Three more women accuse Jeremy Piven

I know this is getting old, but three more women have accused elderly Hollywood Zionist Jeremy Piven of sexual assault.

According to Buzzfeed:

In 1985, a background actor said Piven followed her into a trailer on the set of a film and pinned her down on a couch. In 1996, a background extra on the set of Ellen said a romantic encounter with Piven turned physically aggressive and left her feeling threatened, after he exposed himself to her in his Los Angeles home. Another woman said the actor pushed her against the wall in a Montreal hotel room around 1994 and tried to force himself on her.

BuzzFeed News also spoke to eight people who said the women shared their stories with them either at the time or in the years since.

With these new accusers, the number of women making public allegations of sexual misconduct against Piven now stands at eight.

As he did in November’s story, Piven vehemently denied all the women’s claims in this article, with his lawyers describing them as “works of fiction” and this story as being “conjured up in an opportunistic effort to capitalize on the current media storm in order to obtain attention and/or money.”

Piven had a Bar Mitzvah in Israel. In 2016, Piven flew there in a jet provided by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Adelson says he wants his son to be a sniper in the Israeli Army. Once in Israel, Piven had a "second bar mitzvah" for some reason.

Nevada's Gaming Control Board investigate Wynn

Steve Wynn sued Joe Francis for defamation after Francis claimed that Wynn threatened to have him murdered over a large gambling debt. Francis's slander was a serious financial threat, Wynn claimed, because under Nevada law, you can't operate a casino if you have any connection to organized crime.

Turns out that you might not be allowed to operate a casino if you're a sexual predator, either. Nevada's Gaming Control Board has opened an investigation into Wynn's sexual misconduct that, according to the Washington Post, has been going on for decades.

Stock prices for Wynn Resorts have dropped like a rock and the board of directors is investigating as well.

I hope they can get rid of him and make him not a billionaire anymore.

Could Scott Baio be innocent?

Long ago, I had a friend who, every night, would turn on the old Hawaii Five-O. He would just watch the opening credits then turn it off. I told him I thought the shot of the huge wave at the beginning was intended as an impressionistic portrait of Steve McGarret whose hair in front was shaped the same way.

He would also watch just the opening credits to Charles in Charge. The lyrics to the theme song were weird, kids singing happily about their subjugation to Charles.

I never liked Scott Baio. I didn't like his character on Happy Days, I didn't like his regional accent. I didn't like his looks. I knew nothing else about him, so that was all I had to judge him by.

Twitter erupted in outrage when he announced his support for Donald Trump. And he supported him for such a stupid reason. "He talks like I talk." But I didn't care. As a comedienne tweeted at the time, "I think a lot of you had unreasonably high expectations of Scott Baio."

It was just in the last few days that I learned he believed that the parents of the small children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting were actors, part of a anti-gun conspiracy. His horrible wife replied on Twitter to the mother of a child who was killed there that her daughter was better off dead.

“You do NOT get to target me only to sling hatred. Bite me…..I’ll bite back harder! Where’s her sincere apology?” Baio's monstrous wife wrote.

When Baio tweeted a racist attack on Michelle Obama, he said that he couldn't possibly be racist because his wife had a black friend.

Baio is now denying that he statutorily raped one of the children on Charles in Charge. He said, sure, he slept with Nichole Eggert, but not until she was eighteen. Apparently she claimed that they had sex when she was 17, after the show was off the air, but Baio showed that she turned 18 during the last season.

[Eggert since gave a long interview detailing alleged sexual abuse she suffered from Baio from age 14.]

Poor Scott Baio. He was the original choice for the role Tom Cruise played in Top Gun. Whenever he sees Tom Cruise, he must think, That should be me! 

Steve Wynn

The thing I liked about Steve Wynn was that he drove Joe Francis who owned Girls Gone Wild out of the country. Francis owed Wynn's casino a couple million dollars and when Wynn sued him for it, Francis falsely claimed that Wynn had threatened to have him killed. Wynn sued Francis for slander and was awarded $19 million. Francis declared bankruptcy to prevent Wynn from seizing assets of his company but then violated the bankruptcy agreement. The judge put out a warrant for Francis' arrest and he fled to Mexico where he's been ever since. The US extradition treaty with Mexico doesn't include civil contempt. Francis destroyed his sleazy-but-lucrative business for nothing.

