OT: Kevin Spacey - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Yikes, yes the Spacey meltdown, which looks almost total at this point, like he may never work again (even though it's going to take years for things to unwind through the courts) is a kind of epic disaster for the whole industry, and as you say even down to the level of fans. I guess the nearest equivalents are Polanski and Woody Allen: if you ever discuss any film by those guys in public these days there'll always someone who'll try to turn things around to a discussion of their moral and legal problems. This is depressing.

In general, even as the modern world has liberalized essentially all aspects of adult sexuality, one big tradeoff has been the hardening of attitudes about teenage and especially early teenage sexuality. Spacey, Polanski, and to some extent Allen (who dated high school kids and made Manhattan about it which made it look charming) although quite different in their details are all *unforgivable* in the modern world because of that clearly expressed, consistent sexual preference for teens and even early teens (even if everything on the teens' side was always nominally consensual which evidently it wasn't in both Spacey and Polanski cases).

There's just no way back for anyone from that right now, hence the extraordinary stories coming out of Netflix that House of Cards is essentially being immediately shut down, and that they're not going to allow Spacey back on set to shoot another scene even to wrap up his character's story-line! And, damn it, Se7en ('What's in the Box?' 'Your career.'), American Beauty (the attraction to teen main plot, and then the gay misunderstanding twist on that) are both going to play very differently now just for starters. A big big mess. I mean - seriously - I knew middle-aged guys in 1999 for whom Spacey's Lester Burnham was their *hero* (their words). People take their pop-culture figures seriously when they reach a certain level of cool or excellence and double-Oscar-winner Spacey had made it. Oops.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Yikes, yes the Spacey meltdown, which looks almost total at this point, like he may never work again (even though it's going to take years for things to unwind through the courts

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Whereas Polanski found work in Europe for decades and Woody keeps making movies -- that go mostly unseen by the masses -- Spacey was a front-and-center star and the nature of his "sins" do have both underage and coercive elements. It will be hard to cast him in anything. With what compassion I can muster, I trust he has savings and investments.

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) is a kind of epic disaster for the whole industry, and as you say even down to the level of fans.

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There is always gossip and innuendo and guessing, but once one gets to these kinds of public charges...reality enters in. People start thinking about the reality of this particular business and their own support for it.

Spacey was always rumored gay(word gets out on these things) and in his Playboy interview when he was superhot, he didn't deny it, or confirm it, but rather said "You have to understand that in Hollywood right now, if a male star came out as gay, his asking price would be cut in half, or he wouldn't be considered for certain roles, as in action films. Its a financial consideration." Thus did Spacey send out a certain message on that part of this topic(which is decidedly the "non criminal" side of this topic.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I guess the nearest equivalents are Polanski and Woody Allen: if you ever discuss any film by those guys in public these days there'll always someone who'll try to turn things around to a discussion of their moral and legal problems. This is depressing.

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Well, one of the 25 or so great topics of "LA Confidential" is how gossip as an industry would rise and rise and rise.

When I was a kid, our family was big into going to the movies, but the parents would never allow magazines like "Photoplay" in the house. These were "gossip rags with lies about movie stars" and our home ran on a two-track system: movies and actors were to be enjoyed and respected; "gossip" was filthy lies to be ignored.

Well, year after year, decade after decade, the gossip side has pretty well merged with the serious side. Its been pointed out that one reason George Clooney makes money as a movie star even as most of his movies don't hit, is that his real job now is to be "a celebrity with a politically interesting wife, and two twins." THAT's his real job now, not acting. When they were married, Brad Pitt and Angie Jolie noted that they "got" this was part of their work, too ("We're more important for the celebrity thing than the movies we make, which bothers us." Paraphrase) But they made more movies people wanted to see than Clooney did. He's almost "pure professional celebrity" now.

I will note that, as a rumored gay man, there wasn't much publicity Kevin Spacey could generate about his personal life, as Brad and George could. The rumors had to be avoided, and "it all had to be about the work." Which it was, for the most part. Great work sometimes.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

In general, even as the modern world has liberalized essentially all aspects of adult sexuality, one big tradeoff has been the hardening of attitudes about teenage and especially early teenage sexuality.

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That's right. Its the one taboo area, even if I think there is a certain "coming of age" charm to young peers of the SAME AGE coming to sexuality. (With birth control; let's try to avoid "Teen Mom" situations.) But when the one player is teen or younger and the other is a grown man or woman...well, Hollywood is here running into the imposition of some pretty strict "new morality" and coming out on the wrong side of it. And even with grown heterosexual adults, what Hollywood is really running into now is the "boys versus the girls" thing that has really come to the fore in the Age of Trump. Its been amusing to watch Alec Baldwin get pelted over the last few days by women on his Twitter account.

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Spacey, Polanski, and to some extent Allen (who dated high school kids and made Manhattan about it which made it look charming) although quite different in their details are all *unforgivable* in the modern world because of that clearly expressed, consistent sexual preference for teens and even early teens (even if everything on the teens' side was always nominally consensual which evidently it wasn't in both Spacey and Polanski cases).

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One small irony is that Polanski -- who ran to Europe to avoid some serious jail time and found himself supported by a fair number of Hollywoodites(not to mention movie stars like Harrison Ford and Walter Matthau who worked in his European films) -- is starting to look WORSE after a period of rehabilitation(and an Oscar -- and by the way, isn't Oscar looking tarnished given how many of them were given to Spacey and Weinstein? It will be an interesting ceremony this year.) Polanski is still alive, still exiled, and now seen like a serious bad guy again(plus he's drawn a new rape charge.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

There's just no way back for anyone from that right now, hence the extraordinary stories coming out of Netflix that House of Cards is essentially being immediately shut down, and that they're not going to allow Spacey back on set to shoot another scene even to wrap up his character's story-line!

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There is a history of actors being brought in to replace stars of TV shows (Jimmy Smits in for David Caruso on NYPD Blue; Laurence Fishburne coming in for William Peterson on CSI), but House of Cards was so "tied" to Kevin Spacey that I kinda doubt they can pull it off. But if it means a money save -- they will. Maybe John Travolta can join the show.

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And, damn it, Se7en ('What's in the Box?' 'Your career.'),

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Ha.

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American Beauty (the attraction to teen main plot, and then the gay misunderstanding twist on that) are both going to play very differently now just for starters.

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Even at the time, American Beauty seemed to be "toying" with the open secret of Spacey's gayness, and with gay themes in particular...even as ALSO looking to the issue of men lusting after teens.

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A big big mess. I mean - seriously - I knew middle-aged guys in 1999 for whom Spacey's Lester Burnham was their *hero* (their words).

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Well, yeah. He basically broke with the constraints of his job and his unloving family and -- in a ridiculous fantasy that worked -- sought a job at McDonald's because "I want a job with the least amount of pressure and responsibility possible."(Paraphrase.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

People take their pop-culture figures seriously when they reach a certain level of cool or excellence and double-Oscar-winner Spacey had made it. Oops.

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Its tough stuff to take. I always thought he was so perfect as Jack "The Big V" Vincennes in LA Confidential because with a more macho cool guy in the role(Nicholson, Pacino, Willis, even Alec Baldwin), it would have lacked the dimension that Spacey brought to it -- he was a cool swinging guy with a lot of insecurity beneath the surface, and more of a conscience about his dirty gossip rag deeds than he knew he had.

Personally, I think I will continue to re-watch my Spacey favorites with no trouble. Hitchcock's line about loving movies over morality perhaps enters in. And how soon we forget...

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[–] telegonus (728) 7 years ago

The old-time movie moguls were sleazebags, too, EC. They just didn't get caught at it. Weinstein's probably no worse than Mayer and Zanuck were but in the old days these guys taken care of by a press corps that protected them and a different kind of society, with news seldom venturing into the "lurid" (even as movies sometimes did). Now news is lurid much of the time.

MGM had its "fixers", and so did the other studios. Director Byron (I Walk Alone, The Naked Jungle) Haskin told a "funny" story of when he was Warners special effects guru and how, after ace choreographer and director Busby Berkeley, a superstar in his field, apparently killed someone in a drunk driving accident, and how, a few weeks later, Haskin noticed that a key witness for the defense just happened to be employed on the Burbank lot in a cushy job.

None of the aforementioned is intended to make Weinstein, Cosby and Spacy look better. It's just that in today's world it's easier to get caught. Bill Clinton had the same problem when he was president. He not only wanted to BE Jack Kennedy he wanted Kennedy's playboy lifestyle, in the White House, the oval office! But the rumors eventually caught up with him and then Monica happened. Clinton never recovered from that. Now let's imagine the way guys like Thomas Jefferson really lived...

This is all partly about sometime bad guys, or good guys in some ways with bad tendencies, and yet isn't this as much about human nature as Harvey, Bill and Kevin? The old saying is still true: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Many people today, younger than ourselves, worship power. Of course money and greed are a part of this, too. But do these scandals make us more inward looking, more self-critical, are we, as a society, going to LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT OURSELVES IN ALL OF THIS? I suspect not. It's so much easier to point fingers at others, so hard to look at oneself in the mirror, without the makeup.

Okay, I've had my say, have weighed in. I'll drop it now

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The old-time movie moguls were sleazebags, too, EC. They just didn't get caught at it. Weinstein's probably no worse than Mayer and Zanuck were but in the old days these guys taken care of by a press corps that protected them and a different kind of society, with news seldom venturing into the "lurid" (even as movies sometimes did). Now news is lurid much of the time.

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Agreed. Agreed. Agreed! And I'm a personal part of this culture is posting on it and thinking about it -- but I can't be a hypocrite, either. Human nature does fascinate me. These are people of great wealth and fame -- taking greater risks than ever in trying to "get away with it."

What's weird about Hollywood is that we can figure in the "pre-feminist days," these men were going to get away with everything towards women because women had no recourse. But even MODERN Hollywood has the ability to "put women in their place" for the simple reason that there are so many actresses and so few parts. Power turns back the clock to 1954, when women needed men for everything.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And there's a reverse angle to this, too: I read a book on Jack Nicholson once that noted at the peak of his more youthful fame(younger, less overweight), he once stood on a yacht offshore somewhere in France and watched as women on the shore yelled out that Nicholson could er, "have them" RIGHT NOW, all he had to do was ask, invite them on the boat. It was like Beatlemania I guess, for an older crowd.

It sure is fun reading stuff like that because Lord knows I never got to experience it. I've had to court and earn any woman I ever, er...

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[–] telegonus (728) 7 years ago

Nicholson was a wild man and probably still is. He was and maybe still be a druggie guy, going back to his early days, and a beatnick grown old. A bio I read was interesting and revealing, as it showed Jack to be a shrewder businessman than one might have guessed and,--no surprise here--very selfish. I got no sense of him as being a leftie or all that compassionate a person, though if you were on his good side he was a loyal and often generous friend.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

MGM had its "fixers", and so did the other studios. Director Byron (I Walk Alone, The Naked Jungle) Haskin told a "funny" story of when he was Warners special effects guru and how, after ace choreographer and director Busby Berkeley, a superstar in his field, apparently killed someone in a drunk driving accident, and how, a few weeks later, Haskin noticed that a key witness for the defense just happened to be employed on the Burbank lot in a cushy job.

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I read a book on a key "fixer" (Called The Fixers, yah) named Eddie Mannix. He worked for MGM and did all sorts of cover ups. The Coen Brothers made a movie about him a coupla years ago called "Hail, Caesar." Josh Brolin played him.

It seems like a lot of Mannix's work had to do with covering up alcoholic incidents with Spencer Tracy( a fake ambulance with fake medics would be sent to retrieve Tracy from bars), sexual shenanigans with everybody; and the occasional nasty bit of business like fatal car crashes.

So yeah, it was always there, "the dark side of Hollywood" and the people who gather there. In some ways, today's crowd is less cool -- The Rat Pack got away with a lot of this stuff and society idolized them. But these are more moralistic times in certain ways. Crimes against women and against the young are taken very seriously.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

None of the aforementioned is intended to make Weinstein, Cosby and Spacy look better. It's just that in today's world it's easier to get caught.

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Yep. The internet and "alternative news sources" that print what MSM will not....

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Bill Clinton had the same problem when he was president. He not only wanted to BE Jack Kennedy he wanted Kennedy's playboy lifestyle, in the White House, the oval office! But the rumors eventually caught up with him and then Monica happened. Clinton never recovered from that. Now let's imagine the way guys like Thomas Jefferson really lived...

