Anthony Weiner wants book deal. Independent filmmaker cashes in

Anthony Weiner may have to resort to self-publishing. He could alternate between books on politics and his role in Hillary Clinton's humiliating defeat using his real name and books on sexting using his sex offender name, Carlos Danger. (He might want to trademark that name.)

Weiner's been running around New York trying to get book deal. Nobody's interested.

Meanwhile, a guy in Queens is making a $5,000 Anthony Weiner-inspired movie.

The seamy sext-capades of disgraced ex-Congressman and onetime mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner has inspired a Queens indie filmmaker’s black comedy about a legislator with similar lurid cellphone habits.

Vilan Trub needed to look no further than across the street, where Weiner was living when the sexting scandal hit the headlines.

“It was a media circus over here and it definitely stuck in my mind,” Trub, 31, told the Daily News. “There was a funny aspect to the pictures of (Weiner) in the gym, taking selfies, but I decided to turn it into a crime thriller, asking, what if it wasn’t just pictures? What if everything spirals out of control and he doesn’t just screw up his own life, but his actions bring down a lot of people around him, which actually did happen to [Weiner] in reality.”

His “L.A. Confidential" take on the Weiner scandal morphed into “The Dirty Kind," which was filmed in Forest Hills in nine days on a razor-thin $5,000 budget.

...

“I’ll never forget that picture of him staring into the mirror with the towel,” Trub said, recalling his inspiration from an infamous Weiner selfie. “How delusional do you have to be at that point to not realize that what you’re doing is embarrassing?”

Avengers: Endgame

Here's one of the consequences of movie theaters switching to digital projectors. They don't have to make prints anymore. They can cheaply send out their comic book movie to every multiplex in country at the same time. This is one reason Avengers: Endgame is making so much money all at once. That and ticket price inflation. They filmed it in IMAX so they can charge extra.

The only thing anyone says about this thing is how much money it's making. That doesn't inspire me to want to see it, although the type of person who goes for that kind of crap won't want to be left out.

Captain America was just some guy who was 4F until a doctor injected him with a serum to make him fit enough to be drafted. His super power was that he was somewhat healthier than other people. How is he going to save the world from anything?

Alternative routes to filmmaking

Do you really need film school? What are some other, alternative routes to filmmaking? Some of these are less surprising than others. And, really, most of them were so successful, like John Lennon, that you couldn't possibly duplicate what they did to get into movies. So this is pretty useless.

Stand-up comedy. Woody Allen, Louis CK, Josh Weinstein.

Music. Serge Gainsbourg, Madonna, Rob Zombie, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Frank Sinatra, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, David Byrne, Fred Durst, Ian Astbury, Prince, John Lennon.

Journalism. Michael Moore, Tony Brown.

Novelist. Melvin Van Peebles wrote novels because, in France, that would allow him to direct movies. Stephen King. Michael Crichton.

Acting. Vittorio Di Sica. Too many to name.

Film distribution. Arch Hall, Sr., started a distribution company then made movies so he would have something to distribute. Doris Wishman.

Criticism. Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader. All those French New Wave guys.

Martial artist. Although there's overlap here with "acting", Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jackie Chan.


Animal wrangler. Wasn't there a guy who made a nature film/western based on his animal wrangling?

Commercials. Michael Cimino.

Photography. Stanley Kubrick, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin.

Playwright. David Mamet.

School prinicpal or teacher. There was a school principal who made short educational films. A local drama teacher who was also an actor and playwright directed a movie.

Shoplifters, Japan, 2018

My brother-in-law told me something I'd already thought about. He suggested I adopt some children quick so I'll have someone to take care of me in old age. This after taking him to the emergency room one morning while my sister was out of town, a few weeks after taking my mother to the emergency room in the middle of the night and taking my mother's elderly cousin to a couple of doctor's appointments. At this stage of life, I'd have to adopt a few teenagers and hope to develop enough of a bond that they won't abandon me even though I'd be of no use at all to them.

Shoplifters is about a dysfunctional impoverished family of sorts. Their actual relationship to one each other becomes murkier as the movie progresses before being cleared up.

The movie begins with them getting a new addition to the family. They find a little girl four- or five-years-old freezing outside on her doorstep. The man and boy take her home. They see signs she's been abused and they make the bizarre decision to simply keep her. It's hard to know what to make of this. Are they deeply moral outsiders or monsters who can't see the obvious problem with this?

The boy already shoplifts with the father, and then the new child joins in.

The movie is a bit long and rather grim. Perhaps akin to movies like Midnight Cowboy or Of Mice and Men or Sister, movies about people who are down and out, who have no one to turn to but each other but are of little help to each other.

Available free on Hulu.

If you want to make it a double feature, watch it with Boy (Japan, 1969) directed by Nagisa Oshima about a family of grifters. A ten-year-old boy lives with his father, step-mother and little half-brother. They make money by pretending to get hit by cars and demanding a cash settlement from the drivers. The step-mother plays the victim, but soon the kid has to take over.

I thought there may have even been a bit of a homage to Boy at one point in Shoplifters.

Boy is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Nollywood model

I came across an article somewhere suggesting that Black American filmmakers follow the Nollywood model.

Nollywood refers to a segment of the Nigerian movie industry. She shoot movies on video on small budgets. They then sell thousands of DVDs for a couple of dollars each.

But all they were talking about was filming movies to be released on DVD rather than theaters. I found it surprising that they weren't doing that anyway. Low budget movies don't get shown in theaters.

I thought the defining feature of Nollywood was the distribution, not the production. Everybody makes movies on video that cost almost nothing. Nollywood's innovation, I thought, was selling thousands of copies for a dollar or two each. My impression is that the DVDs are sold everywhere there.

The closest thing to this that I've heard of was in England. A guy made a very cheap action movie on video which he put out on DVD. But he arranged to sell it in local shops, and they sold for only $5 each. They were cheap enough that people would buy them on impulse, sight unseen, and they were so cheap that no one bothered to bootleg them.

