Let the fools have their movie theaters

Maybe comic book movie people are right.

Variety reports that Warner Brothers is making a fortune on that stupid-looking Joker movie, but may still lose money because they set out to make a lot of regular, non-adolescent grown-up movies, too.

Things have been moving in that direction for years. In the '80's. Siskel & Ebert would put down films that had any serious purpose as made-for-TV movies. And some probably were. There was one where Robert De Niro plays an illiterate who learns to read.

There was one review I remember---Gene Siskel said when it started he thought it would be something better suited for TV. It started out showing how teenagers caught up in the juvenile justice system can have their lives destroyed, but he was relieved when a delinquent's lady attorney fell in love with him, helped him escape and, I assume, molested him as they became fugitives on the run from the law.

I don't remember who it was, but one guy years ago who worked in TV was asked about it. He said it was the more serious medium. Movies were empty entertainment. Only TV had anything to say.

Now this has gone all the way. Only mindless crap can make money theatrically. If it's any good, it's streaming video. We may as well accept it.

I don't really understand the obsession with having movies shown in theaters anyway. You can make a lot of money if you get a cut of the gross I guess.

Even now I see hopeless, unemployed film school graduates who dismiss anything short of Spielberg-like success. They don't dream of directing movies, only of being movie directors, and TV just isn't up to their standards.

Woody Allen's Another Woman, 1988

I'm sitting here with Another Woman on TV, a Woody Allen drama. Gena Rowlands begins to realize that nobody likes her. I kind of like it. It doesn't have some of the crap his other dramas have had---in Interiors, for example, Diane Keaton played a celebrity poet, something I don't think exists. In September, Mia Farrow was unaware that her house she had put up for sale wasn't actually her property. Like Allen doesn't know how the world works. 

In one scene in this movie, a father arranges for his son to work for a company producing paper products. It's far more plausible than job opportunities in his other dramas. In Interiors a woman turns down a high-paying job in advertising, a field she's never worked in, because she thinks it's beneath her. In September, Mia Farrow needs to find work so she figures she'll be an art photographer.

I don't know if the son was going to be an office boy, a factory boy or a warehouse boy, but it sounded like a pretty good job to me. He threw a bit of a tantrum over it.

With Sandy Dennis, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm, Gene Hackman; John Housman plays Gena Rowland's father--David Ogden Stiers plays a younger version of the same character. 

Something about TV series

I like old episodes of Perry Mason. But you have to take it as kind of an anthology. You can't sit there adding up how many murders Perry Mason solved because it was an absurd number. You have to take each case as a stand alone thing, as if none of the other episodes existed.

Matt Dillon shot 407 people over the course of the TV series Gunsmoke including the made-for-TV movies. That was four hundred men and seven women. I doubt he shot any children or very many teenagers. Some were "only" wounded, of course, but a lot of those probably died of their injuries later.

Dillon himself was shot 56 times. The show was on for twenty years (635 episodes) so he was shot two or three times a year. It's nice that there were at least a couple of hundred episodes where he didn't shoot anyone.

I never liked Matt Dillon. I was just a little kid when I watched that show, but seeing Matt Dillon with Miss Kitty turned me off completely to any sort of cowboy sexuality. Remember when MSNBC's Joy Reid said terrible things about Brokeback Mountain because she was outraged at the very thought of homosexuality? I was repulsed at the thought of it only because they were cowboys.

But I'm getting off the subject.

I guess my point is just that TV shows should stop that thing where they're all continuing stories. Every episode should be stand alone. Inconsistencies were part of the aesthetic. For example, on Gilligan's Island, when the Howells think their fortune has been wiped out, the girls try to teach Mrs Howell skills like cooking and sewing that she'll need now that she's poor. Mrs Howell already showed that she could cook and sew in previous episodes.

Of course, TV is a lot less violent than it used to be so this stuff doesn't matter as much.

8 Million Ways to Die (1986)

I was still working that job in 1986?

I worked with a woman whose sister was a bodybuilder who had gotten a role in this movie as a police woman, but her scene didn't make it into the final cut. But my co-worker went to see the movie anyway. The theater was empty. Nobody liked it. A theater employee said they'd give her her money back if she wanted, but she could gaze at Jeff Bridges all day and was happy to watch it.

I just watched it on Amazon Prime. Terribly violent, but I liked it okay. I didn't follow the middle part.

Alcoholism ends the career of a Los Angeles County Deputy. He wants revenge on the drug kingpin who murdered a prostitute he met in an AA meeting and tried to protect.

Based on the novel by Lawrence Bloch. Script by Oliver Stone, Robert Towne and R. Lance Hill. Directed by Hal Ashby.

Surprised Jaguars were so popular back then.

It was Hal Ashby's last feature film. He directed a couple of TV pilots after that. His health was bad and he finally went to see a doctor who diagnosed him with cancer which killed him. He was only 59 when he died.

Hal Ashby directs.

Prince Andrew on the BBC

The Guardian referred to his reputation as an "arrogant dolt" in their report on the interview.

Prince Andrew gave a long interview with the BBC about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He didn't help himself. The interviewer being so respectful made it worse.

From The Guardian:

What is the excuse, given the seriousness of Giuffre’s allegations, for the reverential set-up, for burnishing this pitiful, misogynistic nonsense with an audience in a massive gilded chamber, like a scene discarded from The King’s Speech for looking too comically servile?

I figured the accusations against Andrew and the others were most likely true, but how would anyone know? Now we know. He should be locked up.

Adult babies out for revenge on Scorsese?

What 76-year-old wouldn't want to watch this?

I remember long ago. Roger Moore was being interviewed around the time he was making an especially idiotic James Bond movie, the one where he's in Venice and he has a special hi-tech gondola loaded with weapons. A lady asked him if he was ever going to make a serious film. He told her how much the movie cost to produce and that he thought THAT was pretty serious.

But, he added in the interview, he knew what she meant.

An article in Variety suggests that petty, money-grubbing comic book movie makers will retaliate against Martin Scorsese come Oscar time. Scorsese's $180 million The Irishman was made for Netflix which means that billionaire Steven Spielberg will have his panties in a wad over it. Spielberg has made a fortune getting a cut of the box office for his big budget exploitation films. This is why he's outraged at the thought that his movies might not be shown in theaters.

So Scorsese will have Spielberg and his ilk plus the sulking adolescent comic book "movie" "people" against him. They see themselves as being like Peter Parker or the Avengers, persecuted social outcasts---no one understands how extra-special they are.

I never understood why they care so much about Oscars. They're rich celebrities who get to make movies. That's not enough for them?

How many millions did Amazon pay Woody Allen?

No word yet on how much Woody Allen's getting out of Amazon. I just hope it's enough to leave Dylan Farrow sobbing in a fetal position and Ronan Farrow wondering how his father managed to outwit them once again.

I've said all this before but, according to the internet, Woody Allen has a net worth of $80 million. He doesn't need any more money. If he wants to, he can bankroll his own movies. They're low budget by Hollywood standards but cost a fortune compared to European movies. He can still cut his budgets way down.

He's hiring all these stars, paying them the union minimum. They're willing to do it in part because some of them get Oscars out of it. But if he would start casting people who actually need the money, he would quickly amass a veritable army of grateful actors coming to his defense.

On the other hand, he may use experienced stars because he doesn't know how to direct actors. It's hard to imagine anyone going to his movies because they want to see Leonardo DiCaprio or whoever else he puts in those things, but, what do I know. Maybe his movies would fail without them.

It's always amusing to tell wealthy celebrities how to conduct their lives, but few of them are total morons. They have some idea what they're doing.