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Ha. Yeah, Clinton's bad luck to show up at the 200-year plus mark where Presidential foolin' around would matter. But this: some of the Republican Congressmen who went after him had to RESIGN over THEIR affairs. As I recall, these were Congressmen who didn't WANT Clinton impeached because they KNEW they had their own dirty laundry. SNL did a funny sketch on them, sitting in a bar, saying "What the hell happened?" as Bill just sashayed in with two women on his arm. "What the hell happened" was: more moralistic religious voters in their party.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

This is all partly about sometime bad guys, or good guys in some ways with bad tendencies, and yet isn't this as much about human nature as Harvey, Bill and Kevin? The old saying is still true: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Many people today, younger than ourselves, worship power. Of course money and greed are a part of this, too. But do these scandals make us more inward looking, more self-critical, are we, as a society, going to LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT OURSELVES IN ALL OF THIS? I suspect not. It's so much easier to point fingers at others, so hard to look at oneself in the mirror, without the makeup.

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All of that is food for thought, telegonus. Speaking from the male perspective, being in a world where suddenly hundreds of women pursue YOU all the time would probably blow one's mind. But to get to that anointed position, you had to do what you do to become Jack Nicholson. And that's very hard to do.

There is also the issue that, for many decades, celebrities simply got away with ALL of this. Now, they don't. Or do they? The problem with all these cases is separating out the real victims from the golddiggers, and making "he said, she said" or "he said, he said" cases from long ago, "stick."

To me, the "learning something about myself angle" is simply this: I've long since given up idolizing Hollywood people. Even My Man Hitchcock left behind a paper trail of villainous power behavior(firing Bernard Herrmann is at the top of my list, followed by the Tippi thing, sort of) but...its really best to do what I do: Enjoy, "the movie, not the movie star." Or the movie director. Or the movie mogul. These people have done all sorts of things -- both good AND bad -- to earn the right to make or be in these movies. All we can do is...watch.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Okay, I've had my say, have weighed in. I'll drop it now

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I realize in my posting the OP, I perhaps "forced" those of you with more elegant tastes to consider weighing in on such sordid stuff. And I apologize for that. But I found myself wanting to keep commenting. Kevin Spacey truly was/is one of my favorite modern actors and he IS in some of my favorite films. This revelation actually kind of hurts, for me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And this:

I hestitate to recommend another TV show/movie given recent responses, but this is interesting, I think:

Given recent Hollywood news, a friend of mine invited me to his home to watch a relatively "old", short lived Fox series called "Action."

It ran for 13 episodes in 1999-2000. Actually not all 13 episodes ran, but they are on DVD. Some say it was cancelled because all the characters were too mean, greedy, and sick to enjoy; others say it was cancelled because a show that had veiled versions of Barry Diller and Harvey Weinstein "cut too close to the bone."

But its all there --18 years ago: a male character who makes others watch him shower; references to Roman Polanski and how some of his pre-teen conquests are now grown up characters ON THIS SHOW; one angry male executive shouting: "And I don't want to keep dealing with some chick who calls a pat on the ass "sexual harrassment" and turns me over to that b--- Gloria Allred!"

Its all there. Drugged-up stars, gay stars acting straight. Hookers promoted to studio executives.

Actually I liked this exchange between powerful producer Jay Mohr and his beleaguered personal male assistant, about Mohr's friendship with hooker Illeana Douglas:

Assistant: So, this is your hooker?
Mohr: No, this is my prostitute. YOU"RE my hooker.

But what mainly plays in "Action" is an over-riding sense of really mean people being really mean to each other, all the time. Funny, I know one married couple who work in the well-paid lower echelons of Hollywood(film editing) who are very nice and normal. I suppose both types exist.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One other thing about "Action." In each episode I watched with my friend(and I haven't seen them all yet), a major star appears as themselves: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Selma Hayek. And one wonders: they all seem like such NICE,good people -- in real life, how do they function with the meanies shown on "Action"?

Anyway, "Action" is recommended for a perhaps fictionalized, perhaps overdone version of "mean, sexually sick Hollywood" that sure seems to fit what's being revealed now. And this show, again, is from 18 years ago....

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Thanks for the Heads-up on Action. I'd never heard of it before.

As for the basic question of how 'nice' people can function in an industry full of sharks... I guess that most people most of the time being pretty much on the level is enough to make it bearable given the rewards. That said, one can easily understand why some people upon reaching a certain level of bankable stardom immediately get out of LA and in a sense minimize their contacts with the industry because the more you're involved in the intimate details of production and aware of the various rumor-mills the more you're going to feel compromised.

Think of Edgar Wright. He's back in Hollywood's good books after Baby Driver (2017). On the one hand he must be thanking his lucky stars that BD basically got to earn out *before* the Kevin Spacey scandal broke. On the other hand as a plugged in young director who doesn't yet have any blank checks he was surely in the position of having both been privy to lots of rumors about Spacey, Weinstein, and many others I'm sure, and also with having no real choice but to work with these people for their various talents, and that he's had a little bit of luck won't be entirely offset the compromises. He's a good buddy of QT's and with Uma ready to blow which side will he take in *that* divorce if its coming? I'm sure that Wright will be having the odd thought about he might be able leverage his current success to get a *little* more distance from the industry and have a less-morally-compromised life.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Looking around, the main, pristine ways to view Action are on Amazon and Apple's online services. Six Action episodes (eps 3,7,10-13), however, are up on youtube (in relatively low resolution/quality) starting here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUjfCjKhwig&list=PLB8901FDB040DDE6C&index=3

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[–] telegonus (728) 7 years ago

I'm really sorry to hear that, EC. I am lucky, I suppose in never being a Spacey fan. He was effective when cast as a bastard but I never cared for his screen persona. I first noticed him in Glengarry Glen Ross, a role he was perfect for. His coolness toward others was on dress parade in that one, and he was most effective when taking Jack Lemmon's poor Shelly character down.

American Beauty I loved, then hated, ultimately feel blah about it. There was an underlying air of agenda, even propaganda to it that I couldn't shake even in the early scenes. It was a far cry from all those "dare to be different" movies, plays and novels that began in the Fifties, peaked in the Sixties. I think of the more mainstream Barefoot In The Park, a nice Neil Simon piece, and how charming and harmless it was.

Thirty some years later came American Beauty, which was "having fun" with dope, gayness, marital infidelity and pedophilia. It was too much for me. Too many envelopes pushed, fast and furious. I agree with much of the criticism from conservatives that the movie was like a full frontal attack on being straight, whether dope or sex, the family unit and America in general, what with the only happy couple in the neighborhood a gay one!

As to Spacey himself, his gayness always struck me as obvious from the first time I saw him in anything. He was skillful enough to play married men but I never bought that the actor himself cared much for women. There was always a smugness to Spacey, a holding back. The pedo stuff about him is sad but not surprising. That he spent so much time abroad suggested to me that he had a lot to hide and wasn't comfortable in the limelight.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

More industry fall-out: Spacey's next movie arrives in just a couple of weeks: Ridley Scott-directed All The Money In The World (for Sony). Spacey plays the elder J Paul Getty dealing with his son being kidnapped etc..

Sony has announced that they've canceled the Oscar campaign for the picture but they may yet have to push back the release to next year or even abandon the release entirely. Scott's such an up-and-down director, but, still, he'll have given 2 years of his post-age-70 life to this project, and what if this is, if not an instant-classic at least one of his damn-good ones (The Martian, Black Hawk Down, Thelma and Louise)?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

More industry fall-out: Spacey's next movie arrives in just a couple of weeks: Ridley Scott-directed All The Money In The World (for Sony). Spacey plays the elder J Paul Getty dealing with his son being kidnapped etc..

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I saw the trailer for that; looked pretty good; with Spacey in old age make-up refusing to pay the ransom....

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Sony has announced that they've canceled the Oscar campaign for the picture but they may yet have to push back the release to next year or even abandon the release entirely. Scott's such an up-and-down director, but, still, he'll have given 2 years of his post-age-70 life to this project, and what if this is, if not an instant-classic at least one of his damn-good ones (The Martian, Black Hawk Down, Thelma and Louise)?

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Its rather like "negative star power" -- Spacey single-handedly scuttling a movie by a prominent filmmaker just by being in it.

I hear Spacey also completed a Netflix film where he plays Gore Vidal. That's a tough loss too -- Vidal was a delightfully bright and witty man(gay, too) -- and we're gonna lose THAT movie?

Here's an idea: re-film these scripts with other stars in the Spacey role, except in the scenes that don't feature the stars. Use those previously shot scenes without Spacey. Won't cost so much for the re-dos.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Holy Crap, Scott is reshooting all of Spacey's scenes in All The Money In The World with Christopher Plummer in the Elder Getty role. Details here:
http://tinyurl.com/ydenu2xl
Amazing that this is even possible, but apparently all the costars in the relevant scenes were available.... so Ridley looks like a bad-ass boss.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm really sorry to hear that, EC. I am lucky, I suppose in never being a Spacey fan.

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I rather became one. You know, he did perfectly good character work in movies like "A Time to Kill" and "Outbreak" before LA Confidential made him a star(The Usual Suspects was still a supporting part of sorts) and American Beauty consolidated his stardom. Anyway, I saw him in a lot of stuff, got used to his demeanor. He was so horribly cruel in Se7en, and yet, came LA Confidential, its like he found every sympathetic note of his otherwise venal character(and what happens to him is therefore sad beyond measure.)

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He was effective when cast as a bastard but I never cared for his screen persona. I first noticed him in Glengarry Glen Ross, a role he was perfect for. His coolness toward others was on dress parade in that one, and he was most effective when taking Jack Lemmon's poor Shelly character down.

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Its a great sequence. Al Pacino has just torn Spacey apart, up and down with insults ("You are working with MEN! You a f'n CHILD!") and left; Lemmon tries to insult Spacey too; Lemmon accidentally gives away his complicity in a crime; Spacey ...to avenge himself against Pacino...delightedly destroys Lemmon.

What a great, horrible, movie.

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American Beauty I loved, then hated, ultimately feel blah about it.

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Yeah, me too. It starts great and then really goes off the rails. And I thought Annette Bening was just awful in her acting choices for the most part. Spacey seemed TOO smug, too over the top...beyond the control of his LAC character.

By the way, both American Beauty and Frenzy share the same joke:

Blaney/Spacey: I lost my job.
Mrs. Blaney/Mrs. Spacey: You were fired?
Blaney/Spacey: Of course. You think I just MISLAID it? (Actually, that's the Blaney punchline; the Spacey punchline is more oversold and with too many words.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Thirty some years later came American Beauty, which was "having fun" with dope, gayness, marital infidelity and pedophilia. It was too much for me. Too many envelopes pushed, fast and furious. I agree with much of the criticism from conservatives that the movie was like a full frontal attack on being straight, whether dope or sex, the family unit and America in general, what with the only happy couple in the neighborhood a gay one!

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The propaganda was pretty obvious -- with the only happy/normal couple the gay one -- but I suppose the gay writer of the film felt it was about time to make a movie with that theme. Still, it was too over-the-top in the play-out, and often lands on lists of "Best Picture winners that shouldn't have one." (I can't remember what should have in 1999.) THAT said, to be sure Spacey's Lester Burnham struck a positive note with some male married friends of mine. They loved the character. I say: the movie veered out of control between over-the-top satire and dead-serious , murderous drama. A mess. Saved mainly by Spacey, not by Bening.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

As to Spacey himself, his gayness always struck me as obvious from the first time I saw him in anything.

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He seemed willing to "put that out there," and he was smart in one way: so many of his roles didn't require him to romance a woman: Glengarry, The Usual Suspects, Se7en, Outbreak, even LA Confidential, where he is shown dancing with one woman, but almost as a chore. Spacey chose these roles well, and resisted romantic parts. Clearly his marriage to Bening in American Beauty is a disaster.

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That he spent so much time abroad suggested to me that he had a lot to hide and wasn't comfortable in the limelight.

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That's possible. America just wasn't the place to "be that way." Probably really bad, in retrospect, that he returned to the States to do "House of Cards."

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

and often lands on lists of "Best Picture winners that shouldn't have one." (I can't remember what should have in 1999.)

