erik lundegaard

 RSS
ARCHIVES
LINKS

Thursday April 21, 2022

Movie Review: West Side Story (2021)

WARNING: SPOILERS

It’s not often that someone makes a classic better, but I guess most people aren’t Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner.

It didn’t hurt either that they were adapting the work of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. And Shakespeare.

I mean, look at that fucking roster.

Grounded, soaring
Spielberg and Kushner clarify things about “West Side Story” that I didn’t know needed clarifying. I never got a sense from the original that the Jets and the Sharks were anything other than gangs in a slum fighting over turf, but here there are historic reasons for what’s going on. Robert Moses’ urban renewal program is destroying neighborhoods, their neighborhoods, so the Jets and the Sharks have less turf on which to exist. The powers that be are essentially pushing them together, and they’re blaming each other rather than the powers that be. 

In the ’61 original, the territories seemed amorphous. In real life, there are lines—“Yeah, you don’t go into that neighborhood”—and at the beginning of this one, the Jets cross that line, 68th and Broadway, to cause trouble in the Latino neighborhood: to take back what they feel is theirs. Down goes the Cocina Criolla sign covering up the Irish Pub sign; up goes the paint to cover the Puerto Rican flag mural. Then it’s back to their hangout, Doc’s, which is already at the edge of the urban renewal destruction. It looks like the last store standing in a war zone.

How about Anybodys? In the original she was just a girl trying to hang with the boys. She was a punchline. Here, played by Iris Menas, she’s obviously trans and packs a punch. Literally. I love the moment at the end, after Riff and Bernardo have been killed, when she, a figure flitting in the shadows, delivers intel on Chino and the gun and is finally accepted into the gang. The myriad emotions that wash over her face: gratitude and pride, and then … confusion. As if to say: Is that all there is? 

Officer Krupke isn’t just comic relief. As played by Brian d’Arcy James, he’s allowed dignity. He’s a good cop in a bad situation. The “Dear Officer Krupke” bit has been transferred to the police station, without Krupke present, and it’s insanely good. The Jets aren’t doing it to get back at Krupke; they’re doing it to amuse themselves. They’re doing it to mock every authority figure that thinks knows them: cop, judge, shrink, social worker.

I like how the songs come out of nowhere. Just a thought, a whisper, a kind of stumbling, before finally catching and going full-blown. “Deeeeaaarrr kindly Sgt. Krupke…” Or Tony by the schoolyard, repeating the name of the girl he just met, under his breath, before breaking into song, soaring into song, with “Maria.” Kushner’s script grounds us in the historic realities of 1950s New York while Spielberg’s direction makes it soar.

Everyone talks up Mike Faist as Riff and Ariana DeBose as Anita, not to mention the pipes on Rachel Zegler’s Maria, but Ansel Elgort’s Tony feels like an overlooked performance to me. Is it the toughest role? He has to be someone who’s leader enough to start the Jets, tough enough to still be pursued by the Jets, and someone wholly, fully in love. Elgort nails all of this. The balcony scene, “Tonight,” makes me believe in love again. I also believe he could kill. He talks about his regret at nearly beating another kid to death, how one more punch might’ve done it. And then we see him nearly do it again with Bernardo. Does this take away from the tragedy? In the original it just seems like a bad string of events, unlucky circumstances, and if they’d made it past this point things would’ve been OK. Here, I thought, “You know, if it wasn’t Bernardo it would’ve been someone else. He would’ve gone zero-to-60 with someone else at some other time.” Which, I guess, is tragedy enough.

I could go on: the photography, the shots, the camera angles. The overhead of the gang fight at the salt mines, with the long shadows of the gang members meeting in the middle before they do. Then juxtapose it with the overhead of the cops coming in afterwards: their long shadows falling upon the dead bodies of Riff and Bernardo. My nephew Jordan talked up the puddle shot and I was like “What puddle shot?” He: “As Tony’s looking up the puddles take on this surreal colorful quality. Gorgeous.” 

The dancing? The toreador bit from “America” has been tossed for something more muscular and boxing. All the choreography feels harder now. And those songs? Those seemingly effortlessly beautiful songs? The playing/praying of “Maria” really got me in a new way this time. And city/committee from “I Feel Pretty.” 