There was something else I mentioned recently. The Spanish Language home video market, the one Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for. I don't know if it still exists or what shape it's in now, but it might be a model to follow.

Everything has changed now.

But in the early '80s, before Spike Lee came long, Hollywood was producing nothing for Black audiences. There were attempts by low budget filmmakers to fill that void, but they went nowhere.

An article I read at the time in a radical film journal argued that Black American audiences were too sophisticated to go for very low budget movies. Filmmakers were using Third World Cinema as a model for movies made for a First World audience.

One thing they mentioned was movies where the camera sat on a tripod and wasn't constantly moving as was the fashion in Hollywood at the time.

I don't know whether that would be a problem today. I'm amazed at how good zero-budget videos look now. Steadicams are freely available. Even fluid head tripods are surprisingly affordable. Buy a drone and get arial footage.

Anyone can make a movie now. Distribution is always going to be the problem.

You know who Doris Wishman was? She started out working as a film booker for her cousin, a movie distributor. Her husband died at age 31, and she wanted to something to fill her time, so, in 1958, she raised money from family and made a nudist camp movie.

She could never record live sound, but she didn't want to go through all the work of dubbing, so she was known for movies where you were hear the dialog but almost never see the person when they were speaking.

Her movies were awful, but her background in film distribution paid off. She knew who to take the movies to.

I suggested to a film student that he try to get a job in distribution for that reason, but he pooh-poohed my sensible advice.

Anti-vaxxers cite Brady Bunch episode

The anti-vaccination crowd are not bright people. They're now citing a 1969 Brady Bunch episode to prove that measles is no big deal.

From NPR:

The episode "Is There a Doctor in the House?" features the whole family sick with measles. First, Peter gets sent home from school. Mother Carol Brady, played by Florence Henderson, describes his symptoms as "a slight temperature, a lot of dots and a great big smile," because he gets to stay home from school for a few days.

Once the rest of the six kids come down with measles, the youngest two Brady siblings fool around, with Bobby trying to color Cindy's measles spots green.

"If you have to get sick, sure can't beat the measles," sister Marcia says, as the older Bradys sit around a Monopoly board on one of the kid's beds. All the kids are thankful they don't have to take any medicine or, worse, get shots, the thought of which causes Jan to groan.

People who are critical of vaccines bring the episode up often. It's used in videos and memes and is cited by activists like Dr. Toni Bark, who testifies against vaccines in courts and at public hearings across the United States. To them, it aptly illustrates what they consider to be the harmlessness of the illness.

"You stayed home like the Brady Bunch show. You stayed home. You didn't go to the doctor," she says. "We never said, 'Oh my God, your kid could die. Oh my God, this is a deadly disease.' It's become that."

There were 25,000 cases of measles in 1969 and 41 deaths. 

Elena Conis, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in medical history, explained that circumstances in 2019 are vastly different from those in 1969.

"In 1969, we had less control over infectious diseases," she says. "Smallpox was still a reality. There were far more cases of polio. In that context, it made sense to think of measles as a lesser threat."

 In contrast to the Brady Bunch episode, I'll mention here an episode of Hazel. Bobby Buntrock draws dots on his face. An unwanted guest sees him, thinks he has measles or chickenpox and says, "You---you! Get away from me!" and flees.

There was a 1950 stage play, a comedy called The Curious Savage set in a sanitarium. One of the patients carries a doll she thinks is her baby. In a running gag, she keeps warning people to be careful because he has the measles. This was what killed her baby.

Why I don't watch super hero movies

Cesar Romero was pushing 60 when he gave a wildly energetic performance as the Joker on TV's Batman. Jack Nicholson was only only 52 when he played the Joker in 1989. I haven't seen it since then but didn't he mostly sit around talking?

It was like when John Astin replaced Frank Gorshin as the Riddler on the TV show. He just walked around in a costume and smiled when he talked.

I can't remember how many Superman movies I saw. I saw the first one and I saw the third, crappy Israeli-produced one where they kept re-using the same shot of Superman flying. But I barely remember the middle one.

The part where Lois Lane started reciting poetry was just embarrassing. I don't know how that ended up in the movie. The tagline for the movie was, "You will believe a man can fly," but there was nothing special about the flying scenes.

Maybe if I hadn't stopped watching superhero movies at that point I would have liked them, but I doubt it.

There was a time when I read comic books. Marvel Comics just annoyed me. They wasted so much space on character development that the stories never got anywhere. Everything was continued in the next issue. Even people who liked that kind of crap got tired of it. The one Captain America comic book I bought started with Captain America blubbing over his long-dead sidekick, Bucky. I don't think anything happened after that. It was just Captain America moping around thinking. They could have used the same drawing in every panel with a different thought balloon and it wouldn't have changed the story one bit.

Captain America and Bucky in happier days.

And, back then, exactly 50% of Marvel comic books was advertising. You'd have two pages of comics, two pages of advertising. Occasionally you would be surprised by three pages of comics, but then there would be three pages of ads. When you added it all together, with front and back covers, it was half advertising. Other comic books weren't like that.

Now, long ago, there was a cheap Gold Key UFO comic book I bought. It had some "true" UFO stuff in there, such as the story of Bo and Peep, a couple who led a UFO cult. Their real names were Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. Their cult eventually started calling itself "Heaven's Gate". Thirty-nine of its members committed suicide together in 1997.

After the mass suicide, I thought the comic book might be worth a few dollars. I looked for it but it was long gone.

Michael Jackson's nephew cashing in

Someone called Taj Jackson, nephew of Michael Jackson, is trying to raise $777,000 on gofundme.com (it's at $138,125 now) to make a documentary series to counter Leaving Neverland.

Leaving Neverland is the HBO doc in which two of Michael Jackson's victims detail how he sexually abused them.