Probably The Insider wins the classy awards if American Beauty doesn't. In general, 1999 was a movie year for the ages but movies like Being John Malk, Election, Magnolia, Topsy Turvy, All About My Mother, not to mention things like The Matrix, Fight Club, Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, Three Kings, even Talented Mr Ripley and The War Zone couldn't get over the hump with the Acad except in a few technical categories.

AB is a tricky one. I really liked Spacey's performance, and loved the aspects of the script that drew on The Apartment and Sunset Blvd, and the final shot and moralizing monologue in particular were powerful. Cinematography and Score were both ace. But... yeah, some of the third act plotting feels cheap: I never believed that Lester wouldn't have had sex with the cheerleader on account of her virginity, the suspense about who might have killed or be about to kill Lester feels like it belongs in a different movie, the specifically visual mistake that the neighbor makes in thinking he's seeing Lester having some sort of sex with his son is too close to an Austin Powers gag, and so on. All of these problems (and several others like them) seemed like they should have been avoided but in fact the production back story is that the movie is only as good as it is through being 'saved in the edit suite'. As originally shot and scripted the film opened and closed with the trial of the kids for the murder of Lester - that's the film the suspense about who killed Lester belongs to! - and a lot of the sore points in the plotting were in fact last minute, best of bad option rewrites and reshuffles once they ditched the court murder mystery in post.

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[–] telegonus (728) 7 years ago

I'm glad I'm no the only one, EC. My criticism isn't based on my own political views but rather an aversion to tendentious movies, especially mainstream commercial ones. Agenda heavy films just don't appeal to me, though I liked Mississippi Burning as history, found Glory difficult to watch. It's like the movie had flat feet. Uninspired. They tried hard, though.

American Beauty shall probably go down in history as a "zeitgeist classic", hugely relevant in its time, not so good ten to twenty years later. I think of You Can't Take It With You, Mortal Storm, Mrs Miniver and most of those Anglophile morale boosting pictures that Hollywood turned out. Urgent at the time, most of them are more interesting for what they say about their time, roughly 1940-45 than their quality.

From the Seventies, aside from their significance as historical artifacts my sense is that, sadly, some of those star-making pictures of Jack Nicholson's career,--Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge, maybe Cuckoo's Nest--may not have legs. From the Eighties, those uber-literary Merchant & ivory pictures and others like them, plus Gandhi, plus Amadeus and others that seemed to be "holding up values" in the Reagan era, and which were, don't strike me as that good. Also, Terms Of Endearment and The Big Chill, which were dated by the time they reached television!

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

"There is also the issue that, for many decades, celebrities simply got away with ALL of this. Now, they don't. Or do they? The problem with all these cases is separating out the real victims from the golddiggers, and making "he said, she said" or "he said, he said" cases from long ago, "stick.""

I think it's obvious by all of these new allegations that celebrities still do get away with this. You'd think, now that it's 2017, it'd have gone the way of the dodo, but that isn't the case. The powerful and wealthy still prey upon those who are vulnerable, *because* they know they can get away with it.

Sexual harassment/abuse/and even rape is extremely difficult to prove, and prosecute -- more so than other crimes. In most instances, as you point out, it boils down to a he said/she said, or he said/he said (or even, in some instances, she said/he said, or she said/she said) situations). Real victims are often referred to as gold diggers, liars, fame whores, and worse. That is a strong preventative for most to keep quiet.

"To me, the "learning something about myself angle" is simply this: I've long since given up idolizing Hollywood people. Even My Man Hitchcock left behind a paper trail of villainous power behavior(firing Bernard Herrmann is at the top of my list, followed by the Tippi thing, sort of)"

Although I've enjoyed a few Hitchcock films, from early on I got a distinct creep factor from him/them, and not merely that which he intended. In ways I envy you, being able to enjoy the movie or show rather than factor in what you know about the actors/directors/producers. EVERYONE's done both good and bad in their lives, even the worst of humanity. Nothing's entirely black or white. But if someone's a bully, and has harmed others on their way to the top, or while they're at the top, it colours my regard for their work. I can't help it, it just does.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Real victims are often referred to as gold diggers, liars, fame whores, and worse. That is a strong preventative for most to keep quiet.

In lots of these cases *multiple* forces conspire to make real victims not prosecute/report:
(i) the crimes in question are quite hard to prove and victims are easily disbelieved (your point)
(ii) the villain's power means he often really can directly and indirectly ruin the career of the accuser (stick)
(iii) often and perhaps particularly in the most serious cases the powerful villain will make a lucrative offer to settle for the victim's silence (carrot)
It's this *array* of forces that's the core of what allows powerful offenders to 'get away with it' for decades.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

I agree with everything you've said, and have nothing more to add to it.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Ronan Farrow's latest New Yorker piece:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies
details stuff in the Weinstein case that's so extreme that it barely fits in any of the categories (i)-(iii) I outlined. I guess it's a form of (ii) - stick - but directed against anyone you tell your story too as much as you. At any rate, it's sickening stacking of the odds against the powerful person ever facing any justice.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

"First, all the Bill Cosby comedy albums and "I Spy" from my childhood were rendered "tainted" for me.

Now...my favorite movie of the 90s -- "LA Confidential" -- will never really be the same again."

I've just re-read your OP and can't help but wonder why it is you feel Cosby's comedy albums and "I Spy," as well as "LA Confidential" are now tainted for you and will never be the same again, but when it comes to Hitchcock, and perhaps others whose work you particularly enjoy, it's "Enjoy, "the movie, not the movie star." Or the movie director. Or the movie mogul," rather than feeling their work is similarly tainted?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

"First, all the Bill Cosby comedy albums and "I Spy" from my childhood were rendered "tainted" for me.

Now...my favorite movie of the 90s -- "LA Confidential" -- will never really be the same again."

I've just re-read your OP and can't help but wonder why it is you feel Cosby's comedy albums and "I Spy," as well as "LA Confidential" are now tainted for you and will never be the same again, but when it comes to Hitchcock, and perhaps others whose work you particularly enjoy, it's "Enjoy, "the movie, not the movie star." Or the movie director. Or the movie mogul," rather than feeling their work is similarly tainted?

---
To quote Norman Bates (within whose page this thread is become such an interesting journey with articulate posters), "Of course...I've considered it myself."

Leaping to Hitchcock, this: my "love affair" with Hitchcock films pretty much began in 1962(I was very young when I saw a double bill of The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Trouble With Harry) and it took until 1983 (20 years) for the first book to appear that cast Hitchcock as Tippi's tormentor, a tyrant at times, and The Man Who Fired the Man Who Scored Vertigo and Psycho. Also, quite the drinker, especially in his last years.

In some ways, I felt that the Donald Spoto book was really reaching to besmirch Hitch(and it was really traitorous coming from Spoto, who befriended and had access to Hitchcock while writing "The Art of Hitchcock" for 1977 release). The drinking? Hitchcock was in pain and insecure and, eventually, facing death. So he drank. Firing Herrmann? Lew Wasserman and Universal forced it on him but -- sadly -- Hitchcock HIMSELF felt that he had to change with the times, and the times were Henry Mancini. Hitch still never should have fired Herrmann, but he feared that he would otherwise been put out to pasture as so many of his peers were(even Capra and Ford.)

In short on Hitchcock: for the twenty years I was most delirious about him, I knew nothing of his bad side (with the exception , perhaps of the truly sordid content of Frenzy, which disturbed me even as all the critics were hailing it as a return to form.)

And this: I've left a long trail of posts here about how Psycho was something just HORRIFIC as an iconic film of my childhood. I mean, it was considered THE WORST. The most terrifying, the most sick the most..."can you stand to watch THIS?" film ever made. And I recall, as a matter of child development, trying to reconcile the fact that Alfred Hitchcock made THAT film.
It "didn't compute" with his TV show and Rear Window and Rebecca. Honestly, it freaked me out that he was the maker of Psycho.

It took a couple of decades to take that in stride, and to place Psycho alongside his other works, "just another movie."

So hey -- "in the beginning," Hitchcock rather tainted himself by making that nightmare movie for the ages. (Yeah, soon Night of the Living Dead would turn up and make it quaint but...not for 8 years...)

And this: so much of Hitchcock's work is really "on the positive side." The good guys win. The bad guys lose. Romance is rewarded with marriage. He was a very positive filmmaker a lot of the time. He lost that in his last 16 years of film, save Family Plot. But it was there in the decades before them.

Put it all together, and I've never had the trouble watching Hitchcock films and enjoying them that I've had with -- well, Quentin Tarantino, right now.

But I doubt I'll ever be able to NOT watch a new QT film. He's got his hooks in me even as I personally think he is really, really messed up. Good thing he says he'll only be making two more -- well, for a long time.

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[–] telegonus (728) 7 years ago

Briefly, re Hitch and his "strangeness": his passive aggressive humorous introductions and closing comments on his TV series, especially the half-hours I'm watching now, can be downright creepy. It's not that Hitchcock liked to push envelopes but rather the envelopes that he tended to favor pushing. It can get a little creepy after watching some poor old lady choke to death on her poisoned tea or whatever and then switch to Hitch saying something like "now that was heartwarming, wasn't it?". Once, okay. Twice, it starts to feel old. Then, downright irritating.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

Even as a kid watching AHP in first run, I understood that Hitchcock was reading a script written by someone else.
I don't recall the name, but my recollection is that most, if not all, of the intros and closings are the work of one writer, who in 1955, was instructed to watch The Trouble With Harry and use the same macabre humor in the scripts.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

His name was James Allardice, and he was vital to the Hitchcock persona of Hitch's great period.

Allardice scripted Hitchcock's narration for the NXNW, Psycho, Birds, and Marnie trailers, along with all the TV intros/out-tros. He also scripted speeches for Hitchcock to give.

And he died. Around 1965 I think, and he was ONE of the reasons that Hitchcock closed down his show. Hitch had literally "lost his voice."

You can feel the loss of Allardice in two trailers of the 70's where Hitchcock tried to "get the old mojo going" with on-screen narration: Frenzy and Family Plot. They just aren't terribly well written, though the Frenzy trailer tries to tie in with Psycho in having Hitch say"another horrible murder took place here."

Hitchcock so hated his experiences on Torn Curtain and Topaz that he says nothing in the Torn Curtain trailer and just one sentence in the Topaz trailer, BTW. Already missing Allardice.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

Thanks for explaining. It makes sense that for 20 years you knew nothing about his bad side, except for Frenzy and Psycho, and therefore feel differently about him than you do about Cosby, Spacey, and others.

Personally, I've never liked Tarantino's films, so don't have to struggle at all with that.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Thanks for explaining. It makes sense that for 20 years you knew nothing about his bad side, except for Frenzy and Psycho, and therefore feel differently about him than you do about Cosby, Spacey, and others.

---

I think that's about it. Also, I don't think his bad side was as bad as Weinstein(especially), Spacey and Cosby(if as alleged.)

Hitchcock was not a consistent sexual predator. We have one disputed incident with one actress whom, I'm afraid, I find an unreliable witness.

Actually, two things are amazing about Hitchcock to me. One is that he evidently partake not one whit of the accepted Hollywood sex wildness, and he was a very rich and famous director. The other is that for the most part, Hitchcock worked with fairly sedate and professional actors -- folks like James Stewart and Cary Grant and Greg Peck and Henry Fonda were "scandal free," beyond multiple marriages for Grant and Fonda. Eva Marie Saint and Julie Andrews were happily married. Janet Leigh thought she was.

But there were some affairs on the female side. Kim Novak had an affair with Sammy Davis Jr. during Vertigo. Ingrid Bergman had the scandal of a love child with a director(Rossellini) though -- and Grace Kelly in gossip at least, had affairs with practically every leading man she had -- confirmed with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland, rumored with William Holden and Clark Gable(thought not with Jimmy or Cary.) Hitchcock wrote a friend a letter claiming that Kelly had sex with just about every man on Dial M -- Milland, Cummings, the guy who played the killer, "Even the writer, Freddie!" (Frederick Knott, playwright of Dial M and Wait Until Dark.) Was Hitchcock just being a gossip? Or was he "in the know"?

Anyway, all this sexual activity swirled around Hitchcock, but he didn't partake, and his actors weren't "wild ones."

Personally, I've never liked Tarantino's films, so don't have to struggle at all with that.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Personally, I've never liked Tarantino's films, so don't have to struggle at all with that.