Turns out Wynn (born Stephen Alan Weinberg) sues people a lot. He's pushed to weaken Nevada's anti-SLAPP legislation which deter lawsuits without merit filed to harass critics.

Wynn is as big a scumbag as the rest of them. He's been forced to resign as finance chair for the Republican National Committee after the Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire predator has been sexually harassing employees for decades. He's an enthusiastic Trump supporter.

Nobody mentions his horrible plastic surgery.

MPR reports on Garrison Keillor

Minnesota Public Radio has revealed its reasons for ending its contracts with Keillor.

The revelations create a portrait of Keillor more complicated than that of the folksy, avuncular storyteller whose brand of humor appealed to millions of listeners. They suggest a star who seemed heedless of the power imbalance that gave him an advantage in his relationships with younger women. They also raise questions about whether the company knew enough — or should have known enough — to stop the behavior of the personality who drove much of its success.

 https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/01/23/keillor-workplace

Keillor says he'll write a novel about it. But now there's added stuff he'll have to explain.

My Three Sons

I'm sitting here with My Three Sons on TV. Not exactly watching it. But Ernie is trying to make an electric clock work as part of a school science project. He doesn't know what's wrong but his engineer father, Fred MacMurray, out of some confused sense of educational ethics, won't tell him what's wrong with it or even share some knowledge that would help him figure it out himself.

What good is it being adopted by an engineer if you get no engineering advice?

The cruel irony is that the kid who played Ernie was the younger brother of the kid who played Chip. An actor who got his part through sheer nepotism is forced to perform in an episode about the moral superiority of your father not telling you how to fix a clock.

Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg

You know who I wish would denounce Woody Allen and say he'll never work with him again? Jesse Eisenberg. I can't stand that guy. He's been in two of Allen's movies, neither of which I cared for, but they're among the very few Woody Allen movies available on streaming video that you don't have to pay extra for. Allen's made so many movies, why aren't they all over the place?

Moses Farrow defends his father on Twitter

 From Roger Friedman's Showbiz 411. Read the whole thing here:

http://www.showbiz411.com/2018/01/18/dylan-farrows-brother-moses-defends-woody-allen-it-simply-never-happened

"Moses Farrow has been trying on his own Twitter feed– @MosesFarrow– and in interviews to set the record straight about Woody, Mia, and his mother’s abuse of her children, her vendetta against Woody Allen. Gullible actors in recent days have “renounced” Woody and said they were turning their paychecks from his movies over to charities. How uninformed and silly of these people! They refuse to listen to Moses, read the reports, or ask why none of the Farrows address the current prison term of Mia’s brother for child molestation. It’s pathological, and starting to border on something else, I’m afraid. Hysteria, yes. Maybe more."

Mia wanted to work for Woody even after accusation

Diane Keaton replaced Mia Farrow in Manhattan Murder Mystery.

Mira Sorvino has publicly apologized to Dylan Farrow for appearing in a Woody Allen movie and David Krumholtz says he "deeply regrets" working with Allen.

Before anyone else begs Dylan Farrow's forgiveness, they should be aware that Mia Farrow, just days after accusing Allen of molesting Dylan in 1992, still fully intended to star in his next movie, Manhattan Murder Mystery.

... Mia called her lawyer and said something very bad had happened. Allen had taken Dylan up to the attic and molested her. She videotaped Dylan — a tape that was later reported to have been edited in-camera — then took her to the doctor for an exam.

Mia also kept on with her plans to star in Allen’s next movie, “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” and placed a call to meet with the wardrobe supervisor on Aug. 9.

“She accused me of child molestation on August 4th, right?” Allen told “60 Minutes” that November. “And August 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th — you know, the week after, she’s fully saying, ‘When do we begin our new movie? I’m going for my costume fitting next week’ . . . And I said, ‘Are you kidding? You’re accusing me of child molestation, and you think we’re just going to go on with the movie? . . . This is insane.’ ”

https://nypost.com/2014/02/08/woody-mia-a-greek-tragedy/

This was reported elsewhere at the time. Mia Farrow didn't deny it.