From the gofundme site:

This explosive documentary series will conclusively destroy decades of salacious myths which have been told and sold about Michael Jackson ad nauseam. In doing so, we will shine a light on the corruption within the media and entertainment industries which conceived and perpetuated them. Falsehoods like: 

“I heard Michael Jackson paid a settlement to avoid a criminal trial for child abuse” Wrong. 

“I heard the boy described Michael Jackson’s genitalia accurately” Wrong. 

“I heard Michael Jackson paid over 200 million to as many as 20 victims” Wrong.

I'm not sure Michael Jackson would want a documentary to carefully investigate the genitalia description.

Taj Jackson has never directed anything. He was executive producer on a reality show he starred in, The Jacksons: Next Generation. It's been announced that will direct a zombie movie he's also a producer on.

But he's very wisely cashing in on this. James Safechuck, Wade Robson and their families were paid nothing for Leaving Neverland. I assume Taj will pay himself directing and producing fees, do music for it and get paid if anyone ends up watching the thing.

There must be some way for someone not related to Michael Jackson to get in on this, to get their hands on some of that outraged-Michael-Jackson-fan money. 

Zero for Conduct on Criterion Channel

I've seen this thing a few times over the years. Saw it in 16mm in the days before home video and I saw it on VHS and on streaming video. But seeing it now on the Criterion Channel is the first time I've seen a good print of it.

Now I'm sitting here watching what I guess was an educational film by the same director, Jean Vigo, showing French swimming champion Jean Taris demonstrating different swimming techniques. Ten minutes, 1931. His swimsuit could have been a bit more modest. Ends with a surrealist flourish.

People who are in it for the money

I find it rather astonishing that there are people who become actors, musicians or comedians just to make money.

I've known people who were intelligent and talented who had no education or trade who looked to writing thinking it might be a way out of low wage jobs, but I think they knew they were clutching at straws.

"I need to finish my novel so I can make some money," one said.

I saw a documentary about Toshiro Mifune. They interviewed the actress Kyoko Kagawa who said that, in Japan after the war, people became movie stars just because there was no other work. Mifune himself had been a photographer in the Army and applied for a job as an assistant camera operator. His application was misdirected and he became a movie star instead.

I read about a child actor who was doing it just because she wanted to. She met another child actor who said he didn't like acting---he was doing it for the money, something that had never occurred to her.

And there was Gallagher, the comedian. He was big in the late '70's, a prop comic. Had some specials on Showtime. He was known for smashing watermelons with a sledge hammer. He was interviewed by Marc Maron on his podcast. He claimed he was a chemist before he became a comedian and that now he was out to spread scientific knowledge using his skills as a comedian. I think he was full of crap. I haven't heard of him doing anything like that and he's said himself that the work he did as a "chemist" was for a company that worked with such a narrow range of chemicals that all he had to do was take two classes at a community college to qualify.

But Maron asked why he gave up science and Gallagher said it was because comedy was so lucrative. He was in it for the money.

Then there were the Von Trapp Family Singers. The Sound of Music wasn't quite accurate. Captain Von Trapp lost his money in the stock market crash. His wife and children began performing because they needed the money.

Now I know people who majored in film in college. The economy is so bad that they're not missing out on anything. I can't see how they'll make any money making movies, either. It seems impossible and all they're interested in is movies about super heroes. They learn to direct. I see them making shot lists, but they've never worked with actors and I don't think they know anything about the history of film.

I've met some in the '80's for whom it was all or nothing. Hollywood or bust. Commercials and industrial films were beneath them. I tried to talk to them about feature films being made back then in the days before prosumer video for little more than the cost of film and processing, but they had zero interest. I don't think they made any student films, which may have been just as well.

Now that I think about, Charlie Chaplin said he went into it for the money.

That may be the key to success at least for some people. You need to at least be aware of the business side of it.

Robert Rodriguez didn't make El Mariachi as a work of art. He made it for the Spanish language home video market. He called up the companies to find out what format they needed it in before he set out to make it.

Mountain Mafia again

I watched the rest of Mountain Mafia. I still didn't follow the plot, but it had a naked lady in it and the late Robert  Z'Dar had a cameo. It had a sex scene and a lot of murders. I looked it up on imdb.com. I wonder what the budget on the thing was and how it was marketed.

There have people who've talked about adapting the Nollywood model of movie production to the United States and this might be an example.

I read about a guy in England who had made an extreme low budget action film. He arranged to sell DVDs in local shops. They sold for $5, or 5 pounds, or whatever they use for money there. They were cheap enough that people could buy them on impulse and so cheap no one would bother bootlegging them. And he did quite well.

The director has four other directing credits on imdb.com and a long list of acting credits.

Available here on Roku:

 https://www.rokuguide.com/channels/ten-tv-gold

Mountain Mafia

I came across a free Roku channel I added at some point and had forgotten about. Started watching a movie called Mountain Mafia, made in rural Kentucky. A fellow comes back from Iraq a grizzled veteran. He becomes a hitman for local drug runners. I didn't really follow plot in spite of the narration.

It had a large cast of guys, all the same type, around the same age and about three women who were around the same age as the men although one was playing the star's mother.

It was terrible. Just terrible.

Although I should admit that I turned it off after twenty minutes, so, as far as I know, only the first twenty minutes were terrible.

It was reasonably well-made. They had a lot of guns. I don't know if they were real or airsoft. We see a Nissan Sentra blow up and several people shot and killed. A murder victim is dismembered. We see a grown man running across a field. How many adults can run? If I were to run in a movie, I would film myself from the waist up in front of a green screen moving my arms. I would do it as a special effect.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video.

First screening was in Lebanon, Kentucky in 2010. According to the 2010 census, the population was 6,331.

Now I feel like watching the rest of it.

I was a little disappointed in the violence and the main character didn't have a clear goal. I think the filmmaker should have sat through the films of Aleksey Balabanov a few times, like Orson Welles watching Stagecoach over and over before directing Citizen Kane.