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Tarantino's a personal struggle with me. Love him, hate him...but mainly love him. I've counted Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight as my favorite films of their years, even as each film has something wrong in the narrative(overlong scenes), something sick in the violence, something offputting in suggesting "he's not as great as we think he is." But he's great ENOUGH, and no movie in any of those years excited or entertained me more.

When QT is on a dialogue roll, it is just plain delightful, like this line from Brad Pitt to a Nazi in Basterds:

"We're not in the taking prisoner bizness, we're in the killin' Nazis business...and cousin, bizness is A BOOMIN!"

Or Sam Jackson's rancid Southern plantation slave speeches in Django unchained -- "You gonna put that n-- IN DA BIG HOUSE?"

There's a wonderful buddy-movie romance at the center of Django, by the way, in how kind-hearted Chris Walz assists Jaime Foxx in rescuing his beloved wife from the clutches of Leo DiCaprio and Jackson . Amidst all the gore and grue, its heart-warming, what Walz does for Foxx(at the cost of his life) in a very old-fashioned way.

And I love the crystalline blue and gold colors of The Hateful Eight, and its "Ten Little Indians" mystery. I love the opening credit shot and the Morricone music that accompanies it. I love the sequence where two men brave a blizzard to rope off a route to an outhouse in the middle of the storm. I love the door that has to be nailed shut to keep the blizzard out("That door's a whore!" yells one character after fighting the door to closure.) I

I love Kurt Russell's Yosemite Sam moustache and John Wayne voice; Tim Roth doing a Chris Walz impression; Bruce Dern holding the screen at 80 as he did at 30(and in exactly the same rodentoid manner); I love the weirdly romantic relationship between brother Channing Tatum and sister Jennifer Jason Leigh. The scene in which poisoned coffee is drunk by two victims and almost drunk by a third is a masterpiece of suspense and precision timing (in the Hitchcock tradition) before it turns into a blood vomiting mix of Alien and Carrie.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

But that's late, "weaker" QT.

Like everybody, I was enthralled by just about everything about Pulp Fiction: the dialogue, including Jackson' "great vengeance and furious anger speech," Travolta's dialogue on the date with Uma; the entire hilarious body clean-up scene with Travolta, Jackson and Harvey Keitel as "the Wolf"(its a Hitchcockian scene with a hipster's comedy to it)...and above all the time-twisting out of order playout of the tale. (Travolta dies early , ala Marion Crane...but comes back to life for the final funny third story.)

Pulp Fiction is one of those movies -- like Psycho -- that changed everything and that you can watch over and over again. Its the " core" to any QT fanship and yet....

...I like his next film "Jackie Brown," even better. Set in the same offbeat corners of LA as "Pulp Fiction," this one is laid back, amiable, and focused on middle-aged protagonists(Pam Grier, Robert Forster) and middle-aged antagonists(Jackson, and a wonderfully silent and slothful Robert DeNiro -- possibly his funniest role.)

----

My beef with QT is that with each new film, he seems to have become more and more perverse, testing my patience(I can HANDLE this material, I just don't like that he wants to put it in -- much as with Hitchcock's rape murder in Frenzy, which, nonetheless, has always seemed more profound and compassionate than QT's heavy metal "for the shock fun of it" offensiveness.)

BTW, I think with QT's best pal Harvey Weinstein accused of so much REAL perversity, the jig's gonna be up on QT's "fun" perversity in his movies -- his work will be tainted by association going forth. And QT has to find a new studio to back him...he will, but it won't be like with Weinstein.

Also BTW..QT's engaged to be married right now, I think...but he had a HUGE reputation for sexual shenanigans over the years. He has a rabid fan base, cult-like, and that includes the ladies. But from what I've heard, everything has been consensual.

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[–] mattjoes (53) 7 years ago

As sad and revolting as this may be, it's fascinating to see it come to light in such an open way. It's not being relegated to rumor or gossip; instead, it's being widely discussed, and has had concrete repercussions in the film and TV projects Kevin Spacey is involved in. The same with Weinstein and his expulsion from his company, from guilds and associations and with the withdrawal of medals and other honors. Heavy stuff. With all the consequences it's had for the abusers and harrasers, and will all the actors that have spoken very passionately about it, it feels like some sort of volcanic eruption, as if many people had wanted to talk about this for a long time, but hadn't been able to or willing to. It will be very interesting to see what long-term effect these events will have on Hollywood... will this "cleansing" continue? Weinstein, Brett Ratner, Spacey, Dustin Hoffman... who's next? Will people now always be willing to publicly denounce those who harass them? Will AMPAS or any of the guilds provide more effective means for their members to do so?

This situation is reflective of a problem which is not exclusive to Hollywood, but can also be found in the political arena and probably in plenty of other situations in which there are many people trying to reach very few positions of "power". It has do both with the abusers and those who keep quiet about them. A part of what leads to abuse is that some of the people who are trying to get ahead begin to to look at others not so much as people, but as means to an end. They dehumanize others, and that's when they begin to harass and abuse others. Also, these people probably feel some sense of entitlement; they think they are special, and thus feel they can do whatever they want. (...)

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[–] mattjoes (53) 7 years ago

(CONT'D) Regarding those who keep quiet about the abusers, the fact is that for the sake of succeeding, they are willing look the other way, and they also are probably indoctrinated to regard Hollywood as a closed society; its own world, that plays by its own rules, that have to be accepted to harbor a hope of joining in.

At any rate, it's good to see these things being exposed. They do have the effect of contributing to the demystification of Hollywood, but that was happening already, with movie stars today presenting a more down-to-earth, approachable image. Still, there is a certain magic to the process of moviemaking that I can't imagine going away, and the magic of the films themselves will not disappear.

Oh, and I love K-PAX. I'll continue to watch it. For the reasons, I'll quote Columbo:

"Even with some of the murderers that I meet, I even like them too. Sometimes, like 'em and even 'em respect them, not for what they did, certainly not for that, but for that part of them which is intelligent, funny or just nice, because there is niceness in everyone."

There is no excuse for Spacey's behavior and I condemn it, but I acknowledge there is a creative side to him, the good side, and that I appreciate.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

"Even with some of the murderers that I meet, I even like them too. Sometimes, like 'em and even 'em respect them, not for what they did, certainly not for that, but for that part of them which is intelligent, funny or just nice, because there is niceness in everyone."

---

Sounds like some of our Hitchcock villains, yes? And none moreso than Norman Bates.

But also Philip Vandamm, Alex Sebastian, Bruno Anthony, and (in his good moments) Bob Rusk...whose sexual mania puts him closest to the Hollywood bad guys, yes?

---
There is no excuse for Spacey's behavior and I condemn it, but I acknowledge there is a creative side to him, the good side, and that I appreciate.

---

It is troubling, but entirely understandable.

---

Speaking of Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins too lived the "open secret" of a gay life for many years, before electing to marry a woman, and personally sire two children. And yet he died of AIDS. Thus he was "a gay Dustin Hoffman," cheating on a wife but with men. But for all of those years, he was never accused of doing anything coercive, or with underage partners.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

It will be very interesting to see what long-term effect these events will have on Hollywood... will this "cleansing" continue? Weinstein, Brett Ratner, Spacey, Dustin Hoffman... who's next? Will people now always be willing to publicly denounce those who harass them? Will AMPAS or any of the guilds provide more effective means for their members to do so?

---

I'd like to zero in here a bit on Dustin Hoffman, objectively one of my favorite stars for many years. Poor guy: he had Oscar buzz(Supporting?) for his new movie with Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller as his sons. Where will it go?

Anyway, I'm reminded of this hilarious quote Hoffman gave about 20 years ago:

"People stereotype stars in the wrong way. For instance, everybody says that Warren Beatty gets all the women. Well, I get as many women as HE does."

The ego in that statement always cracked me up, but this, too: Hoffman was married at the time he said it. Still is, to the same woman(his second wife, but for many decades.)

And there-in lies yet ANOTHER sexual aspect of Hollywood. With their own wives attesting, its been a given fact that stars like Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, and Dustin Hoffman were in "open marriages" in which the men cheated like crazy ...and the wives put up with it. THEY got to be the Mrs. and the mother of the star's children. They'd put up with a harem.

Mrs. Bill Cosby has stuck with him through his current troubles, and tried to offer this defense: "I've always known he had a lot of women on the side. That's all this is." Intriguing, yes?

There was one famous female star who got away with a similar lifestyle, and fairly early in Hollywood history: Shirley MacLaine married a guy named Steve Parker. Steve promptly moved to Japan "to do business," while Shirley stayed stateside or travelling for movies...and having affair after affair while still married. It was OK; Shirley said...her husband could have affairs too.

And now Shirley lives alone with her dogs.

My point here? Well...its that Hollywood people have ALWAYS been allowed to play by different rules and get away with them. But these new cases are about "going too far;" the usual Hollywood rules won't apply.

And Dustin Hoffman is probably trying to sort out how whatever he did wrong is THAT wrong -- I mean, he gets more women than Warren Beatty...

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[–] mattjoes (53) 7 years ago

And now Christopher Plummer will replace Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World, one month before the film's release, which won't be postponed.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-plummer-replace-kevin-spacey-all-money-world-1056450

Has something like this ever happened before?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And now Christopher Plummer will replace Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World, one month before the film's release, which won't be postponed.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-plummer-replace-kevin-spacey-all-money-world-1056450

Has something like this ever happened before?

---

Wow. On a lot of fronts.

To your question, I am thinking that something like it has happened...but not for these reasons, and not so damn close to release. They are really going to have to hump it to get Plummer's scenes done and in the movie. Also, existing(and costly) posters and trailers with Spacey have to be scrapped.

Nothing this radical, but I know of three instances where a famous director shot a film for a few weeks with one actor, replaced him over health or "creative differences," and shot again with another.

One was Hitchcock! Roy Thinnes filmed for about three weeks as villain Arthur Adamson in Family Plot; Hitchcock fired him ("You're too nice for the role" was the reason) and replaced him with William Devane.

Another was Otto Preminger: Otto began a filmed called "Rosebud" with Robert Mitchum in the lead role. They clashed too often on Mitchum's lateness, attitude and drunkenness. So on quick notice, Otto fired Mitchum and hired Peter O'Toole, getting yet another drunk but one with greater punctuality and attitude.

Billy Wilder had filmed a few weeks with Peter Sellers on Kiss Me Stupid (with Dean Martin and Kim Novak) when the 30-something Sellers had a heart attack from drugs and weight loss programs. (He had the attack while on poppers having sex with wife Britt Ekland, a trifecta of mistakes.) Unable to replace Sellers with a major star(Jack Lemmon was approached), Wilder went with a supporting guy(Ray Walston) and uneasily elevated him to star status with Dino and Kim. I've seen the movie, it didn't really work.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One thing I've always wondered is if film was kept of Thinnes, Mitchum, and especially Sellers(who worked a long time on Kiss Me Stupid.)

But wait, there's more: Tyrone Power died of a heart attack while filming a swordfight with George Sanders in a movie; Yul Brynner replaced Power -- there are still photos of each man swordfighting Sanders.

Two actors died before filming completed on their movies -- Natalie Wood in Brainstorm(she famously drowned off Catalina on a weekend) and Oliver Reed in Gladiator(heart attack in a pub; said friend Glenda Jackson "he died with his boots on". Both stayed in their movies, with not all their scenes filmed -- and Reed used via CGI for a final scene.

---

But none of this fully matches up with what is being done here.

Evidently Spacey isn't in every scene in the film; he filmed for about ten days. It will be interesting to see Wahlberg and Michelle Williams in the new scenes with Plummer -- we will KNOW they were shot about a month before release, will they throw the movie off?

Alas, I expect Spacey is in most of the scenes in that other movie where he plays Gore Vidal. On balance, I'd like to see that story -- will someone dare release it in some format for the "shameless viewer" to watch?

On the other hand, they could spend the money and make a new version with a new star. I can't imagine the Netflix movie cost that much to make.

Keven Spacey: ERASED.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Another one: Louis CK.

And this guy is, roughly, at the beginning of what looked like a brilliant career. But the witnesses are believeable(he did his thing in front of TWO women, although I suppose two can make something up as easy as one), and a lot of his written humor for film and TV has a certain perversity that is backfiring on him now.

Too bad. I enjoyed his work, AND his persona -- the face, the expressions, the line delivery.

Obviously, some sort of "sea change" is happening to Hollywood culture. It seems that any number of "open secrets" are being exposed, as if in a mass purge.