Krumholtz, by the way, works with James Franco, on his HBO series The Deuce. Will he apologize to Franco's actual victims?

I've said in other entries on this blog why I think the molestation accusation against Allen has been disproven, and I'm repeating myself here. The accusation was very specific---it supposedly happened on August 4th, 1992, during an arranged two-hour visit at Farrow's home in Connecticut. Allen and Dylan allegedly disappeared together---back then, it was reported they were gone for 10 minutes, now they claim it was 25 minutes during which time people in the house were scrambling to find them until they reappeared without explanation.

There were four witnesses in the house: Moses Farrow, 13, two nannies and a cook. One nanny says this Woody and Dylan disappeared together; Moses, the other nanny and the cook say that no such thing happened. The other nanny says that Allen was never out of her sight for more than five minutes and Moses, who was with them the entire time, say that Woody and Dylan never left the room. The nanny who says it did happen wrote a book in which she declared her love and devotion for Mia Farrow.

When Moses wrote about this publicly, Dylan stated that Moses was "dead to me", and that his statement was "the lowest form of evil I can imagine." Moses, who now works as a family counselor, came across as being far more credible than Dylan. Her denouncing him in such an extreme way without refuting anything he said gave the impression she was consciously lying.

I can't defend stuff Allen actually did. I can't even defend his movies after the 1970's.

I question how much effect any of this will have on his career. He's not popular anyway. This is one reason I doubt much of what Dylan says----she claims she falls apart whenever she sees a Woody Allen t-shirt or a Woody Allen poster. I had to google this. I was surprised to find that there is such a thing as a Woody Allen t-shirt. I've never seen one. I may have seen a Woody Allen poster in the 1970's, but it's hard to believe they exist now.

Allen makes low budget movies that were getting cheaper all the time. When he made Match Point, he discovered he had no money for music and had to make a deal with a company that put out a CD of public domain recordings of Caruso for the soundtrack. Cheap as they are, half his movies lose money.

Look at Eric Rohmer. He made very cheap, talky movies. He got cheaper and cheaper as he went on, eliminating one job after another until he was down to himself, a camera operator and a sound man. I saw one movie he filmed on a crowded beach and none of the vacationers seemed to pay any attention to him and his tiny film crew. I don't know why Allen's movies cost so much.

For years, Allen has been hiring major stars for his movies, getting them when they were free and had nothing better to do, paying them the minimum their union allowed. That bastard. Instead of underpaying big stars, he could be providing great gigs to little-known actors. He could be another Roger Corman, giving good roles to older stars who weren't working much.

I'll bet he could get Kevin Spacey to star in a couple of movies now.

Allen's father lived to be over a hundred and had a job when he was 90. My guess is that Allen has another ten good years left in him and at least five not-so-good years after that.

Woody Allen's serious work

Woody Allen's "serious" movies all contain these odd quirks. In Interiors, Diane Keaton plays a celebrity poet. An ad agency begs her sister to come work for them even though she has no experience at it. Allen has the idea that if a job is beneath your dignity, you must be really good at it.

I don't remember much about September except that a woman who needs a job thinks she'll go to New York and be a photographer. Contrast that with a documentary about William S. Burroughs. His son needs a job and Burroughs tells him a restaurant down the street is looking for a dishwasher.

Another Woman had a lot of middle-aged sex talk that must have bewildered younger viewers.

September had this stupid thing where the characters all had jobs like astrophysicist. Another guy rented the house to finish his novel. Why would anyone do that?

It makes me think of an old photographer I knew. He was from New York. He had a batch of pictures of musicians at a jazz festival. He had taken them for Playboy in the '60s but they were never printed. He also had a candid photo of an old couple sitting in folding chairs in the middle of an empty beach in the early morning. He said that photo made him rethink what is hip. The jazz cats were no match for this couple on the beach and they weren't even trying.

Allen should lay off the creative types and have more old people on the beach.

Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives

The first time I saw Woody Allen's Husband's and Wives, I had to close my eyes from time to time due to sea sickness. I've never seen a handheld camera that shaky before. It was in an arthouse theater in an old funeral home near the university. It arrived in theaters around the time news was breaking about Allen and Farrow's breaking up.