And here, I think, is an important lesson. When everyone in your movie is the same age, sex and race and speaks in the same regional accent, the audience knows your age, sex, race and region of origin. Keep them guessing. Always throw in a few old people and maybe some teenagers. Try to have an even mix of men and women. And, this is a different matter, but if you're filming in Kentucky, throw in a snake handling church.

Jimmy Lydon's lesson to us all

I turned on the TV just before 6 AM and saw the closing credits of 77 Sunset Strip. I saw the name James Lydon as associate producer. I looked it up. It was former child actor Jimmy Lydon.

According to Wikipedia, Jimmy Lydon became an actor in the early 30's when his alcoholic father decided to quit working, forcing everyone in the family get jobs. So Jimmy became an actor. Appeared on stage and later in movies.

It reminded me of Kyoko Kagawa saying in a documentary that people were forced become movie stars because there weren't many jobs available in post war Japan.

Acting is the only profession open to children today. There was a child actor, a girl who appeared in Mrs Doubtfire, who said that another child actor told her that he was only in it for the money.

Going into a field with little hope for success because you need a job is probably healthier than people who desperately want to be famous.

A few years ago, I worked with some people who were going to make a five minute movie for YouTube. It should have taken a weekend but it dragged on for weeks. The "director" explained that he WANTED everyone to get annoyed and quit because then he'd know whoever was left really wanted to do it. What a brilliant strategy! The only guy with a camcorder quit. I had a little pocket camera I carried around.

"I have this," I said.

"It's not high definition."

"Yes, it is."

"It is? Okay! We'll use that!"

Everyone working on that thing seemed to be penniless. They took me aside and asked me if I could give one of them a ride home, otherwise they'd all have to pool their change to give him bus fare.

The guy thought that YouTube money would be his salvation, but he wasn't in any hurry for it to start rolling in.

I don't know if it was more or less realistic than an old friend I had who decided to become a writer, I think because he had no other options. It was the only way out of a life of low wage jobs. He was a very good writer but nothing came of it.

I always saw this as clutching at straws and maybe it was, maybe it was even for Jimmy Lydon and Kyoko Kagawa.

You may as well try it. The economy isn't going to get any better. You won't miss out on the economic boom.

Field of Dreams

I'd never seen the thing. It looked insipid. I started watching it---it's free on Hulu---and was still surprised at how bad it was.

Kevin Cosner is a farmer who hears a voice that says If you build it, he will come, which he somehow decides means that he should build a baseball field. Then---well, I didn't follow it. Ghosts of baseball players start appearing for some reason. They're probably the last historical figures anyone would ever bother to raise from the dead.

At least they got a lot of the crap out of the way quick. He built the thing in the first twenty minutes.

I looked up a few negative reviews online, mostly from sports writers who pointed out the historical inaccuracy. "Shoeless Joe" was left handed in real life but presented as being right-handed. And he was a Southerner, not an Italian from New York. And they noted that the players were all white. Where was the Negro League and why didn't James Earl Jones have anything to say about that?

In real life, mowing down two to three acres of corn couldn't bankrupt a farm like it did in the movie.

The only thing more dreary than a movie buff is a sports fan. Passively watching a movie is bad enough without it being about people passively watching sports.

The movie was a Reagan era attack on the 1960's. Cosner had committed a terrible injustice against his dead father by preferring a different baseball team and now has to make amends.

Why did a farmer own a Volkswagen bus? He drives it from Iowa to Boston and back. Those things are murder on long drives. Everything seems two or three times as long.

I have no idea what people saw in that father-son thing. It was anti-climactic.

Playing baseball was probably a great job back then, but you don't think any of those guys were looking forward to retirement? Even if you loved playing baseball, doing it beyond the grave for eternity seems way too much.

Olivia Jade a terrible daughter

Olivia Jade was callously partying with other YouTube "stars" while her poor parents agonize over the years they could end up in prison, TMZ reported.

Meanwhile, a couple of "news" sites have dismissed claims by the National Enquirer that William Macy is about to divorce Felicity Huffman over the scandal. And it's being reported that Huffman may be sentenced to "home confinement" instead of jail. Which sounds pretty nice, actually. I wouldn't mind staying home for a couple of months.

Comedian elected president of The Ukraine

I hope he's more Pat Paulson than Al Franken because Al Franken was a right-wing pro-war Democrat and a groper.

Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been elected president of Ukraine with over 70% of the vote. He reportedly ran on a vague anti-corruption platform.

I can see how a comedian could do pretty well in politics. If they can't make an argument they make a joke. They use jokes to cover up holes in their reasoning. It's embarrassing when non-comedians try it. 

Man of Aran (1934)

 From the maker of Nanook of the North, about people living on a big rock island off the coast of Ireland. They have no soil. They go out on a small boat to catch an enormous, weird-looking (and harmless) basking shark.

It made me nervous watching the Man of Aran's tween son messing around and sitting on the edge of a cliff. He's out there alone and decides to climb down the cliff which seems unwise. But I'm sure the kid survived making the movie. He was cute in his sweater, baggy pants and tam.

The people on the island take little advantage of living in the 20th century.

Come to think of it, the filmmakers were the same way, making essentially a silent movie in 1934. It had music and some unsyncronized sound.  

You should be happy to know that, like Nanook of the North, the movie was "docufiction" or "ethnofiction", much of it phony. The people there didn't hunt for sharks. They had to bring people in to show them how to use a harpoon. The locals risked their lives in a small boat in bad weather even though none of them knew how to swim, something they only did for the camera. No one in the "family" presented in the movie were related. The director picked them for looks from among the locals. He said himself that they were barely paid. It was true that locals would gather seaweed, but they didn't do it when they were in danger of being swept out to sea.

Happy Easter!