Is “I Feel Pretty” misplaced? We get it after the gang fight, but before Maria knows her brother is dead. Feels like the wrong time. And something felt off, not quite connected, between Maria finding out Tony killed Bernardo but sleeping with him anyway. I love Corey Stoll but his Lt. Schrank added little. But I loved Rita Moreno as the widow of Doc, running Doc’s, mentoring Tony. We see an old photo of her and Doc, and for a second I wondered if that was the original Doc, Ned Glass, next to her. Then I wondered if it might not be Spielberg's dad, who died in 2020, age 103, and to whom the movie is dedicated. Wouldn't that be a nice present? Hey dad, I fixed you up with Rita Moreno. But it seems to be neither of those men.

I didn’t get a strong sense of the Sharks as a gang. In the original, you see how the violence of the Jets helps create the Sharks. Here, when are the Sharks ever together as a gang? A bit during the dance but it feels loose and unaffiliated. We see the Jets creating havoc in PR territory, singing about being a Jet, singing about Office Krupke, watching Tony and Riff battle over a gun on the docks. The Sharks don’t even get their own song. Or their songs are dominated by women. That’s another big difference. The Sharks’ girls, Anita and Maria, are main characters, while the Jets’ girls barely register; they barely have a line.

The sweet spot
The ending requires everyone to act their worst selves. Maria never should have sent Anita, still grieving for Bernardo, with a message for Tony. Anita’s good deed then goes punished when the Jets attempt to rape her—a scene that’s always tough to watch—and so she acts her worst self, delivering the message that Maria is dead. That leads Tony into the streets crying out for Chino to end his misery. I like that even after he’s shot, as the life ebbs out of him, Tony’s eyes still shine with happiness because he’s in Maria’s arms.

There’s a sweet spot between art and commerce, identification and fantasy, fine and bold lines, that's tough to hit. In literature I think of “Gatsby” and “Garp” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” It has to be accessible, maybe even breezy, but deep, somehow. I think Spielberg’s “West Side Story” hits it. It should've won best picture. I watched it and felt filled.

It’s Spielberg’s first musical after more than 50 years in the biz. Encore.

Posted at 06:06 AM on Thursday April 21, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 2021   |   Permalink  

Tuesday April 19, 2022

Sam McDaniel Breaks the Fourth Wall

The above screenshot is from Warner Bros.' 1934 actioner “Here Comes the Navy,” the first pairing of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, and it seems to show bathroom attendant Sam McDaniel, brother of future Oscar-winner Hattie, presenting a man (Cagney, playing Chesty O'Connor) leaving the restroom. But that's not what he's doing. McDaniel is actually breaking the fourth wall.

Cagney's character is a riveter in, I would guess, Bremerton, Wash., who gets into it with Pat O'Brien's Navy man. And at a dance, which Chesty expects to win, they fight in the alley to a standstill—until Chesty's girl calls him, he turns his head, and O'Brien clocks him. Then O'Brien wins the dance and steals the girl. Chesty, meanwhile, winds up in this restroom, where he's awakened via Black Narcissus, a perfume, then consoled, cleaned up as well as possible, and, as he's sent on his way, the man doing all this, McDaniel, holds out an open palm for a tip. Which is completely ignored. It's not even seen. It's not even a concept. So he turns helplessly toward the camera as if to say, “You see this shit?” 

Anyway, it made me laugh.

I don't know if much has been written about Sam McDaniel, other than being Hattie's brother, but according to IMDb he appeared in 223 movies and TV shows, 179 of which are uncredited. Five of the uncrediteds were Cagney pics:

  • Public Enemy (1931): Headwaiter 
  • Footlight Parade (1933): Porter in ‘Honeymoon Hotel’ 
  • Lady Killer (1933): Porter 
  • Here Comes the Navy (1934): Washroom Attendant 
  • A Lion Is In the Streets (1953): Moses, Bolduc’s Butler 

At least by the time of “Lion,” he got a name. 

Posted at 09:06 PM on Tuesday April 19, 2022 in category Photo of the Day   |   Permalink  

Sunday April 17, 2022

Movie Review: The Angels Wash Their Faces (1939)

WARNING: SPOILERS

I’m curious if they did it on purpose.