There were some college students on a first date sitting behind me. As we all waited for the film to start, the boy regaled his date with the story of his parents' divorce, how he felt the rug had been pulled out from under him, how his mother was driving somewhere and broke down sobbing. He still hadn't gotten over it. She pointed out that it was only a couple of years earlier. He concluded by explaining that this was why he wanted to be sure she actually liked him and didn't go out with him out of pity. I didn't see the logic of this. She was taken by surprise and said, "no, no," but not much else.

I just watched it again for the first time on Flimstruck, the Roku channel that carries the Criterion Collection. The movie was better than I remember. I understand now people who think it's one of his best movies.

James Franco--Then it IS true!

Well, there's been pretty much the same report on several different sites. James Franco's friends are worried about him. They're keeping an eye on him, but they don't seem to think he's suicidal. More like he might start binge eating.

But they all say this:

‘He is not surprised this came out. He reached out to multiple former students from his class, so he could speak to them. He’s genuinely remorseful,’ the insider added.

That confirms it. The accusations against him are horribly true.

I couldn't stand the guy anyway. His movie about the making of The Room might have been interesting to me, but not with him in it. It shouldn't matter to me, but I'm glad that more people will now share my prejudice.

Aziz Ansari

It makes me feel more confident about all the other sexual harassment/abuse/rape cases in the #MeToo movement that women have come to the defense of Aziz Ansari. A woman calling herself "Grace" apparently had a bad date with him. He was more into sex that evening than she was, but she didn't just tell him and didn't just leave. She was a photographer by trade. He had no power over her and he didn't threaten her. At least that's the defense made for Ansari. I don't know if they're right.

I did think that this was the case with George Takei. He had no power and shouldn't have been included in this. Playing Mr Sulu on Star Trek didn't give him power to destroy anyone's career.

Max Landis, on the other hand---we don't actually know what, if anything, he's accused of, but if he's not powerful in Hollywood his father is. That's the case with James Franco, too, exploiting students trying to start careers as actors.

My impression is that James Franco has an image of himself as a good liberal only because he doesn't mind having a gay following. Beyond that, you can look at the crap in his terrible "novel". He's a horrible person and not terribly bright. He has no clue what a bad writer he is. It raises serious doubts about every other supposedly intellectual celebrity, although Brooke Shields getting into Princeton blew the lid off that a long time ago. How smart is Ronan Farrow really? How smart is Woody Allen for that matter?

Logan Paul

Idiot.

Years ago, there was a report on the local news. A young fellow had taken a lot of drugs, fired a rifle out the window of his rental house and holed up there while police surrounded the house. There was live coverage on the local news. The guy's two roommates were out somewhere, saw their house on TV and rushed over to see what was happening. They couldn't contain their excitement at seeing their house on TV. They were both smiling and laughing as they talked to reporters.

I can understand it. At that stage of life, I probably would have been mostly amused at almost any of my friends getting into an armed stand-off with Police, and, thinking back to my friends back then, this would probably be justified. But I think I would have had the good sense to conceal my glee.
 
I read in Dear Abby or some such column---a woman wrote in about a relative, a woman who liked taking pictures at funerals. She liked getting pictures of people overcome with emotion. And I can kind of understand that----she was getting dramatic photos. Of course, no one wanted to be photographed then and again, the woman should have at least concealed her glee at getting great shots.

It seems like cheating anyway. Go to a war zone if you want dramatic photos. Taking pictures at a funeral is shooting fish in a barrel.

So I can sort of understand this You Tube "celebrity" Logan Paul and his associates not reacting appropriately when they came across a dead body in the woods in Japan. But it's just as well that You Tube barred him from their site. A French digital media company called Blackpills canceled some scripted web series he was set to produce and star in.

Social media is tricky

Finn wearing a dickey. Think he could say that without giggling?

Be careful what you say on the internet. It hasn't happened to me, but people tend to give things the worst possible interpretation.