I tried to observe the holiday by watching Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew late last night, but all I could find on Roku was the dubbed version. Normally, I prefer dubbed movies---I'm tired of reading subtitles. I don't know how Italians feel about seeing it in Italian, but hearing it in English didn't do it. I should have just turned the sound down since I expected to sleep through half of it anyway.

Johnny Crawford and Marian Seldes from an episode of The Rifleman. Mark's vision of his late mother.

Roman Polanski sues the Motion Picture Academy

Polanski with Mia Farrow

Roman Polanski has done surprisingly well in court in the past. He somehow sued Vanity Fair for libel in a British court even though he couldn't step foot in Britain without being arrested and shipped back to the United States for sentencing. The magazine claimed he had been hitting on women right after the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate. He won that lawsuit with the help of Mia Farrow who flew to Britain and testified for him.

Britain is known for its libel laws favoring the plaintiff, but how do you defame a convicted and admitted child rapist?

Now Polanski is suing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for kicking him out last year on the same day it expelled Bill Cosby.

Harland Braun is representing him. Can Polanski sue without appearing in court? Why does Polanski care if they kicked him out? He won't get to vote on the Oscars, but so what?

He should show some self-respect. Stop pretending to be a Hollywood director. Start filming in French and Polish, stop using American movie stars and quit making movies set in the United States.

Even before he pleaded guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse", the US treated him lousily. When his pregnant wife was murdered, the press tried to suggest that he was the killer even though he was in England at the time. The Europeans feel some sympathy for him having survived the Nazi genocide, but Americans didn't care.

Polanski and wife.

This explains something

Came across this on counterpunch.com:

In a quick scan, I didn’t find much new in the redacted Mueller Report, but this stood out:  the investigation of George Papadopoulos started over concerns that he might be an agent of…………………ISRAEL. That probably kills the impeachment hearings, right Senator Schumer? (When the Israeli connection to Iran/contra was exposed, the steam rapidly dissipated from the Democrats desire to dig much further into the matter.)

It was known at the time that the Democrats put a time limit on the Iran/Contra investigation, and they came right out and said that if they continued, they would find more and more stuff on Reagan and they would be left with little choice but to impeach him, but they didn't want to impeach him because of all the wonderful things he was doing.

Even if the Democrats' explanantion was partially true, the Israeli connection makes more sense.

"Classic" films

A "classic movie" still.

I keep going to cracked.com. They keep running "articles" on what they call "classic movies". Like this one, "Six Classic Films That Almost Turned Out Terrible".

That sounds interesting, doesn't it. Except the "classic films" they talk about were Captain America: Civil War, The Terminator, Groundhog Day, Gremlins, My Cousin Vinny and The Lord of the Rings.

Am I just way too old to be reading that crap? Is that really what people think of when they think of "classic films"?

Then I read this other thing. There was a long article published somewhere complaining about the way women are portrayed in movies. It was written by a woman who, it turned out, only went to movies based on children's books, based on comic books or that may as well have been based on comic books. She said that she took her mother to a movie about a princess who knew kung fu.

"At least she knew kung fu," she said as though this rendered the character a feminist heroine.

"They all know kung fu," observed her mother.

So why on earth were two grown women going to a movie about a princess? I saw a movie about Princess Margaret once, but that was about the degeneracy of an actual royal family.

Someone had posted a link to the article on a message board frequented mainly by women who preferred books and movies intended for children, so I had to be careful what I said. I politely suggested that the author of the article should try going to movies made for adults and they all thought I was a misogynist.

Leaving Neverland

I thought I had to have HBO to see it, but I'm watching Leaving Neverland on Hulu. I heard it was hard to watch. I thought knowing that and being prepared for it would help, and maybe it did help, but not enough.

Barbra Streisand's comments defending Jackson are even more inexplicable now. Did it make sense for her to "blame" the parents when she didn't think what Jackson did was that bad to begin with?

If Jackson were still alive we could go after him and leave the poor parents alone.

Super VHS back in action

I moved a desk out and found a box of S-VHS tapes. They haven't been made in years. I pulled out my old S-VHS camcorder. It still works.

I had two of them. I don't know where the other one went. How could I lose something that big?

One I bought on eBay just as digital video was taking over, and one I bought for $35 after it was completely obsolete from a guy who used it to videotape church services. The one I bought on eBay had once been dropped ten feet, but it still worked.

Made me think it would be a good idea to make a movie on S-VHS. It's time we reassessed the unique visual qualities of analog video. It could be the next PXL-2000.

Making a movie in an obsolete format would take the pressure off. There'd be no thought that the movie might turn out really good and be your ticket to fame.

Notre Dame

"Notre Dame is burning," a co-worker said.

"Really?"

He didn't use a French or pseudo-French pronunciation, so I thought he was talking about that university that likes football so much, so I thought, fine.

Then I saw the video.

I don't know how old the cathedral is, technically, since it took a couple hundred years to build. But it made me think of an especially moronic pro-Zionist Christian I was acquainted with who visited Israel and thought the 1,300-year-old Dome of the Rock should be destroyed because she thought the mosaics were too bright.

Lori Loughlin and husband plead innocent

Well, good for her! Lori Loughlin and her husband along with fifteen other parents have pleaded Not Guilty to charges against them in the College Admissions scandal.

I don't know what their defense will be but they might give some thought to throwing Olivia Jade under the bus.

In Hollywood, there was a big crackdown on celebrities after John Landis got away with the murder of two children in the Twilight Zone case. Attorneys for Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty pointed this out when he was arrested on cocaine charges in 1985.

But I don't know where we are now in the public backlash department. Is there a backlash for or against celebrities? Will jurors see the parents as victims, fighting back against a corrupt, blatantly unfair, openly racist college admissions process in the only way they could?

Is "Prince" Harry married?

Is "Prince" Harry married? Because they're reporting that he's "expecting his first child". This is old news but I just noticed it now.

There are serious doubts about his paternity. Harry looks exactly like the commoner his Mum was sleeping with nine months before he was born. He wanted to get a DNA test, but the Queen ordered him not to.