I'm still wary that some of the "victims"(at least in some of the "smaller star" cases) are fakes and are cashing in...but in the key cases (Weinstein, Spacey, Louis CK) there's smoke AND fire.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

So far at least, the accusations against Louis CK don't strike me as though they *should* be super-damaging: there are no teens or early teens involved so far, things are prima facie consensual (though a bit gross and embarrassing), and as described the scenes are all genuinely off-the-clock so there's no 'hostile work environment' problem let alone any alleged +ve or -ve quid-pro-quo problem.

That said, it's not clear that lots of damage to Louis CK's career won't happen anyway because, speaking for myself, there just is a problem with edgy comedy. You *really* let the edge-meister into your head, and I just don't know that I'm going to be prepared to let Louis CK near my head any more, even if I officially don't believe he's done anything he needs to lose his career over or go to jail for. Damn it, what a mess.

Mad Men creator, Matt Weiner also copped some flak yesterday. He allegedly said something inappropriate once in-the-writers-room to one woman (who went on to share an Emmy with Weiner for Mad Men's Season 2 finale) but was fired was a year later. As related so far there's simply not enough there there for me. Maybe the quid pro quo angle or hostile environment angle will get fleshed out soon, but until then...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

So far at least, the accusations against Louis CK don't strike me as though they *should* be super-damaging: there are no teens or early teens involved so far, things are prima facie consensual (though a bit gross and embarrassing), and as described the scenes are all genuinely off-the-clock so there's no 'hostile work environment' problem let alone any alleged +ve or -ve quid-pro-quo problem.

---

All true, but I think the stunner here is that Louis CK -- rather in accord with his comic persona -- has pretty much copped to everything. "Its all true," he says. No blanket denial, no "no comment," no "lawyering up."

I find it rather amazing. Immediate damage has been done to his career -- a movie release cancelled, HBO erasing him.

I also find this one to be "getting at the core of the issue": the extent to which our entertainers can sometimes/often be "damaged people." I mean, most of us , I would think, cannot conceive of wanting to do what Louis CK did , for ANY reason. To excite himself, to (supposedly) interact sexually with the women in a consensual way, to assert power outwards or debasement inwards.

There is just some sort of very weird , massive "sea change" taking place in the world of Hollywood right now. Whatever sexual things happened in the Mayer/Zanuck years, they seem to have been good ol' harassment and sexual appetites. This stuff is WEIRD. Our human race is spawning folks who have total power and no control...and the impact on the human mind is evidently too much for some of these folks to handle.

I'm wary of conservatism for self-serving conservatism's sake, but my sense here is that when societal controls are removed, too many humans are (to quote John Huston's Noah Cross in Chinatown) "capable of anything."

Its appalling. But it is profound.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Which reminds me: Openly gay Ellen Page's takedown of what Brett Ratner said to her (with Anna Paquin tweeting in to say "I saw that") offers yet another harsh look at the reality of what some "types" in Hollywood have to offer.

Can we get James Stewart back?

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

There was a good, simple joke well-delivered from Jost on SNL's update this week:
'Well, it's a good weekend to stay inside, since it's 20 degrees outside and everyone you ever heard of is [graphic of Louis CK, Spacey, Weinstein, Roy Moore displays] a sex-monster.'

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Mad Men creator, Matt Weiner also copped some flak yesterday. He allegedly said something inappropriate once in-the-writers-room to one woman (who went on to share an Emmy with Weiner for Mad Men's Season 2 finale) but was fired a year later. As related so far there's simply not enough there there for me. Maybe the quid pro quo angle or hostile environment angle will get fleshed out soon, but until then...

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Well, Weiner had an arrogant, narcissistic bully-boy reputation (which, as with David Chase on The Sopranos, was "justified" in certain ways by his writing talent: they don't suffer lesser.) I recall him firing several writers who shared Emmies with him, and going public as to how this was "his vision, not theirs" sort of thing.

As we separate out the "sick Hollywood sex scandals" from the simple issues of power, I suppose we must remember this:

Given the multi-millions spent to make movies and the potential for more multi-millions to end up in the pockets of the people who make them(write them, direct them, act in them)...I suppose we can be SURE that Hollywood is a hyper-competitive, mean, tough town. There are very few jobs -- you can only really get them in Hollywood or NYC. You can be a lawyer or a doctor or a dentist anywhere.

So everybody fights hard to "make it"(Chase and Weiner shopped The Sopranos and Med Men for years of rejection before getting deals) and everybody is very self-protective when they DO make it.

And the money they make. My Lord, the money they make. It might turn any of us into power-mad paranoids...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Sidebar: I'm among those who was outraged by the creative cop-out of the ending scene of The Sopranos(I know, others love it, but not me.) And I always felt that scene revealed that Sopranos creator David Chase wasn't quite the genius he appeared to be.

From the writing side of the show, two OTHER writers -- Terrence Winter and eventually Matt Weiner -- were likely more into "nuance and wit," whereas I think Chase got The Sopranos going as a means of working some stuff out about his relationship with his terrible mother(the emphasis of the first two seasons.) As time went on, Chase chose to "share his vision" with writers who just may have been better at it than he(a "Rockford Files" writer) was.

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[–] [email protected] (690) 7 years ago

So ... you are using this Psycho board for Off Topic convos? Interesting. Maybe this is to keep a certain group of posters together? I can see that. I don't really have a relationship with anyone on MC, but I wouldn't mind. Miss Margo is the closest, but I never know when or where I'll run into her, or whether we even have that much in common, but she seems thoughtful and polite.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

@snepts. The Psycho board at IMDb was very tolerant of Off-Topic threads so long as they were broadly film-culture and film-history-related, and this MC.org board has tried to preserve that. The point being that Psycho is an incredibly central film and Hitchcock is an incredibly central figure in Film History and Culture so almost everything within those very wide parameters in fact has *some*, even if very attenuated relevance to Psycho or Hitchcock. So we flag discussions of Awards shows, or recent thrillers or of early horrors or random blockbusters or.... as officially OT but always with the understanding that aspects of Psycho will frequently play roles in those discussions.

Anyhow, you are very welcome to join any ongoing discussion (we'll have end-of-year/Awards threads popping up soon for example), and if you're new to the board you should probably start a thread or two on whatever aspects of Psycho *you* specifically gravitate towards. Old-timers like nothing better than someone who brings new eyes to the Board's central text.

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[–] [email protected] (690) 7 years ago

I noticed how Psycho keeps popping up as Trending, and then saw all the OTs attached.
There was another place where someone came up with a way to watch and discuss specific films, but I didn't catch how it was organized. I'm not good at finding films on the Internet to watch at my leisure, but it sounded like they were trying to build a discussion group, which sounds like fun.

I don't have strong feelings for-or-against Psycho. It's an interesting, many-layered film, but I wouldn't spend a large part of my life dissecting it. Don't get me wrong - I know there is a lot to discuss, including technical details (like POV) that are worth looking at, and it's more complicated than I think others might realize, but it's rather depressing and creepy.
I feel bad for Anthony Perkins for often being used as an unstable guy, like Brad Dourif.
Not that every film is supposed to be Capra, but Psycho makes me feel sad about people.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I noticed how Psycho keeps popping up as Trending,

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One thing I like about moviechat is the "trending" option and how Psycho pops up pretty often. That suggests to me that we "old timers" have managed to keep this Psycho board as one of the more active at moviechat. And I like how striking the blue-and-yellow poster is on the "trend line." In fact, it inspired me to write a post about the Psycho poster.

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and then saw all the OTs attached.

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swanstep has since given you a comprehensive answer on the "OT" issue at this board(a carryover from an Imdb board on Psycho that had a few of us on it) and I would add that I'm not sure a "Psycho" board could adequately function WITHOUT the OTS.

I'm not sure when imdb began its now-defunct chat boards, but I know I've been posting on Psycho since 2007 at least. As William Shatner said in a "Star Trek convention" spoof on SNL, "you've transformed a job I took as a lark for a few years, and turned it into a colossal waste of time." Might Hitchcock have said the same thing about Psycho-philes?

But that's something about Psycho that has emerged in discussions of it over time -- it seems to now be acknowledged as in the very top list of "movies that obsess" -- The Godfather is there too, and Star Wars (though in that case, it is now an entire series; the 1977 original seems lost in the mix). Why, one wonders, did Psycho do that? These Psycho boards have been working that out for years.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And Psycho -- not unlike Star Wars -- has generated NEW works over the years that allow for anyone posting on Psycho to "keep it current" and discuss how the movie keeps popping up in new forms. Since 2007, we've had the movie "Hitchcock" about the making of Psycho; the cable TV series "Bates Motel"(five seasons worth); the documentary 78/52, about the shower scene; the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut(which, like the book , rather finds Psycho as its dark, magnetic north), and a little-read novel about Hitchcock and Janet Leigh making "Psycho" in Bakersfield, California and interacting with locals. The movie has a grip on folks.

Back things up BEFORE 2007 , and you get: Psycho II and Psycho III in the 80's(at theaters); Psycho IV in 1990(on cable TV); the busted NBC pilot Bates Motel(with Bud Cort taking over the motel for a deceased Norman); an episode of "Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories" about a Psycho-obsessed teen transported INTO the movie Psycho( a great concept -- how terrifying would THAT be? To be at the Bates Motel KNOWING what could happento you.)

And you get Gus Van Sant's 1998 shot-by-shot, line-by-line, musical note by musical note remake. A despised work of art, the "experiment that succeeded by failing."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Meanwhile, over at the books: Stephen Rebello's seminal 1990 book "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho" is THE tome on how Psycho came to be(and one of the best books about the making of ANY movie); Raymond Durgnat wrote the detailed "A Long Hard Look at Psycho"(because the movie practically BEGS for detailed analsysis, and, wrote Durgnat, "because its fun to do."); David Thomson's anniversary tome "The Moment of Psycho" which celebrates and attacks the film at the same time, with two attacks by Thomson : (1) The movie is great only through the swamp burial, and pretty pedestrian TV mystery thereafter(minus Arbogast and the remaining shock scenes) and (2) Thomson contends that the split personality gimmick is unbelieveable and phony -- he felt that Norman knew exactly what he was doing and didn't "turn into mother." (Them's fighting words, but nobody took the bait.)

Some art museum ran a work called "24-Hour Psycho," in which the movie runs, at a super snails' pace, for 24 hours. (I would have loved to look at ten minutes of that just to see HOW the film moves.)

I catalog all of this a bit for my own memory banks, but also to say that Psycho is an INCREDIBLY studied and mulled over film. There has to be a reason for its timeless pull on the minds of its fans.

BTW, I think these two Psycho boards -- imdb and moviechat -- are almost worth their own article some day, by somebody(not me.) Imagine: a disparate group of people -- with some but hardly not all of the same movie tastes -- have elected to spend over ten years using one movie to create a "personal' connection. ON that one movie, but on practically everything else.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Which brings me back to the OT posts. I don't think we could have rationally spent ten years ONLY talking about Psycho.

We have instinctively generated threads on the Oscars(annually), on other movies which have some connection to Psycho; on other Hitchcock movies, on new movies that tie in to Psycho; on TV series(Mad Men got a look; Game of Thrones and SNL gets one often.) Psycho is the "control mechanism" --- a movie which seems to reflect many movies that came before it(Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, Sunset Boulevard, Strangers on a Train, Diabolique, Touch of Evil, House on Haunted Hill) and , of course, inspired hundreds of movies after it(in genre: Baby Jane, Homicidal, Wait Until Dark, Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist, Jaws, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Silence of the Lambs, Scream; and out of genre: Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, The Godfather...Saving Private Ryan.)

Uh...swanstep's answer was more concise. That's what its all about.

But I rather liked doing this "gut check" about how and why the Psycho board is what it is.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

Now that you've mentioned Bates Motel, albeit a different and earlier one, I'm curious to know if you've seen it (most likely so), and if so, what you thought of it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Now that you've mentioned Bates Motel, albeit a different and earlier one, I'm curious to know if you've seen it (most likely so), and if so, what you thought of it.

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I did see it, and I think I can categorically state that it was the WORST offshoot of any of the offshoots of Psycho ever made.

It was a pilot for a series that was to be in the "Fantasy Island" /"Love Boat" mold. But with a Twilight Zone twist.