The movie opens at a reform school, where Ann Sheridan’s onetime-delinquent kid brother, Gabe (Frankie Thomas, quite good), is the foreman of the machine shop. He compliments one kid working a lathe, then gets into a fight with another kid who is fashioning a knife. 

The kid he compliments is Frank Coghlan Jr., who played James Cagney as a boy in “The Public Enemy.” The kid who’s making a knife is Frankie Burke, who played James Cagney as a boy in “Angels with Dirty Faces.”

It’s as if Warner Bros. was saying: “OK, so we don’t have Cagney, but … here you go. Right? Close enough, right?”

Grups
“The Angels Wash Their Faces” isn’t a sequel to “Dirty Faces.” Its working title was the more apt “The Battle of City Hall,” but I’m sure someone figured, “Hey, let’s glom off the hit movie from the year before.” Like that one, it stars  Ann Sheridan and the Dead End Kids (and Burke), but they’re playing different characters. Well, “different.” Their names are different.

Gabe/Thomas is the new kid in town. We’re told he grew up in a bad neighborhood, blah blah, which is why he went bad, blah blah; and besides, Remson (Henry O’Neill), the man in charge of the reform school who moonlights as the city DA, knows a good kid when he sees one. So despite the fight with Burke, Remson paroles him—with a warning that turns out to be prescient: “Watch out for the grown-ups.” Then Gabe and sis, Joy Ryan (Sheridan), move into a newer, better neighborhood.

Well, “better.” The Dead End Kids still prowl the joint. We see them de-pants one kid before picking a fight with Gabe. He fights back. Thomas, with curly hair parted on the side, looks like a pushover but he gets a good determined look in his eyes. He’s so good in this role, in fact, I wondered why I hadn’t heard of him before. Turns out he played Ted Nickerson, boyfriend to Bonita Granville’s Nancy Drew, in a four-movie series in the late ‘30s; then he did some cadet movies before serving in the actual Navy and Coast Guard during World War II. When he returned, it was mostly to TV. His big role was the titular “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” in the early 1950s. After that, he gave up acting for writing and production, but mostly he made a living as a bridge master: teaching it and playing it. He died in 2006, age 85.

Bonita Granville, by the way, is also in this one. She plays Leo Gorcey’s kid sister Peggy, who is forever running to keep up with/join the Dead End Kids. She’s basically a precursor to Anybodys two decades before “West Side Story.” She could've been the inspiration for Anybodys.

Leaving reform school, Gabe had promised to stay out of trouble, so it feels odd he joins the Dead End Kids’ gang, “the Termites,” without a second thought or a scolding from his sis. But by this point in their Warner Bros. career, the Kids have had their rough edges smoothed, and, though they're still rough-and-tumble, and sometime bullies, the movie takes a boys-will-be-boys attitude about them. The true crooks, anyway, are higher up.

Gabe’s initiation into the gang involves fake guillotines and a fake dousing with gasoline, which is bad luck for him. Because the real gasoline he bought winds up being used in an arson, which makes him a suspect, and which leads to the assistant DA nosing around and knocking on doors. And not just any ADA: Pat Remson, the son of the DA. And not just any actor playing him, either: It's Ronald Reagan, future president of the United States. He shows up at Joy’s door and makes a play while gabbing away. At one point he says:

You know there’s more than a bunch of kids playing with matches back of this fire situation. Some organization in the background. Some one man running the whole show. But it’s all very elusive, I can’t get my teeth into anything.

That's a lot of leaps there without much information. Reagan's way.

I haven’t seen Reagan in much, but watching this I get why he never became a bigger star. It made me think of Gore Vidal’s 1983 takedown of the man: “… he was, far and away, Hollywood's most grinding bore—Chester Chatterbox, in fact. Ronnie never stopped talking, even though he never had anything to say except what he had just read in the Reader’s Digest, which he studied the way Jefferson studied Montesquieu." 

So maybe this line of Reagan’s to Sheridan was a Hollywood in-joke? “That’s the marvelous thing about you. You’re the only person in the world who likes my dialogue.” 