There are doubts about the Queen's paternity as well. She and her sisters were the products of artificial insemination. They look nothing alike and may well have had different fathers. U.K. taxpayers are paying a fortune to what is likely an inbred family of  commoners.

It's been reported that Charles, William and Harry have tried to improve the royal gene pool by marrying better-looking women. The Royal Family was getting weird-looking and they apparently set out to do something about it.

If they really want to reinvigorate the Royal Family, they need to start marrying women from families where everyone dies young. They need a higher turnover. The "Queen Mum" lived to be over 100 and it's likely that Elizabeth will go another ten years. Charles may be in his 80's before he becomes king. Luckily, Charles had his sons a bit late in life, so William will be relatively young and dynamic when he takes over, but that just means that the British people will be saddled with him for decades.

[Yeah, I kind of remember now. I said all this same stuff when he got married.]

Admissions scandal: Feds threaten teens

Prosecutors in the college admissions scandal are trying to pressure parents and force them to plead guilty by threatening to prosecute their children.They've sent letters to some of them warning them that they're under investigation. Prosecutors want to force the parents to plead guilty so their spawn won't end up behind bars, too.

Olivia Jade should probably stop giving her parents the silent treatment. Her mother, Lori Loughlin, and her father who has that Italian name I haven't bothered to learn, might just decide that a couple of years in prison would do their bratty, ungrateful daughter some good.

It happens all the time. Parents urge their children to confess to police or plead guilty to charges they could easily get out of. The parents think they're teaching the kids to respect the law, but all that teaches them is that a criminal record isn't something to avoid.

Lori Loughlin herself has been cheerfully signing autographs and even politely greeting prosecutors.

I'd like to know who the prosecutors are and what colleges they went to. Are they from rich families, trying to keep the nouveau riche out of their alma maters, or are they poor boys trying to get back at the rich kids who looked down on them because they had to work their way through law school.

Grey Gardens, 1975

Watching Grey Gardens, a cinema verite film about Jackie Onassis's eccentric aunt, Edith "Big Edie" Ewing Bouvier Beale, and cousin, Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale, living together in their run down Long Island mansion.

Little Edie is fifty-six in the movie. My age. And I'm watching this thing with my elderly mother. I hope it doesn't hit too close to home.

I was a little worried when Big Edie is sitting out in the sun and threatens to "get naked."

Made by Albert and David Maysles.

Weirdly, there was a 2009 made-for-TV movie with the same title starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as Big and Little Edie.

Available on The Criterion Channel.

Wanda, 1970

Wanda shows up late to divorce court with curlers in her hair. She tells the judge that the children are better off with her coal miner husband and she has no objection to their divorce. She tries to get work in a clothing factory where she had worked before for a few days, but she's told that she worked too slow. A traveling salesman buys her a drink in a bar and we next see them in bed together in motel room, him trying to sneak out without speaking to her. She goes to a movie, falls asleep, wakes up and discovers that she's been robbed.

The story actually picks up pretty good after that, becomes a grimly realistic crime movie.

Barbara Loden directed and starred. She had been an actress who appeared on stage, became a regular on Ernie Kovaks old show and appeared in Wild River and Splendor in the Grass directed by her second husband, Elia Kazan.

Made for a hundred fifteen thousand dollars in 1970, filmed in 16mm in long takes in a documentary style that gave it the feel of a zero budget movie but with a bigger cast and better locations. Filmed with a crew of four.

A brilliant film, shot in Scranton, Carbondale, and Philadephia, Pennsylvania among other locales.

It was Barbara Loden's only feature. She died of cancer in 1980 at age 48.

Available on The Criterion Channel.

People still don't have this straight?

I just read an article picking on Woody Allen. Seems to question whether he's REALLY making a movie in Spain.

Then I looked at the comments. There are people who STILL think he was married to Mia Farrow. They think Soon-yi was his step-daughter or his adopted daughter. One thought she was his actual biological daughter. A couple of them thought she was Dylan Farrow.

I avidly followed the story back when it was actually news. I remember sitting there with my throat burning from those horrible perfume samples they used to put in magazines so I could read some of Maureen Orth's crap in Vanity Fair. I was out of work for part of this time and paid out what little money I had for magazines and tabloids. I bought a copy of the book by one of the Nannies, I got Mia Farrow's autobiography from the library. I watched the made-for-Fox-TV movie based on Farrow's book. The scene I still remember was the one where Mia and Frank Sinatra had just consummated their marriage. He says, "How did you like it MY WAY, baby?"

And I didn't go through that hell to read comments from a bunch of ignoramuses who don't know the first thing about it.

Should American reporters be extradited?

So is the U.S. going to start extraditing American reporters who violate other countries' secrecy laws?

I remember years ago when Pat Buchanan, usually a friend to Nazis, wanted to extradite a wanted war criminal to the USSR. This was because the guy could have been sentenced to death in the Soviet Union and Buchanan considered it a good precedent to extradite someone facing execution.

You'd think all the right-wing DNC Democrats railing against Assange would at least pretend it was based on some actual principle.

Girls in Uniform, Susanne Bier, Lars von Trier, In a Better World

Long ago, I saw the movie Mädchen in Uniform (Germany, 1931). A girl goes to a Prussian boarding school run by a proto-fascist headmistess and falls in love with the school's one compassionate teacher. Banned by the Nazis and banned in the United States until Eleanor Roosevelt praised it.

It surprised me how refreshing it was to see a movie with an all female cast for a change. There are way too many men in movies.

I just read an old article in Variety about Susanne Bier who suggested a separate Oscar category for best female director. And why not? They have separate categories for male and female actors.

“At its most cynical,” Bier said, “this would reward the choices made by studios who consider the work of women filmmakers, while shaming those who do not.”

The moronic comments attacking her---"lol" is not really an argument---made me think it was probably a good idea.

