he defended BBC journalists, for another he sometimes resisted the blandishments and abuse that emanated from Downing Street.

But just as the Falklands war had brought down Milne, the Iraq war did for Dyke. Treating an accurate report from Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme as lese majesty, a British judge, Hutton by name, seemed to ignore the bulk of the evidence and declared the BBC guilty. Dyke had to resign while an exultant Alastair Campbell, crowing like a cock on a dung heap, addressed the rest of the media. Hundreds of BBC journalists assembled on the street to bid a fond farewell to Dyke. That had never happened before.

The atmosphere of fear and the self-censorship that followed is hardly a secret. Under Birt, creativity had been suffocated. The new management structures had destroyed departmental autonomy. Heads of departments no longer had the same freedoms as before: current affairs, drama, light entertainment all suffered. The right to fail, so essential to creativity, was no longer part of the deal. Ratings and competition is all that mattered, give or take a few good documentaries. Would a current department boss have taken on a contemporary equivalent of Monty Python with the words: “I don’t like it myself, but make six programmes and then we’ll see.” Ask those who work there.

This is the background to the present crisis. This is the reason why editors of TV programmes are too often scared to take the right decisions. This is why only tried and trusted (ie, safe and sound) people are promoted. Peter Rippon was one of them, but he was not alone in dumping the investigation. That decision was taken by a superior and everybody in the BBC knows their name. Who did they consult? Perhaps we will now find out.

It is the culture of the BBC that needs to be overhauled with the redundant parts (mainly useless management appendages) replaced and some freedom given to programme-makers. There is no sign whatsoever that this is what the government or the opposition wants. Time, perhaps, for licence-fee payers to occupy.

Buddy Hackett, nasty little wretch

As a kid I saw Buddy Hackett on The Tonight Show telling a story about how the Mafia murdered two men because they burglarized his house. The mafia took offense apparently because Hackett worked in a Mafia owned casino. Hackett defended it because they were professional criminals and should know better to rob people who worked for "such nice people". One was murdered with a heroin overdose. 

But I can't find anything about this on-line. I wasn't very good at identifying celebrities as a child, but I knew who Buddy Hackett was.

While looking for information on it, I found this odd item on the internet about Hackett.

Bipolar behavior and drunken debauchery colored many a Shecky Greene story. Fellow comedians, some just as fucked up, were dragged into the chaotic world. "Buddy Hackett," Greene recalls, "went looking for me one night. Buddy Hackett found me in a bar and Buddy Hackett came in with just a nightshirt. A portfolio under his arm. Buddy Hackett had a gun in the portfolio." It wasn't unnatural for Hackett, a foul-mouthed, pudgy faced comic, to be packing heat. Jack Carter remembers that Hackett was "a very angry man. He carried a gun. He was violent. He shot up a car in Vegas that parked in his spot. The Mafia wanted to kill him and I don't know who protected him."

On the night in question Shecky was drunk and bleary-eyed when Hackett started needling him. "You wanna know why I wanna talk to you?" asked Hackett. "You fired Fred Thompson." Thompson was an elderly African-American gardener that had been employed by both men. "Every time he'd garden the lawn he would cut in to the wire fence and it would curl up," explains Shecky. "So I finally said to him 'I've replaced twelve wire fences. Fred, I can't have you anymore.' So I fired him. Buddy Hackett came in and he said, 'Let me tell you something. That man needs new teeth.' I said, 'Well, fuckin' go buy him some new teeth!' He said, 'No, you should buy him some new teeth because you fired him.' I said to Buddy, 'You got any money?' He had some money in the portfolio. We went across the street to The Landmark and started gambling. And drinking."

Two heavy boozers raped their livers that evening. Shecky Greene ran a lucky streak at the crap table, but was too bagged to notice. Each time Greene won a toss, Buddy cashed the chips and stuffed the dough in his portfolio, eventually accumulating enough money to pay for Thompson's new teeth. It should have ended there, but with these two volatile figures, one characterized as viciously angry and the other as merely insane, their acrimony drifted into the Las Vegas streets. "So now we're walking across the street," says Greene. "As I'm walking, he stands in the middle of the street and he refers to me as Mr. Magoo's dumb nephew ... Buddy Hackett says, 'You know something? You're a Waldo!' I said, 'What?' He's in the middle of the fuckin' street! I said, 'I'm a what?" He said, 'Not only that. I'm gonna tell you something. You're a double Waldo!' So now I walk back and I said, 'I'm a fuckin' double Waldo!?' He's got the gun. I punch him in the fucking stomach! As I'm walking away he comes and jumps on my back. I flip him over my back. I put my foot on his throat. I said, 'If you get up, Buddy - I'm going to kill you.' I reach down, I take the gun and his car keys and I throw them into the desert. "Now don't get up."

Shecky and Buddy, despite their assorted fist fights and incessant animosity, shared a long history and a complicated friendship. Phil Berger wrote about the evenings on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles when Shecky was a regular at Billy Gray's Band Box. "The favorite there, Buddy Hackett, would come in and sabotage Shecky's routines with misplaced laughs." Greene's mother was in the audience for one of those shows. She was convinced that "the little fat guy" was Greene's biggest fan because he was always at the back of the room cackling loudly. "No, mom," explained Shecky after the show. "He's ruining me by intentionally laughing in the wrong place!" Today Greene laments, "I miss Buddy Hackett. But he did some terrible fucking things ... there's a word in Jewish culture called dybbuk. He was like the devil. You never knew what was going to happen with Buddy."

Hackett with his gun collection

Roger Ebert, RIP

Roger Ebert has died at age 70. His cancer had returned and he was taking a "leave of presence" to be treated.

I read this quote from him in an article in Esquire three years ago:

"I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear," he writes in a journal entry titled Go Gently into That Good Night. "I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris."

I wish I could find my copy of Hollywood by Charles Bukowski, his novel about the making of the movie Barfly. Ebert appears in it under the name Rick Talbot. Bukowski generally disliked people---in the book he expresses some antipathy for Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch among others. But he liked Ebert, in part because he ordered a double vodka. They were hanging around during the filming. Ebert commented on the atmosphere on some low budget films.

I've heard this from other people. With low budget movies, the cast and crew are paid less, the film will do less for their careers, they don't really have to be there so the people in charge have to be polite and respectful.

Spike Lee put out a statement noting that Ebert was the first major critic to support his work.

 

Ebert tweeted his support for Mark Rappaport's efforts to get his stuff back from Ray Carney and he and gave a thumbs up to Jon Jost's All the Vermeers in New York----not like that snotty Vincent Canby.