The idea was that asylum resident Bud Cort is released from the same place where his best pal was Norman Bates. Bates has died and willed the house and the motel to Cort. Had the pilot "gone to series," each week Cort as the Bates Motel manager would host one or two guests each week who experience "supernatural adventures" at the Bates Motel. (In the pilot it has something to do with a woman who checks in and learns she's been dead a long time, from back in her 50's high school drag racing crowd days. Her old high school gang materializes AS TEENAGERS to haunt her.)

Bates Motel had a "pilot plot" about somebody trying to scare Cort into selling the motel by dressing up in a Mrs. Bates "suit and mask" that looked nothing like the horrific Mrs. Bates in Hitchcock's movie. The figure was perhaps closer, actually, to the Scream killer's look of years later.

But the problem with all of this was this: with Psycho's place in history as the first big adult-level shocker in movie history, this TV pilot pulled every punch and played like a live action Scooby Doo episode. Its "Psycho for kids." As I recall, there were no murders; "Mrs. Bates" as a scare tactic presence was JUST a scare tactic. The writing and production were old-time broadcast TV mediocre to the max. And any sense of Psycho beyond the house and the motel were gone, gone gone(Perkins, having turned down playing the pilot as Bates, wouldn't even let his photo be used -- another actor did the photo that Cort looks at.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I've noted this before: the 1987 Bates Motel had ONE -- just one -- interesting idea, but its a bad one. The idea is that in the 27 years since the original Psycho took place, the town of Fairvale has GROWN OUT the 15 miles to the Bates Motel and house -- and now they are surrounded on all sides by rural urban blight(a gas station, a convenience store), and surrounded by a wooden fence that is painted with graffiti and insults.

Its a clever idea that urban sprawl might envelop the Bates house and Bates motel...but the atmospheric and terrifying isolation of the motel/house in the original evaporates.

And this: Bud Cort was nifty "inside joke" casting for Bates Motel, given his ties to "Harold and Maude," another cult film about a withdrawn young weirdo who lives with his mother. But he was ill-served by the terrible material.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

A misunderstanding. I meant while you mentioned an earlier Bates Motel, what I wondered was if you'd seen the 2013 show of the same name, with Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore.

It is interesting Bud Cort was cast in the starring role in the 1987 Bates Motel, which I've never heard of until now. The original premise sounds interesting enough, but the execution sounds very weak indeed.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

what I wondered was if you'd seen the 2013 show of the same name, with Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore.

We had one long main thread about the Final Season of the Farmiga/Highmore Bates Motel series at IMDb. Here's MC's reproduction/archive of that thread:
http://tinyurl.com/yanew2f7
One of the steps that made MC attractive for IMDb-refugees was precisely that (thanks to help and assistance from insiders at Amazon and IMDb) MC was able to reproduce/archive most of IMDb's boards and their threads (at least for properly film/culture-related boards). The archive loses some formatting so it's not perfect, but when IMDb's great abandonment/switch-off/brush off happened, even this amount of continuity felt like a Godsend.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Summarizing that old thread: regulars at the board had got wind that the show wasn't half-bad and with some encouragement from fans of the show who dropped by, we just jumped in and watched the climactic final season (plus maybe a recap ep. or two that the network provided) which was clearly at long last going to start to knit together with the movie - Rihanna as Marion Crane! and so on.

I guess it's fair to say that I was very impressed by many aspects of the show, esp. Highmore and Farmiga's performances. They did incredible work. And some of the writing was sharp and had good ideas, and a lot of time and energy had clearly gone into the show. Still, it didn't quite work for me and I confess that I haven't thought about it much since (whereas, e.g., I often still think about Feud Season 1 which aired around the same time and was one of the shows of the year for me).

Anyhow, I liked Eps 4, 6, 7 of Bates Motel Season 5 quite a lot.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

I watched it from the beginning, with a great deal of skepticism to start with. But soon enough became won over by the 4th or 5th episode, largely due to Vera and Freddie's performances, and secondarily the writing -- in particular the relationship between Norma and Norman.

I thought it was a great challenge to develop that relationship, especially Norma/Mother, of whom we knew little as a character in Psycho, and I needed to be convinced it'd work. Yet, it was extremely well done, and Farmiga knocked it out of the ballpark for me. Similarly, I thought Highmore borrowed enough from Perkins' Norman to make it work very well. Although obviously a younger Norman, he hit the right notes for me, sort of becoming frozen in time and development as the later Norman was.

I also loved the understated humor, which was a welcome relief from the otherwise oppressive atmosphere.

There were missteps, IMO, throughout some of the seasons, but overall I thought it was an excellent show, with a great deal of subtlety.

I was surprised Rihanna was cast in the show at all, and remember there was a lot of dismay on that score. I trusted the showrunners enough to think they had to have some reason for casting her -- or so I hoped -- beyond the obvious. As I said, I still haven't been able to see S5, so have no opinion on her performance, or the final season at all.

Never heard of Feud, and will now have to look it up.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I thought it was a great challenge to develop that relationship, especially Norma/Mother, of whom we knew little as a character in Psycho, and I needed to be convinced it'd work.

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I think one weird outcome of the seasons long "Bates Motel" version of the Norman/Norma relationship is that comparatively in the Hitchcock version -- we got practically NOTHING about it. We "meet" Mrs. Bates as an elderly harridan with a mean old lady's voice and a jarringly "wrong" amount of nightmarish physical strength and psychotic blood lust shown in the stabbing slaughters of her victims. There is really no "relationship" to contemplate in Hitchcock's original. Mrs. Bates is a monster.

The showrunner of Bates Motel pretty much explained that he had devised an entirely different version of Mrs. Bates(younger, sexier) and Norman (younger, less movie star handsome) for his series and really felt that it needn't have been called Bates Motel at all. He was using Psycho merely as a pretext to launch his new story.

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Yet, it was extremely well done, and Farmiga knocked it out of the ballpark for me.

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I have been seeing trailers at the movies for a January 2018 movie thriller called "The Commuter," in which a smiling Farmiga (much possessed of her Mrs. Bates menace) approaches New York train commuter Liam Neeson on a train(like Strangers on a Train) and entraps him into some sort of life-or-death plot ON The train. The film looks Hitchcockian to the max and -- Farmiga's cashing in her villain chips. (I expect that the trailer can be viewed on Youtube.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Similarly, I thought Highmore borrowed enough from Perkins' Norman to make it work very well. Although obviously a younger Norman, he hit the right notes for me, sort of becoming frozen in time and development as the later Norman was.

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Its odd. Anthony Perkins' career was rather hit and miss both before and after Psycho, but IN Psycho, he got everything so right "for all time" that I just think even Freddie Highmore(the best of the "other Bateses" vs Vince Vaughn and Henry Thomas) couldn't capture that Movie Star uniqueness of the 1960 Anthony Perkins (I will add that I never felt Perkins himself ever did Bates as well in his later years.)

In short, in 1960, Anthony Perkins was one handsome guy. Check him out particularly in the scene in the office, and later on the porch, with Arbogast. That's a movie star, old time style.

And I don't think Freddie Highmore has that movie star look.

But Freddie Highmore DID have his own style, and his own very rich and detailed version of Norman Bates to offer us...Anthony Perkins never got 50 hours of screen time to enact Norman.

I see that, right now, Freddie Highmore is now a "TV doctor" in a series. He's cashed in Norman for broadcast TV. Good for him. But...who wants Norman Bates operating on him?

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

Oh right, now I remember Feud, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange as Bette and Joan. Haven't yet seen it.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

Thanks, Swanstep. I only read the OP, as I still haven't been able to see the final season.

"One of the steps that made MC attractive for IMDb-refugees was precisely that (thanks to help and assistance from insiders at Amazon and IMDb) MC was able to reproduce/archive most of IMDb's boards and their threads"

I agree the many archived IMDb threads has a lot to do with why MC has been so attractive to us IMDb refugees, but where did you hear insiders at Amazon and IMDb had anything to do with it? As far as I know, they didn't.

Originally the formatting was imported intact, but after Jim (MC's owner) imported the second round of threads, the format was gone. As you said, lost formatting or no, the archived threads are a godsend!

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[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

where did you hear insiders at Amazon and IMDb had anything to do with it? As far as I know, they didn't.

The period around the great switch-off was quite hectic (e.g., I was frantically involved in running lots of archiving/web-scraping software myself as part of a joint effort). Then Jim came along IIRC *touting* (at least winkingly) that he had been *given* archived files and some database application interface assistance by insiders at Amazon/IMDb. And, voila, MC overnight had more complete archives than anyone else (certainly more so than the volunteer groups with which I was working), and better integration with IMDb than any other IMDb-successor-site managed. Note the 'link to corresponding IMDb page' on each MC board page, which connects us seamlessly to all of IMDb's (invaluable really) remaining database info. about each topic. You need some API help (or at least consent) from Amazon/IMDb to do that.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

Good for you for being a part of archiving/scraping the threads on IMDb. It would have been a great shame for all of that to be forever lost.

As I understand it, there was at least one other site that had successfully scraped the IMDb threads, and that MC's archives came from the same source, which had nothing to do with any insiders at Amazon or IMDb.

"Note the 'link to corresponding IMDb page' on each MC board page, which connects us seamlessly to all of IMDb's (invaluable really) remaining database info. about each topic. You need some API help (or at least consent) from Amazon/IMDb to do that."

You make a good point there, although I admit I'd assumed the link back to IMDb's pages on the MC boards could only serve IMDb/Amazon, so they'd naturally have no objection to them, and no access to or consent of an API would be required.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Thanks, Swanstep. I only read the OP, as I still haven't been able to see the final season.

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ecarle "cuts in" to note that I pretty much ONLY watched that final season, in which the series finally elects to go head to head with Hitchcock's classic. I think swanstep rightfully surmised that Bates Motel would get an influx of new viewers curious to see "new versus old," and I was one of them, and I did value the moments where the new show mimicked the old movie(in new ways.)

You clearly have liked what you have seen of the new Bates Motel. My take, from start to finish on that series, is that I honor those who like that show, and that, as a "Psycho fan" from way back, I should be proud that it could spawn a hit cable series over 50 years after release.

But that said...no, I don't think Bates Motel and its 50 hours or so of episodes is in the same historic league as Hitchcock's 109 minute outta nowhere classic.

But I'm also kinda in agreement with the Bates Motel showrunner: Psycho and Bates Motel are really two different stories in two different universes with two different characters in the new Norman and Norma.

At the end of the day, we should value both versions.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A misunderstanding. I meant while you mentioned an earlier Bates Motel, what I wondered was if you'd seen the 2013 show of the same name, with Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore.

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Oops. I have since seen swanstep's detailed reply to you about the "general sense of the Psycho board" -- complete with the old imdb thread AND a fine dialogue on the means by which we ended up with the gift of the old imdb threads being available here.

I will speak to the "new" Bates Motel in another post on this thread.

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It is interesting Bud Cort was cast in the starring role in the 1987 Bates Motel, which I've never heard of until now. The original premise sounds interesting enough, but the execution sounds very weak indeed.

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I guess it was interesting in premise, and Bud Cort was super-brilliant casting. (The series was originally pitched to Tony Perkins to reprise Bates for series, but even he wasn't willing to sell out his great character at that level.)

I remember a rather broad joke where Cort drove into Fairvale(the Universal backlot) to visit the knife shop where Norman took his knives to be sharpened.

But really, it was terrible. And the "Fantasy Island" plot of the pilot(the woman whose teenage friends from the 50's reappear before her) had nothing whatsoever to do with Psycho.

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I am reminded that when Universal cut Hitchcock a deal to become the third-largest holder of MCA-Universal stock in the 70's , they asked for rights to only two Hitchcock properties in return: His entire TV series(both versions, half hour and hour); and Psycho (which was largely owned personally by Hitchcock himself.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I suppose Universal already had the rights to all the Universal movies from The Birds to Family Plot; and to Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt , Universal films of the forties. But the property they WANTED was Psycho.

First of all because it was a blockbuster and thus a good TV earner.

But second -- as we found out -- because it could be mined practically forever -- after Hitchcock's death in 1980.

Starting in 1983, we got: Psycho II. Psycho III. Psycho IV. The "Psycho" episode of Spielberg's Amazing Stories. The 'Psycho" episode of Murder She Wrote. Bates Motel -- the 1987 series pilot. Van Sant's Psycho. And Bates Motel, the long-form cable series....

...and who knows what the future holds?