I don't know what Lars von Trier has against her. Remember his long, rambling Nazi "joke" that got him kicked out of Cannes? Here it is again----I'll put references to Susanne Bier in bold:

The only thing I can tell is that I thought I was a Jew for a long time and I was very happy being a Jew. Then, later on, came Susanne Bier and I wasn't so happy about being a Jew. Oh, that was a joke, sorry. But it turned out I was not a Jew and, if I was a Jew, I would be a second-rate Jew because there is a kind of hierarchy. Anyway, I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out I was really a Nazi, you know ... because my family was German - Hartmann - ... which also gave me some pleasure. So I'm kind of ... [Here a journalist interrupts: "Sir?", but Von Trier does not respond.] I ... what can I say? I understand Hitler. ... I think he did some wrong things, yes absolutely. But I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end. [Here Kirsten Dunst interrupts him, saying to someone else, "Oh my God, this is terrible!" Von Trier turns to her and reassures her: "But there will come a point at the end of this." Then he turns to the press again.] No, I'm just saying that I think I understood the man. He's not what you would call a good guy, but I ... yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit, yes. But come on, I'm not for the Second World War! And I'm not against Jews - Susanne Bier! - no, not even Susanne Bier. That was also a joke. I'm of course very much for Jews - no, not too much because Israel is a pain in the ass. But still, how can I get out of this sentence? [Here a journalist interrupts: "By another question! Here's your salvation." But Von Trier continues:] No, I just want to say, about the art of the ... I'm very much for Speer. Speer I liked. Albert Speer I liked. He was also maybe [not?] one of God's best children, but he had some talent that was kind of ... possible for him to use during ... [sighs] OK, I'm a Nazi!"

Von Trier had grown up thinking that his Jewish stepfather was his biological father. He had only recently been told by his mother on her deathbed that his biological father was a German. I guess the only joke here is that he keeps calling Germans "Nazis".

I've never understood von Trier's appeal. I liked Melancholia but it was in English and von Trier apparently can't distinguish one accent in English from another. A British and an American actress play sisters. 

Susanne Bier's In a Better World

I just watched some of Susanne Bier's In a Better World, available on The Criterion Channel. 

It was Danish, but I had said this before about Sweden, that it seems so clean and wholesome and progressive, how could a Swedish movie not be dramatically inert? How could they have any conflict? It turns out, of course, that the country is full of rapists and Nazis.

But Bier saw this same problem with Denmark and set out to make Danish society look a bit rougher. It has a couple of smaller tweenagers dealing with a school bully, which they do rather effectively. Then a father deals with a bullying auto mechanic.

Although, come to think of it, the main characters were pretty much all male.

Julian Assange arrested

Edward Snowden had the good sense to go first to China then Russia.

Israel Shamir told Julian Assange that he should go to Russia if he wanted to be safe from the US, but Assange thought that western Europe's bourgeois "democracies" would protect him.

A lesson for us all.

The worst Rifleman episodes

There were several episodes of The Rifleman which had the same plot. Some outsider would come to town---an Italian, Chinese, Japanese or, on one episode, a British father and son. Local ruffians would threaten and bully them.

I don't know why the British kid, Percy, was such a wimp. Bullying and blatant sado-masochism were part of the British curriculum at least until the 1980's. They should have showed him rolling up his sleeves for a fight and telling then, "Now I shall demonstrate the benefits of an English education."

One of the kids who attacked Percy was Larry from Leave It To Beaver.

Those episodes were all dreary. The victims act humble even if they're Japanese samurai or English. Even when they've had enough and stand up to their tormentors, they never kill anybody. It's a little annoying that the Rifleman is so tolerant, open-minded and non-violent when he's usually a morally rigid killing machine.

The Italian who insisted on dueling with Jack Elam didn't kill him after Elam fired and missed.The samurai, instead killing the two cowboys with his sword, uses Jiu-Jitsu. The Chinese guy just roughs them up so they quickly promise not to bother him anymore.

Contrast that to an episode of Trackdown where the Chinese fellow walks into a Saloon, outdraws and shoots the racist town bully.

What's the point of it being a Western if they aren't going to kill anybody?

Criterion Collection is back

I saw on the internet that the Criterion Collection's streaming video channel kicked in today. I signed up. I cheerfully turned on a short film but turned it off because I was pretty sure something horrible was going to happen to a couple of children in it. It was French Canadian.

Instead of thinking about the fate of the characters, I should think about the child actors, so proud of their movie, and how sad the little fellows would be if they knew I turned it off before the conclusion. It looked like they did their own stunts.

First two weeks are free! But then you have you have to pay.

Lori Loughlin faces two years in prison---for being cheerful and polite

Remember long ago? Michael Jackson was smiling and waving at his fans outside the courthouse where he was on trial for child molestation. He climbed on top of a van to wave to the crowd while his lawyers yelled at him to get down. That sort of thing upsets judges. You're supposed to act guilty and ashamed even if you claim to be innocent.

The lawyers had to tell the judge that Jackson was trying to calm the crowd down so they wouldn't turn violent.

So apparently Lori Loughlin has been smiling and signing autographs outside the courthouse, and they think this is part of the reason she's facing a minimum two years in prison (if she agrees to the plea deal) while Felicity Huffman will saunter away after a few months in the slam.

Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli have been charged in a second indictment with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Reportedly, she said hello to prosecutors in court and this offended them somehow.

And their daughter, YouTube sensation Olivia Jade, isn't speaking to them because they embarrassed her in front of her YouTube "fans". She said she didn't want to go to college in the first place---they bullied her into it---and now they wreck her YouTube career.

Olivia Jade had been cashing in on her new status as college girl. She did a video showing all the crap she bought for her dorm room on Amazon Prime. What was she doing in a dorm? My guess is she just used the room for videos.