A woman--I think they said she was a model, I don't know--posted a photo of Finn Wolfhard on Twitter and suggested he give her a call once he was grown up. This was interpreted as pedophilia. And some guy commented on a picture of a girl from the same show Wolfhard is on. She was dressed up for some event and the guy said she had grown up before their eyes. People attacked him for being a pervert.

I thought they sounded like a couple of old people patronizing their friends' grandchildren. They were basically saying, "What a handsome little gentleman!" or "What a pretty dress! You look so grown-up!"

When I was kid, I had an old man let me go first in line. "Age before beauty," he said smiling at me. He didn't know what "age before beauty" meant. And he thought I was a girl. He thought he was being very kind to a pitifully unattractive girl and I didn't correct him. Let him have his moment.

I didn't know who Finn Wolfhard was until recently. I read something about him in the news, googled him and watched a YouTube video of him sitting in his room singing and strumming a guitar. There were hundreds of comments from doting fans all telling him that he sang like a little angel. (He didn't. Sorry.)

This seemed dangerous to me. You don't want these people to feel like they're communicating with you directly. You don't want them picturing you reading their reactions to your YouTube videos. Look at all the kid actors who've had stalkers. Even Dustin Diamond had one. He had to move in with a co-star for a time.

Woody Allen, Mira Sorvino, Maureen Orth, et al

Is Mia Farrow sorry she was in every single movie Woody Allen made over a 15 year period? Has she apologized to Dylan for dating Woody Allen all those years? Mia and Dylan both claim that Woody was openly lusting after her from the time she was a toddler. Has Mia apologized for sacrificing Dylan on the altar of her own stardom? Didn't Mia notice that Dylan was running and hiding from Woody as they now claim? Mia fought in court to allow Woody to adopt her in spite of all this.

By her own account Mia Farrow is a terrible mother. The judge in the custody case said as much. How could she not notice that Soon-yi was dating Woody?

But now a couple of actresses have apologized to Dylan Farrow for being in Woody Allen movies.

The attacks on Allen are contradictory. He's attacked for ignoring Mia's children. Allen himself said he focused only on Moses, Dylan and Satchel (now Ronan) and the custody case revealed that he knew very little even about them. Yet they claim he was a "father-figure" to Soon-yi. One person managed to reconcile these two positions by saying that having no relationship whatsoever with Woody just made Soon-yi want his attention even more--it made him an even MORE of a father-figure. (Like Dinesh D'Souza's claim that Barack Obama's total lack of contact with his father meant his father had an even GREATER ideological influence over him.)

Maureen Orth wrote some nonsense, TEN UNDENIABLE FACTS ABOUT WOODY ALLEN. One or two of the "facts" WERE deniable and the others were irrelevant. She claimed that "three adult witnesses" confirmed Dylan's claims of abuse that day.

...Another babysitter told police and also swore in court that on that same day, she saw Allen with his head on Dylan’s lap facing her body, while Dylan sat on a couch “staring vacantly in the direction of a television set.” 

Staring vacantly is pretty much how one watches TV. But the babysitter who said this also denied that Allen and Dylan disappeared together---she said that they were never out of her sight for more than five minutes.

And why does Orth only count "adult witnesses"? Moses Farrow was thirteen-years-old, he was with them the entire time (the nannies weren't, apparently) and he was perfectly capable of noticing if they went anywhere together (they didn't). The accusation was made the next day so the memory was fresh in his mind. There was also a cook present in the house who said it did not happen---at no time were they running around trying to find Dylan and Woody as only one nanny claimed.

There was only one "adult witness" who says that the alleged incident could have happened and she got a book deal out of it. Her book ended with her professing her love and devotion to Mia Farrow and it was made into a Fox Network movie.

Orth says Allen lost four court battles. He lost the custody case no one expected him to win and he lost an appeal in that case; he filed an ethics complaint against a prosecutor and filed an appeal in that case as well. I wouldn't call them "court battles" exactly. It's undeniable, but what does Orth think it proves?

The ethics complaint was against a prosecutor who claimed in a press release that he didn't charge Allen with a crime only because the trial would have been too much for Dylan. Orth doesn't mention the undeniable fact that Dylan had until she was 20 to file criminal charges.