(As I recall, since Psycho IV ended with Norman the father of a baby boy...plans were for Psycho to continue with Norman Bates Jr. But the death of Perkins scuttled that plan.)

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 7 years ago

BTW, just to clarify, these are the parts of the original premise for the 1987 show I thought sound interesting:

"The idea was that asylum resident Bud Cort is released from the same place where his best pal was Norman Bates. Bates has died and willed the house and the motel to Cort."

"Its a clever idea that urban sprawl might envelop the Bates house and Bates motel."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

BTW, just to clarify, these are the parts of the original premise for the 1987 show I thought sound interesting:

"The idea was that asylum resident Bud Cort is released from the same place where his best pal was Norman Bates. Bates has died and willed the house and the motel to Cort."

"Its a clever idea that urban sprawl might envelop the Bates house and Bates motel."

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I suppose those were thoughtful ideas -- the first being that Norman Bates might befriend ANOTHER mad killer who ALSO had a "good side" -- and try to help him out "on the outside."

As for the urban sprawl idea, it made a lot of sense. I have lived in "small towns" that are now surrounded for a 30 mile radius with shopping malls and movie theaters. Its what happened in America from 1960 on.

BUT...the urban sprawl idea kind of wrecked the terror factor of the Bates Motel being in the middle of nowhere...nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no help available.

Now, you could just run across the street to the convenience store.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I don't have strong feelings for-or-against Psycho.

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That's certainly OK. I'm intrigued that it was its constant popping up on "trending" that may have brought you here.

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It's an interesting, many-layered film, but I wouldn't spend a large part of my life dissecting it. Don't get me wrong - I know there is a lot to discuss, including technical details (like POV) that are worth looking at, and it's more complicated than I think others might realize,

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My detailed response posts try to get into why some of us have "spent a large part of our lives dissecting it." I've found it a relaxing mental exercise, with a warm central feeling of nostalgia to it -- and a RELENTLESS focus on making sure to talk about TODAY's culture , too -- NEW movies, TV shows, "things in the news"(the Hollywood sexual crime breakdown is now striking me as a historic moment in the history of humanity itself.)

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but (Psycho is) rather depressing and creepy.

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Oh, yeah. Though leavened by the shocks that made people scream and the dark humor that weaves all through it, Psycho IS depressing, dark, creepy. The studios and the censors tried to stop Hitchcock from exposing the world to the ideas and feelings of Psycho, but they couldn't...and audiences remained haunted by this film for years after seeing it. The depressive and creepy aspects are key to that.

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I feel bad for Anthony Perkins for often being used as an unstable guy, like Brad Dourif.

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True, but actually Perkins fought hard against the Norman Bates thing for years. For one thing, he turned down horror movies and other psychos for most of the years before he did Psycho II. But Norman Bates HELPED Perkins because the role gave him some gravitas, some menace, some haunting weirdness that infected all his "normal" roles thereafter.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Not that every film is supposed to be Capra, but Psycho makes me feel sad about people.

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"Psycho" screenwriter Joe Stefano said one key to why Psycho hit so hard on audiences is that "They were forced to see two nice people get horribly killed...by ANOTHER nice person." And that's sad.

Norman's life at the motel "alone with mother" is sad. He doesn't go out with friends. Romance is an impossibility.

Marion Crane's life is sad. A working secretary for 10 years, no 1960 "rescue by marriage" in sight; a handsome boyfriend saddled with debt and alimony...dead parents.

Sam Loomis' life is sad. Debt, alimony, and living quarters in a room in the back of his hardware store, in a small town he cannot escape.

Lila Crane's life is sad. As workaday as Marion's, and evidently without a boyfriend.

And Sam and Lila will spend the entire rest of their LIVES sad...with the knowledge of Marion's horrible death never leaving their thoughts.

Audiences have forever related to the tense sad characters of Psycho -- who "scratch and claw, but only at the air, only at each other...."

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[–] swanstep (2628) 6 years ago

Time for an update on the evolving sexual harassment 'day of reckoning' story:

The big ones today: Charlie Rose and John Lasseter (head of Pixar and Disney Animation). Both basically luminaries in their respective fields, both evidently with troubling patterns of behavior that people have half-worked around, half-turned-a-blind-eye-to for many years (probably decades).

The big one over the past week or so: Al Franken. Prima facie his indiscretions seem to be much less serious. The famous photo that upset so many I confess to me looked to me like the sort of thing that *every* person whose job is to be a comedian/life of the party type has posed for (probably dozens of times over a life). Probably the average college party has a shot from it with the jokester in the crowd goofing on someone who's passed-out drunk. My guess: Franken survives as a Sen..

The sense of a general house-cleaning, backlog-removal going on is still quite vivid. Plenty to talk about over Thanksgiving this year!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Time for an update on the evolving sexual harassment 'day of reckoning' story:

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There's a scary month left for something else bad to happen, but I would figure other than the mass shootings of the year, the big story of 2017 will be this now amazingly extensive "purge of harraser/molesters." Its unprecedented no matter how much the history of Hollywood has these stories embedded. And of course, it goes beyond Hollywood: politics, NEWS television(Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin).

Ordinarily I'm not too big on dwelling on things like this, but I really do think "why now?" is a helluva question to ask. So many folks have been saying "Well, we always knew (about Weinstein, the Pixar guy, Rose)..." but this is the year they all fall down.

We are told that the Weinstein "get" was likely some internal Democratic party stuff to get at the Clintons(the New York Times broke the first story). Maybe. But unanticipated consequences have kicked in with everybody else.

I think what is very true is that any number of women(and in the gay cases, men) decided there was no downside in going public with their stories, no potential loss of career(and a potential EARNING of settlement payouts.) So everybody piled on.

Interesting to me: not all the accusations are sticking. Dustin Hoffman and Richard Dreyfuss seem to have gotten off by saying "hey, we're movie stars, women flirt with us and we flirt with women all the time. And sometimes it gets physical." I flashed back to the arrogant autobiographies of Brando, Kirk Douglas, and Tony Curtis, in which their message was: "As a male movie star, women threw themselves at me and I slept with all of them -- especially the wives of friends."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In a less "toxic" time, I recall reading some article where some unnamed woman talked of Kevin Costner hitting on her in a cab or something. The woman said, "He thought because he was Kevin Costner, he was entitled and that I would fall for him right on the spot. But I said no." This story was along the lines of how -- ha ha ha -- no male movie star should expect that he can get ANY woman. I recall that article because I had to chuckle a bit: evidently Kevin Costner lacked the seduction skills of Brando, Douglas, Curtis...but also: times had changed. Costner's lucky this was reported years ago, though, isn't he?

I write all this to background the fact that the accusations that ARE sticking seem to be the ones where powerful -- and not terribly attractive -- men, came on to women in gross or "salacious" or uncomfortable ways, and there's enough "pattern" evidence to make these guys have to quit their jobs.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The big ones today: Charlie Rose and John Lasseter (head of Pixar and Disney Animation).

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Lassester is the shocker. Pixar is godlike in its power at the box office and the critical worship of most of the animated fims that emerge from there. Lasseter seemed to be the Walt Disney of the operation. I think this one is also a CREATIVE loss.

Charlie Rose...eh. I've watched enough of his interviews to take him as a bit "elevated beyond his capabilities." Though I loved it the one time he mildly punctured Tarantino's arrogance. QT had noted that there WAS another movie called "Inglorious Bastards"(correct spelling) that inspired the title and little more for his movie. But later in the interview:

QT: What I really love about this movie is that it ALL came out of my head. Totally my baby.
Rose: But you said there was ANOTHER "Inglorious Bastards" that you based it on...
QT: (Angry) No, no, NO! Just the TITLE, OK?

Ha.

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Both basically luminaries in their respective fields, both evidently with troubling patterns of behavior that people have half-worked around, half-turned-a-blind-eye-to for many years (probably decades).

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Looks like Charlie was into showing himself off naked, like Weinstein. Ech.

And Charlie invited a female intern visiting his home to watch "Secretary" with him -- the one about the secretary who submits to spanking and other S/M tortures by her boss.

You know, in the olden days, the actual DETAILS of these actions were not reported. Now we get chapter and verse.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The big one over the past week or so: Al Franken. Prima facie his indiscretions seem to be much less serious. The famous photo that upset so many I confess to me looked to me like the sort of thing that *every* person whose job is to be a comedian/life of the party type has posed for (probably dozens of times over a life). Probably the average college party has a shot from it with the jokester in the crowd goofing on someone who's passed-out drunk. My guess: Franken survives as a Sen..

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Probably. He won't resign. I'm not sure when he is up for reelection. US Senators get long six year terms so maybe he can wait it out.

There have been new groping allegations, but politicos are different from people in business: the voters have to fire them. Political history is replete with politicians of questionable morals being reelected again and again. Party loyalty is part of it; not reading about them is part of it(many voters don't) and hey -- modernly, so voters just don't CARE. It didn't seem to hurt Trump (at the time.)

Not to mention, folks like Weinstein, Lasseter and Rose are connected to deep pocket corporations which could end up paying multi-billions in settlements if they DON'T fire these guys, (or "suspend" them immediately.)

But back to Trump: one thing I always surmised about famous comment about "grabbing" something is that he was saying(paraphrased) "When you are a rich and famous celebrity, women LET YOU grab(etc.)" He seemed to be talking about the world that rich men, male movie stars, and star athletes live in all the time. (Except, evidently, Kevin Costner.)

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The sense of a general house-cleaning, backlog-removal going on is still quite vivid. Plenty to talk about over Thanksgiving this year.

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I daresay. Its a phenomenon. And it WILL affect private and public policy going forward.

Perhaps all dating will have to be managed by matchmakers and subject to cameras and audio filming all aspects of the date to "confirm consent."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A PS on Al Franken:

I read an article that indicated while he will likely stay in office(for now), he is a big celebrity fundraiser of political funds to give to OTHER Democrats, and now "Franken money" will be tainted in the giving. So as a matter of impact, some is taking place.

Boy was he funny on SNL: "The 80's are going to be 'The Al Franken Decade.' Whenever something occurs, ask yourself -- how is this going to affect ME, Al Franken." I loved that routine.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 6 years ago

My guess: Franken survives as a Sen..

Well, I was wrong.

I didn't follow the subsequent allegations closely, but nothing horrific had emerged, so arguments will now begin about whether this is one of those high-minded mistakes that the left periodically makes, choosing purity over winning. I suspect that Franken is going to able to make good comedy out of this.

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[–] [email protected] (690) 6 years ago

I'm frustrated that a smart Progressive guy like Franken gets cut down for being stupid in his personal life, and how Trump manages to swim above it all. I'm sure it's annoying when some jerk-wad gives into some urge to get tight with a good looking girl, but I'm not sure AF did anything more than act like an idiot around women who caught his fancy. No under-agers, no rapes, no coercion, just an assumption of license and no impulse control. At least he's openly embarrassed about it, unlike some other serial gropers who appeal to the religious right.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

My guess: Franken survives as a Sen..

Well, I was wrong.

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Its interesting. The guys in TV and movie studios were fired or suspended immediately -- the risk of zillions in lawsuit payouts made it imperative.

But,as they say, "only the voters can fire politicians" and oftimes voters reelect all sorts of tainted pols.

But not this time. There were some political complexities:

The Dems are mainly following a "pro woman, get the women's vote" strategy for 2018 and 2020 that evidently requires cashiering their wayward men. Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kristin Gillebrand are all potential 2020 Presidential candidates and -- they all asked Franken to quit. (Hey, HE was a potential 2020 candidate, too, so -- why not?)

Also: Franken quits, the Democratic Governor of Minnesota will appoint a Dem to replace him. Its said that if Minnesota had a Republican Governor, Franken would stick it out and retire after the next election for his seat, with new candidates -- years from now.

Also: African-American Congressman John Conyers had to quit -- so the House Democratic Black Caucus said if the black guy had to go, the white guy had to go.

Also: Don't rule out some jealously about Franken. He was a fore-runner of Trump in one key way: a TV star with far more celebrity than any "ordinary politician." Franken was, more and more, letting his comedian side out on the floor and in committee hearings, and -- well, ordinary politicians don't much like being upstaged.

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I didn't follow the subsequent allegations closely, but nothing horrific had emerged,

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Well, here we get into "He said, she said":

One woman accuser says that Franken blocked her path to a door out of a room, grabbed her, tried to tongue kiss here, and said, upon her making her escape "Its my right as an entertainer" to have attacked her.