Like I said before, this wasn't a public university. Why should it be a crime to trick a private company into taking your money? Why should taxpayers have to foot the bill for protecting wealthy parasites from other wealthy parasites? The "College Board" is a private company raking in over a billion dollars a year forcing high school kids to take their tests. They discriminate against Black kids among others. Then they sell the kids' personal information for 45 cents a head. Why is it the government's responsibility to protect them?

I didn't completely understand the old Quiz Show scandal.

Which reminds me, Olivia Jade had her own quiz show thing. She lost miserably to fellow "influencer" Marissa Rachel and "singer" Rydel Lynch on an idiotic game show called Tap That Awesome App which aired on a Verizon app.

After she lost and Marissa was declared the winner by pretty good margin, producers stepped in and demanded that they reshoot it. Marissa and and Rydel were ordered not to buzz in and Olivia Jade, a well-known dullard, was allowed to win. The prize was $5,000 to be donated to "charity".

She can't say she didn't know.

The World Socialist Website on Woody Allen, Amazon

The Trotskyist World Socialist Website has a long article on Woody Allen and Amazon's response to Allen's lawsuit. They're less taken by the #MeToo movement than I was. But maybe they have a point. Ronan Farrow has taken to arguing that he didn't have any evidence against Weinstein---why should he need evidence against Woody Allen or anyone else?

The article also points out Amazon's hypocrisy.

Again, the Amazon lawyers modestly fail to identify one of the chief culprits in the creation of this poisonous atmosphere, Bezos’s own Washington Post. On January 4, 2018, for instance, the Post published an especially foul, stupid piece authored by Richard Morgan, “I read decades of Woody Allen’s private notes. He’s obsessed with teenage girls.” The article’s sub-heading read “His [Allen’s] 56-box archive is filled with misogynist and lecherous musings.” ThePost advertised the article as “Making Art out of Lechery.”

From the World Socialist Website article:

In Wednesday’s motion, Amazon’s legal team were obliged to concretize the company’s arguments, although they could not manage to make them any more convincing in the process. 

The motion notes that little over a month after Amazon entered into its agreement with Allen’s production company, Gravier Productions, in August 2017, “Allen’s son Ronan Farrow published an investigative article in the New Yorker detailing multiple reports of serious sexual misconduct by film producer Harvey Weinstein.” This sensationalized, scandal-mongering piece, according to Amazon’s lawyers, “became the catalyst for a broad public reckoning over the persistence of sexual harassment in entertainment and other industries.” 

Remarkably, the motion goes on to assert that, despite “immediate consensus on the importance of acknowledging and addressing this issue, Allen made a series of public comments suggesting that he failed to grasp the gravity of the issues or the implications for his own career.” He dared to express sympathy for Weinstein as well as his alleged victims, “describing the situation as ‘very sad for everybody involved.’ Then Allen added: ‘You don’t want it to lead to a witch-hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself.’” 

Of course, this “immediate consensus” was largely manufactured by the establishment media, led by the New York Times, the New Yorker and theWashington Post, the property of billionaire Jeff Bezos, who also happens to own Amazon. There is no indication that broad layers of the population, women or men, ever adopted this cause as their own. #MeToo has remained for the most part an affair of the outraged, affluent petty bourgeois, incited and manipulated by the Times, Post and company. 

The lynch-mob atmosphere created in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, on university campuses and elsewhere has been driven by several related concerns: to distract attention from deteriorating and desperate socio-economic conditions, to help channel popular opposition to Donald Trump along right-wing lines, to further undermine legal due process and to advance the careers of an already affluent layer of women. 

Amazon’s motion continues: “Several months later, in January 2018, Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow recounted her memories of Allen’s sexual abuse. Allen publicly dismissed those statements as ‘cynically using’ #MeToo for attention.” These “memories” have been looked into and dismissed by numerous bodies, including the New York Department of Social Services and a team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic.

...

For 18 months, the American and global public has been subjected to an endless stream of platitudes and outright lies about the uplifting character of the #MeToo movement, about its supposed defense of the weak against the “powerful,” about its liberating effects. And a good many “left” figures, including some who should know better, have chosen to believe and have repeated this drivel. Only willful ignoramuses can make such claims now. 

...This “ennobling” campaign has been reduced to the squalid effort to destroy the reputation and career of an 83-year-old man because he refuses to be a part of the conformist “consensus” and toe the #MeToo line. Disgusting and shameful. 

The Amazon motion spells it out: artists are to be driven out and blacklisted on the basis of their public comments. If this is not a new McCarthyism, what is? In some ways, the current blacklisting is even more fatal. The blackballed Communist Party members or supporters in the 1950s were generally seen as martyrs, even if their politics were considered to be misguided or “extreme.” There were also limits to their banishment. A time came, after the height of the anti-communist hysteria passed, when most were allowed back in the fold. Today, however, individuals who find themselves on the Hollywood “sexual offenders” list are presumably pariahs forever. They are “monsters,” “predators,” there is no hope for them. 

Moreover, the film industry blacklist in the 1940s and 1950s was almost never overt or verifiable. Historian Ellen Schrecker notes, “There was, of course, no official list and the [film] studios routinely denied that blacklisting occurred.” The Amazon legal argument could hardly be more explicit.

Read the whole thing here. 

Felicity Huffman to plead guilty

Poor devils.

So, word is that Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy's wife, is set to plead guilty to paying $15,000 to "admissions consultant" William Singer to boost her daughter's SAT score. Macy wasn't charged, but they say he "agreed to the plan".

Should this even be illegal? The SAT's are given by a private company. They were using the test scores to get into some private university. Why should it be a crime to trick evil money grubbing corporations into taking your money?

Prosecutors want Huffman to be locked up for four to ten months. Defense attorneys argue for no prison time.

Huffman insists that her ne'er-do-well daughter knew nothing about it.

As always, I'm hoping some of these people will panic and make a run for it. Remember the end of Fargo, or toward the end, when the cops go to the motel room?

"Just a sec," William H Macy calls as he tries to climb out the window.