It was insane to allow Allen and Farrow to adopt children together when they weren't married. And what was their excuse for not simply getting married? People apparently had the idea they were married anyway. They could have continued to live separately. I've known married couple who lived in separate countries.

More women accuse Franco

I wondered if I was wrong to attack James Franco. Did he use his position of power to commit sexual abuse and to keep his victims quiet like Weinstein and the rest of those guys did?

Yes, it turns out he did.

The Los Angeles Times reported this morning that were accusations of just that. Franco bullied young women into doing sex scenes, orgy scenes, nude scenes and topless scenes with the promise that he could advance their careers.

“I feel there was an abuse of power, and there was a culture of exploiting non-celebrity women, and a culture of women being replaceable,” said Tither-Kaplan, who was one of many women who took to Twitter on Sunday night to vent anger over Franco’s win and his support of Time’s Up, the initiative combating sexual misconduct in Hollywood.

She told The Times that in a nude orgy scene she filmed with Franco and several women three years ago, he removed protective plastic guards covering other actresses’ vaginas while simulating oral sex on them.

Two other student actresses also recounted negative on-set experiences. Both said Franco became angry when no women, while at the shoot, would agree to be topless.

Franco’s attorney, Michael Plonsker, disputed all of the women’s allegations and directed The Times to Franco’s comments Tuesday night on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

I haven't seen it, but it sounds like Seth Myers was a little more assertive that Colbert when he interviewed Franco on his late night talk show.

Franco said he had a perfectly fine relationship with Ally Sheedy and didn't understand why she tweeted those things about him.

“I heard you mention last night on Stephen Colbert’s show that you had directed her in a play. You’ve had a good experience with her,” Meyers said. “Have you reached out to her … and are you not curious as to why she would do that if you had, from your perspective, a good relationship with her?”

“Yes, I had a great — I had a great relationship with her,” Franco responded. “She took the tweet down. I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“Not curious enough though to reach out to her as someone that you’ve had a good relationship with before, and to try to understand why she would have done that?” Meyers pressed.

Franco paused. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was so shocking. I don’t know. I just — I guess I’m just letting it be.”

Myers was a veritable tiger compared to Stephen Colbert. I can't understand what was wrong with Colbert.

Did Michael Douglas masturbate in front of an employee?

Michael Douglas (right) with child-killer Bibi Netanyahu.

"This would not be presented in a court of law. This is way past the statute of limitations," said Hollywood Zionist Michael Douglas.

Douglas's lawyer had been contacted by reporters investigating a story that he masturbated in front of an employee thirty years earlier.

"As I say, I will fess up to colorful [i.e. obscene] language, but the issue of masturbating in front of her? That rung is something I’ve only heard about the last year. It’s not an expression that related to the ’80s. So I thought it stunk."

Douglas is trying to get out in front of the story, to deny it before it's even reported.

I don't know if it's true or not. He has no evidence for his claim that the woman is trying to get a book deal, and it wouldn't be much of a book if the big selling point is him masturbating.

I would call the book The Time Michael Douglas Masturbated in Front of Me

Stephen Colbert fawns over James Franco

It's embarrassing to watch. First Colbert asks permission to bring it up, then he says Franco was criticized only for wearing a "Time's Up" pin. No, the pin wasn't the problem. It was his going after high school girls, trying to physically force his girlfriend to fellate him in a car and bullying one of his acting students to appear nude in a movie she was barely being paid for.

Franco was obviously lying when he said he didn't read the tweets, didn't know what they were about, but he said they weren't accurate whatever they said. What is wrong with Colbert? He let Franco drone on trying to sound sincere without saying anything. Colbert knew what was in the tweets. If Franco denied reading them Colbert could have told him.

Maybe John Oliver wasn't so bad after all questioning Dustin Hoffman.

Here it is. James Franco on The Late Show:

https://youtu.be/GpEuHHMy-Z8

The Daily Beast claimed Franco was "grilled" by Colbert.

James Franco, cheap pervert

Don't know what the movie's about but it's called The Long Home.

In Rick Schmidt's old book, Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices, he called for filmmakers to pay actors a $100-a-day per diem in addition to deferred pay. That was in the '80's and he noted back then that it was less than minimum wage. He considered it very little to be paying an actor. It would be about $200 a day in today's money.