Anyway, while Reagan woos the Oomph Girl, the real power in town, the one man running the whole show, Martino (Eduardo Ciannelli), sets another building ablaze, and one of the Dead Enders, Sleepy (Bernard Punsly), who’s got a thyroid problem, dies. And even though Gabe was the one who nearly got him out, he’s blamed, arrested, put on trial and convicted. And the judge sentences him to 10 years in the state pen. Remember that “watch out for grown-ups” line? Truer words. Oddly, the guy who said this is the guy who convicts him—Reagan’s dad. Leading Sheridan to chastise the old man: “In this city of graft and corruption, you’ve overlooked a thousand lawbreakers to convict one innocent boy!”

I kept waiting for Joy to break up with Ronnie, or for Reagan to show his worth by saving the day, but neither happens. He still wants to marry her, she still wants to marry him (despite his dad convicting her innocent brother), but she can’t because of the disgrace. That is, she doesn’t want to disgrace him.

So if not Reagan, who comes to the rescue? Our stars, of course, the Dead End Kids. There’s some honorary mayoralty a kid can win, and the lead Dead Ender, and future Burt Munson on “All in the Family,” Billy Halop, playing Billy Shafter, runs for it. And between him studying and the Dead Enders threatening the competition, he wins.

I don’t know if they had real such honorariums back in the day, but I doubt they were like what the film shows us: the real mayor giving up his office and going on vacation for a week while Billy and the gang take over. They think they can pardon Gabe but can’t. So they go through various channels, and we get some not-bad lines:

Judge, we want a writ!
Yeah, a writ of hocus pocus or somethin’.

Or after Reagan mentions the fire chief might be in on it.

Billy: Why don’t you go out and arrest him?
Reagan: I can’t arrest him on suspicion. I need proof.
Billy: We’ll get you all the proof ya need!
Huntz Hall: We’ll get you enough to hang the guy.
Leo Gorcey: What’s more, we’ll hang him.

Eventually, they get the rats on the run, they get a confession, etc. etc. Happy ending to a mostly dull film. Sheridan is given little to do, Chester Chatterbox doesn’t help. But the kids are alright.

Dead end
But not for long. This is the sixth movie they made as “The Dead End Kids” between 1937 and 1939—not even including “Dead End”—and there would only be one more. Then Halop went off to become a junior leading man, while Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey and a few others became the Bowery Boys. Most of them were in the war, then there was the end of the studio era and the transition to TV. Most of them didn’t live long. Bobby Jordan died in 1965, Gorcey in ’69, Halop in ’76—all from complications with alcoholism. Sheridan also died young, in 1967, from cancer. Ironically, the Dead End Kid who dies in this one, Punsly, lived the longest: until 2004. 

Chester Chatterbox, meanwhile, kept going and changed the world. Watch out for the grown-ups, indeed.

The Oomph Girl in a less-than-excited clinch with Chester Chatterbox.

Posted at 05:53 PM on Sunday April 17, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Saturday April 16, 2022

Gilbert Gottfried (1955-2022)

Sometimes all it takes is a moment that just lands.

In the mid-80s I was watching “David Letterman” and Gilbert Gottfried came on to do standup. Had I seen him before? Had someone disparaged him before? He had a loud rasping voice and was perpetually squinting. His eyes were all but shut and I kind of wanted to do the same with mine, because I was a little embarrassed for him. What laughs he was getting were awkward. Because he was awkward. I wasn't laughing, either. I think I kept thinking, “When does he stop this bit and go into his regular act? Oh, this is his regular act?” But I kept watching. And at one point (27:20 here) he segued from an Elephant Man joke into this:

“And I said there you go putting everything into your looks! You think everything is your looks! It's not—women do not care about a man's looks! If you read any sex quiz, they care about a personality and a sense of humor! Women love a sense of humor. Women would trample over Tom Selleck to get to Buddy Hacket!”

And I lost it. I laughed so hard. And from that moment on, whenever anyone disparaged him, I defended him. That was all it took. I bonded with him on that. And amazingly, the thing I thought was the awkward bit—that loud, rasping, annoying voice—lasted his entire career. He played it for all it was worth. He parlayed it. Iago in “Aladdin.” Gilbert Gottfried reads “50 Shades of Grey.” When John Oliver realized early in the Trump administration that though Jared Kushner was everywhere, we never heard him speak, who did he tap to be Kushner's voice?