If true, there's your horrific event. And that's a core value in this phenonmenon: are we to accept EVERY story as true?

Evidently, yes.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 6 years ago

The Dems are mainly following a "pro woman, get the women's vote" strategy for 2018 and 2020 that evidently requires cashiering their wayward men. Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kristin Gillebrand are all potential 2020 Presidential candidates and -- they all asked Franken to quit. (Hey, HE was a potential 2020 candidate, too, so -- why not?)
Also: Franken quits, the Democratic Governor of Minnesota will appoint a Dem to replace him.
Also: African-American Congressman John Conyers had to quit -- so the House Democratic Black Caucus said if the black guy had to go, the white guy had to go.
Also: Don't rule out some jealously about Franken.... ordinary politicians don't much like being upstaged.

Great analysis! Thanks ecarle. I hadn't quite put together Harris, Warren, and Gillebrand as the top contenders, but I can see it now: a two-woman ticket chosen from that trio as the most likely outcome for the Dems in 2020. And the idea will be a strong party unity ticket after Hillary/Bernie divisiveness. (Bernie, Biden, Gore are too old and too caricaturable/wacky - these Senator gals all look like all safe pairs of hands by comparison.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Great analysis! Thanks ecarle.

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Well, if movies is everybody's second business, politics is perhaps everybodys "second second" business. But talking about it is such a sudden-death proposition nowadays that I don't much like talking it (hell, religion and politics have been banned from conversation for decades, but now its pretty bad.)

I got a lot of that from reading articles, but I will confess that I like to see the structure of things, from a great Hitchcock movie to a "why is THIS happening NOW?" political proposition.

Entire machinery is set up on the internet and elsewhere to "tell the story of strategy" and this one is this one: Dems kick out bad guys; Reps don't. Women are ready to take the stage.

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I hadn't quite put together Harris, Warren, and Gillebrand as the top contenders,

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They sort of trade the position back and forth. Looks like Gillebrand is in the lead this week.

There's also the angle that by coming on strong with so many women...the Dems are trying to put Hilary to bed.(I know, I know, she had 3 million more votes, but...)

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but I can see it now: a two-woman ticket chosen from that trio as the most likely outcome for the Dems in 2020. And the idea will be a strong party unity ticket after Hillary/Bernie divisiveness. (Bernie, Biden, Gore are too old and too caricaturable/wacky - these Senator gals all look like all safe pairs of hands by comparison.)

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Yeah, heck, why not. Obama was proof that you can "do things differently than they were." And you could say that Trump picked up where Obama left off -- ending the "Bush/Clinton continuum"(Tom Hanks' phrase; I love hiding behind his admirable skirts.) With Hilary out, and Trump on the menu, the rest of the girls can come out to play.

Oh, wait, I said "girls." But you tell me what word is the female equivalent of "guys."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

so arguments will now begin about whether this is one of those high-minded mistakes that the left periodically makes, choosing purity over winning

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I'm just one slightly-informed voice on this(politics becomes the subject everyone knows) but supposedly the "long game" IS to win.

Cast the Dems as the party that "casts out its wicked men."

Cast the Reps as the party that "keeps, protects and defends its wicked men."

Get all the women's vote, accordingly. And some "good men."

Flip the House and the Senate in 2018. Impeach Trump.

Run a woman again in 2020 for President.

(In the meantime, if Trump is impeached, we get President Mike Pence -- who was mocked for refusing to ever meet with a woman alone unless his wife is with him. Suddenly looks like a good plan, eh?)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Meanwhile, back at Dustin Hoffman.

As with Franken, a damming photo: Hoffman in "Death of A Salesman" bald cap make-up, with his hand on the breast of his smiling, pretty young co-star(she claims she's smiling because he slipped the hand on her before she could change expression.)

Well, what's ol' Dusty got to lose?

He's made his multi-millions, won his Oscars. I think he already got his AFI Life Achievement Award. I guess, ala Spacey, he might stop getting roles.

But mainly I think what he's losing is: going into history as a great movie star...without an "asterisk of smarminess."

Of course, way back in the 70's and 80's , articles appeared all over the place about Hoffman as a tempermental, crazy-making, piggish jerk of a movie star. He had worked diligently in recent years to prove that he has "mellowed." Oops. He was even confronted during a panel last week over his harrassment issues, in public, by TV guy John Oliver.

Speaking of Oscar: for awhile there, Hoffman was being mentioned as a "Supporting Actor" lock this year for a movie with Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, where he played their aged dad. No more.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 6 years ago

Speaking of Oscar: for awhile there, Hoffman was being mentioned as a "Supporting Actor" lock this year for a movie with Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, where he played their aged dad. No more.

Ha ha, yes that film was already a log shot because of Netflix being its primary identity, but now it's awards-roadkill after Hoffman's bad publicity.

Slightly Relatedly, I have seen Girls Trip for which there's been some talk of a Supporting Actress nom for Tiffany Haddish (who was so good on SNL recently). No chance. The critics group that awarded Haddish must have completely lost its mind. She's quite (gross-out-ly) fun in the film but nothing super-special, and the film itself is an utterly routine 'ethnic' retread of The Hangover/Bridesmaids/Last Vegas/Old Dogs/Every '4 college friends get together after a decade or two for one last blow-out weekend in a sinful city' movie. I kept waiting for Haddish to have a big potentially Oscar-worthy scene but none arrives.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Ha ha, yes that film was already a log shot because of Netflix being its primary identity,

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I continue to be a Luddite not only on how to access Netflix in my home...but how Netflix finances movies. Some are ON Netflix -- the ones with Adam Sandler, right? -- but didn't this Hoffman/Sandler/Stiller one get theatrical release?

And: Scorseses' big "The Irishman"(with DeNiroPacinoPesciLiottaKeitel) is listed as a Netflix production -- but it will go to theaters, right? I think I heard that Paramount will release.

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but now it's awards-roadkill after Hoffman's bad publicity.

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The campaign folded soon after starting -- hell that was the big selling point OF the movie: Hoffman.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Slightly Relatedly, I have seen Girls Trip for which there's been some talk of a Supporting Actress nom for Tiffany Haddish (who was so good on SNL recently). No chance. The critics group that awarded Haddish must have completely lost its mind. She's quite (gross-out-ly) fun in the film but nothing super-special, and the film itself is an utterly routine 'ethnic' retread of The Hangover/Bridesmaids/Last Vegas/Old Dogs/Every '4 college friends get together after a decade or two for one last blow-out weekend in a sinful city' movie. I kept waiting for Haddish to have a big potentially Oscar-worthy scene but none arrives

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If I can extoll the glories of The Ice Harvest(2005) in one post around here -- and the more recent Kidnap in yet another -- I owe you the reading of this post on Girls Trip. First of all -- yeah, this is a genre by now. Funny: it started as a grossout/sexual GUYS genre, and now of course, we've got plenty of entries in the GIRLS division(starting, I suppose, with Bridesmaids, that made Melissa McCarthy "the female Bluto" before she refined her act a bit.)

And of course, WITHIN the guys/gals party genre, we have the African American versions.

Its all good Hollywood capitalism. Imitiation is the sincerest form of flattery.

And I think somebody out there always sees an angle on finding SOME MOVIE to promotes a new talent(Haddish, here.)

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[–] mattjoes (53) 6 years ago

http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/dustin-hoffman-2-1202641525/

Sadly, I think with this, the asterisk of smarminess is firmly put in place. Just too many stories surfacing. What a strange thing it must be for a man's reputation to suddenly collapse in his later years.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 6 years ago

@mattjoes. Yikes - this is very detailed and credible. :(

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Sadly, I think with this, the asterisk of smarminess is firmly put in place. Just too many stories surfacing. What a strange thing it must be for a man's reputation to suddenly collapse in his later years.

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And the tough thing is that Dustin Hoffman is rather "one of the greats of his era" -- singled out to replace Cary Grant and James Stewart as "a new kind of young star" who proceeded to give great CHARACTER performances in The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man...Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man. Pretty much those six defined him as a Great(even as he turned in good star work in Marathon Man and All the President's Men,too).

That asterisk is going to be a heavy load going forward. He may retreat into seclusion(he was doing one of those public Q and A things when John Olivier blindsided him on stage about the sex stuff.)

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I can't remember if it is one of Hoffman's accusers, or perhaps Matt Lauer's, where the woman is saying, "well, I had an affair with him for awhile, and I thought it was consensual, but I realize now that I was abused." These issues can get a bit murky from the woman's side of the table.

Its good in key ways, what is happening here, but it is sad in others. Sometimes I think the "new way" will be that any given man or woman gets only ONE partner of the opposite sex "on their side." (Their spouse, their significant other.) All other interaction will be forbidden, and men and women will otherwise be "enemies" as a matter of identity politics. (Its already happening -- gains are sought for women to "get payback" for what men have done.)

There is also the issue that most of the men being brought down have wealth, fame, power. If you DON'T have those, perhaps you are OK to keep on flirting and dating. If a man doesn't have money and power on his side, he has to win the woman with charm and love.

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[–] swanstep (2628) 6 years ago

Get all the women's vote, accordingly. And some "good men."

Is this a winning strategy? Trump got a majority of white women last time!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Get all the women's vote, accordingly. And some "good men."

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Is this a winning strategy? Trump got a majority of white women last time!

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Well, its a strategy. And its already begun with Senator Kristen Gillebrand calling for Trump to resign over HIS women accusers(hence yet and again -- why Conyers and Franken had to go.)

Meanwhile this the night before Christma--- no wait -- the night before the Alabama election, and the Dems are crowing that they win either way: the seat for the Dems or Moore to run against in '18, at least.

I dunno, I tend to watch all this with a jaundiced eye. "Political experts" often prove not to be - they go with "broad brush assumptions" as to why their strategy will win.

I'd say, "they are trying this strategy on for size right now while its hot"(sexual harassment and abuse accusations)...and there is time to pick another strategy if this one doesn't work.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

Run a woman in 2020, indeed. The GOPs worst nightmare at the moment has to be Kristen Gillibrand, the anti-Hilary who replaced Hilary in the Senate.

The woman who can crack the Republican hold on blue collar women.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Meanwhile, back on the sexual harrassment watch:

There's a movie I really, really want to see this Christmas weekend:

Downsizing, by Alexander Payne. Like Kubrick and QT, Payne hasn't directed all that many movies, so one can consider the lot of them in a quick memory check: Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska.

Sideways is my favorite film of 2004; The Descendants was my favorite of 2011 until I caught up with Moneyball as a rental. And I like the rest of them in varying degrees. (Nicholson's "Dear Ndugo" speeches in Schmidt are funny and sad and profound.)

Anyway, I'm all psyched for Downsizing but...

...its got Matt Damon in it. And suddenly he's in hot water.

They say his connection to Weinstein helped sink "Suburbicon" a few weeks ago -- but I also hear that Suburbicon was a horrible movie(horribly directed and horribly co-written by George Clooney.)

Damon's in a better vehicle by a better writer-director this time, but I wonder: if "Downsizing" underperforms, trouble for Matt Damon's career?

It gets worse for Matt: there's a petition out there to remove his only-rumored-about cameo in "Ocean's Eight," a sequel to the other Oceans movies in which the entire gang is women this time(led by Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett). The petition claims that Matt should be removed not only for Weinstein, but because Ocean's Eight is "all about women."

Tough times. Tough times.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I still want to see Downsizing, though. Its even got My Man Chris Waltz in it. I love watching him, though I was amused by a Downsizing review that said "Chris Waltz does his usual schtick."

Well, well, well. Not 8 years ago, in 2009, all the critics were uniformly singing the praises of Chris Waltz as a "spectacular new discovery as an actor" who proceeded to win every award extant for "Inglorious Basterds." And who then won a surprising second Oscar for Django Unchained. (For a better, nicer, role.)

And now, Waltz is accused of "doing his usual schtick."

They turn on you. Every time.

They turned on Jack Nicholson. They turned on Johnny Depp. They turned on Chris Waltz. With re a director, they turned on QT. They turn, it seems, on every "discovery" who gets too rich, too big for his britches.

I say its the critics who are doing THEIR usual schtick. Jack, Johnny and Chris still entertain me wildly, QT too; -- well, Jack did until his retirement in 2010(oh they say he's coming back in that remake, but I'll believe it when I see it.)

But critics can't help themselves. "They build up, they tear down." Its what they do.

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