So why was millionaire James Franco paying actors only $100 a day to be in whatever movie he was making? And any woman who wanted a speaking part had to do a nude scene. Why didn't he do his own nude scenes? You don't think that would boost DVD sales?

Traditionally, by the way, in photography, you pay a model at least double for posing nude. Franco was too cheap to pay $200 for days they shot nude scenes?

That grinning Zionist parasite is paying only slightly better than the kids I see on Craigslist making zero-budget zombie movies on video.

James Franco, sexual predator

James Franco in heavy make-up and "Time's Up" lapel pin.

I can't stand James Franco anyway and I have a feeling this will have no effect on him, but several women went on Twitter to accuse of sexual harassment.


"Cute #TimesUp pin James Franco. Remember the time you pushed my head down in a car towards your exposed penis & that other time you told my friend to come to your hotel when she was 17? After you had already been caught doing that to a different 17 year old?" his ex-girlfriend Violet Paley tweeted. The actress made it clear that she was an adult at the time and had a consensual relationship with him but that doesn't mean he gets to push her head down toward his exposed penis in a car.

Sarah Tither-Kaplan, a former student at Franco's "acting school", tweeted that she was forced to appear nude in a movie the scumbag was directing. She was paid only a hundred dollars a day to appear in it. Franco claimed that the vaguely worded contract she signed required her to do it.

She tweeted: “Remember a few weeks ago when you told me the full nudity you had me do in two of your movies for $100/day wasn't exploitative because I signed a contract to do it? Times up on that! I 100% did not feel like I had a choice to say no.” and "If a famous actor who has the ability to make or break my career with the snap of his fingers offers me a part, I don't have bargaining power. I need work. I need to eat. I need a career."

In 2014 he tried to molest a high school girl online. He's a millionaire movie star who's been in college for years, but claimed had no other way to meet women.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Bad Day at Black Rock

Spencer Tracy Double Feature

Didn't pay much attention but sat through Guess Who's Coming to Dinner last night. The daughter seemed like kind of an idiot. Did Sidney Poitier, playing a hyper-accomplished doctor, really want to be saddled with her?

After this, watched Bad Day at Black Rock again. The Jui-Jitsu fight seems less plausible every time I see it. No one owned a handgun they could lend to Spencer Tracy? He just had to shoot three people who were always together. I've always liked the movie and I shouldn't be slamming it.

It might have been interesting if the roles had been reversed----a guy who had been 4F fighting a bunch of combat veterans. 

Paul Haggis

I didn't like Crash. Everyone in it shows their depth of emotion in exactly the same way, by shouting the same obscenities over and over.

Police arrest a fellow. They yell, "PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!" Later, an off-duty cop orders a man to get out of his car: "GET OUT OF MY FUCKING CAR!"

A woman yells at her husband that the Latino workman repairing something in their home is a criminal even though the guy is right there in the next room and can hear everything she's bellowing.

Later, a gun store owners tells a customer, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY STORE!"

The nice, non-racist cop kills an unarmed man and plants a gun on him to make it look like self-defense, thus learning that maybe corrupt, murderous racist cops aren't so bad.

I'm amazed that people took that movie seriously.

Now Haggis, the Canadian ex-Scientologist who wrote and directed the movie, is being sued by a woman who claims he raped her. He denies it and he sued her back. He has also suggested that he's being targeted by the "Church" of Scientology and this may be what's behind the accusations.

Jerry Van Dyke RIP

I took my mother to the emergency room this morning at 2 AM. She's fine now. But I was in the waiting room at 5 AM watching Dick Van Dyke in an infomercial, marveling at what good shape he's in in his 90s. 

Then I come home and read this on Twitter about his brother:

RIP Jerry Van Dyke. I'm glad his mother wasn't still running when it happened.

--J Elvis Weinstein
A reference to his sit-com My Mother the Car.

Jerry Van Dyke has died at 86. 

He started in comedy the same way his brother did, in the Army. Dick Van Dyke avoided becoming a tail gunner by entertaining the troops. He told Marc Maron it was why he was such an energetic performer. Jerry Van Dyke stayed out of combat in the Korean War the same way.

It seemed very strange that the Army could simply order a soldier to be a comedian, but it turns out they could do this because they would freely steal everyone else's material, something you're not supposed to do in civilian life.

Netflix making sequel to Bright

I used to watch the Love Boat. I don't remember how old I was, but there weren't that many channels on TV in those days. I don't think anyone actually liked it, but you could watch it without paying attention, drift in and out and it made absolutely no difference.

So Netflix's big budget critical failure Bright getting 11 million views in thee days is less of a mystery to me. It's a combination hate-viewing, people who want something mindless to watch and those who actually like that sort of crap.

I sat through Nicolas Cage's Rage twice. It was terrible but it was kind of relaxing. A movie I didn't need to pay attention to. There was nothing to admire or think about. I didn't feel anxious or interested.

It's one reason I started finding it hard to sit through foreign films. I don't like having to have my eyes glued to the subtitles the whole time. I wish they'd bring back dubbing. 

I kept trying to watch this one French movie. I finally looked it up on Wikipedia. They often have very detailed descriptions of the plot that give away every plot twist and tell you how it ends. I read that then watched it and relaxed. I knew what was happening. I got the gist of it.

So Netflix announced it will do a sequel to Bright and they'll do it without Max Landis, the accused pervert who wrote the first one.

Yojimbo, new subtitles

I signed up for a free trial with Filmstruck, a Roku channel that carries the Criterion Collection. I watched Yojimbo. I've seen it countless times but haven't watched in a few years. Last time I saw it, I was surprised that they changed the subtitles. I wasn't entirely happy with it. The old translation seemed better.

There was a scene early on Toshiro Mifune picks a fight with some armed goons who had been menacing him.

The old version goes:

Mifune: "Such gentle faces."

"What?"

Mifune: "Anger makes you look even sweeter."

They explain to him how tough they are, how they're facing execution if they're ever arrested.

Mifune: "You're all pretty tough then?"

"Kill me if you can!"

Mifune: "It'll hurt."

In the new version, Mifune says:

"You guys have such cute faces."

"What!?"

"You act so tough but you couldn't hurt a fly. Adorable!"

One shows him his prison tattoo and says he'll be crucified if caught. The others say they're wanted and facing execution.

Mifune: "Then you won't mind if I kill you?"

"Kill me if you can!"

Mifune: "It'll hurt."

I'm writing this from memory. It might not be exact.

I assume this new translation is more accurate and it is an improvement most of the time. But it bothers me that they keep referring to people as "guys".

"Idiot! I'm not dying yet! I have quite a few guys to kill first!"

Yojimbo was remade as A Fistful of Dollars and more recently Last Man Standing. Kurosawa was reportedly annoyed at Leone's unofficial remake but Yojimbo was itself inspired at least in part by Dashiel Hammett's The Glass Key and possibly Red Harvest. Leone said that he heard that Yojimbo was based on an American story and wanted to take it back to its original source, but he probably should have gone back to the original novels and made his movie less of a direct rip-off.

Waiting for more on Max Landis

John Landis and his scumbag lawyer. That's Max Landis's mother behind them.

Still waiting for more Max Landis news.

Of course, he's probably getting advice from his scumbag father who got away with murdering two small children, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shinn Chen, on a movie set. John Landis denied everything. He directed a segment of The Twilight Zone movie. He had two children on the set in the middle of the night which was illegal in itself, then he had them perform their own stunt in which they and Vic Morrow were killed.

According to Landis's testimony, a movie director doesn't really do anything. The cameraman decides what to film. The actors decide what they do in front of the camera. Other people make the movie and he doesn't even pay that much attention.

You can be pretty sure that Max Landis's defense will be along those lines. He'll deny everything. For the moment, he's lying low and keeping quiet which is extremely unusual for him.

John Landis got away with it. Was acquitted of manslaughter and it had no effect on his career. He was banned by the Screen Actors Guild from working with children for two years. But, soon enough he was directing Macaulay Culkin in a Michael Jackson video. It turns out Jackson cared nothing about children.

John Landis is characteristic pose.