We've lost so many standups in such a short time: Norm Macdonald, Bob Saget, Louie Anderson. All in their 60s. Is there something about standup that shortens your life? It seems to be a brotherhood, too. Which you totally get. It's a tough life, I would imagine, and most people aren't funny, and you need to hang around the people who are. I envy that brotherhood. It would be a great group to hang around. 

After the news broke, my friend Josh told a story on Twitter about interviewing Gottfried for an article in Playboy magazine, and how he was never “Gilbert Gottfried” in those conversatons. He was kind and quiet; he always apologized for bothering him. A few months later, he called while Josh was driving to ask when the article was coming out; Josh had to admit that the piece had been killed for various reasons. “Long silence then he went full Gilbert on me. 'Oh my god' he said in that voice, 'what is it like to have your work rejected by a porno magazine?' He then said 'Have you thought about selling it to Leg Show? How about Barely 18....' He said he might know someone at Nugget and various other skin mags. I nearly drove off the road I was laughing so hard.” 

Posted at 07:37 AM on Saturday April 16, 2022 in category TV   |   Permalink  

Thursday April 14, 2022

'The Litany of Trump-Russia Intersections Remains Remarkable'

There is a long, remarkable paragraph in Robert Draper's excellent New York Times Magazine feature on former presidential adviser Fiona Hall. It's good reading for Americans who, per David Bowie, don't really remember their President Trump. Or the bills they have to pay. Or yesterday. 

As I said, it's a long paragraph. This is how it begins: “The litany of Trump-Russia intersections remains remarkable,” and then Draper lists them off. He doesnt' bullet-point them but I'm going to. They demand bullet-pointing. Most of them I remember. I didn't know the thing about Gordon and Kislyak. I knew about the watering down but not the details behind it. Ready? Rock 'n' roll...

  • Citizen Trump's business pursuits in Moscow, which continued throughout his candidacy
  • Candidate Trump's abiding affinity for Putin
  • The incident in which the Trump campaign's national security director, J.D. Gordon, watered down language in the 2016 Republican Party platform pledging to provide Ukraine with “lethal defense weapons” to combat Russian interference — and did so the same week Gordon dined with Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, at an event
  • Trump's longtime political consigliere Roger Stone's reaching out to WikiLeaks through an intermediary and requesting “the pending emails,” an apparent reference to the Clinton campaign emails pirated by Russia, which the site had started to post
  • Trump's chiming in: “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
  • The meeting in the Seychelles islands between Erik Prince (the founder of the military contractor Blackwater and a Trump-campaign supporter whose sister Betsy DeVos would become Trump's secretary of education) and the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund in an effort to facilitate a back-channel dialogue between the two countries before Trump's inauguration
  • The former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort's consistent lying to federal investigators about his own secretive dealings with the Russian political consultant and intelligence operative Konstantin V. Kilimnik, with whom he shared Trump campaign polling
  • Trump's two-hour meeting with Putin in Helsinki in the summer of 2018, unattended by staff
  • Trump's public declaration, at a joint news conference in Helsinki, that he was more inclined to believe Putin than the U.S. intelligence team when it came to Russia's interference in the 2016 election
  • The dissemination by Trump and his allies in 2019 of the Russian propaganda that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 election, in support of the Clinton campaign
  • Trump's pardoning of Manafort and Stone in December 2020
  • And most recently, on March 29, Trump's saying yet again that Putin “should release” dirt on a political opponent — this time President Biden, who, Trump asserted without evidence, had received, along with his son Hunter Biden, $3.5 million from the wife of Moscow's former mayor

This is the guy that his base, his idiot base, says would be tough on Russia right now. This fucking putz.

Jonathan Chait has a piece over on the New York magazine site about Sean Hannity trying desperately to get Trump to condemn Russia's aggression in Ukraine and Trump constantly deflecting to complain about NATO and our western allies and Ukraine. Jesus fucking Christ. It could be high comedy but Chait knows it's not and ends the piece ominously: “Had 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin swung the other way, Zelensky would probably at this moment be in exile, in a Russian prison, or dead.”

Posted at 06:05 PM on Thursday April 14, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Thursday April 14, 2022

Six Outs from Perfection

Yesterday, in Minnesota, visiting LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled his pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, after 7 innings. Kershaw had thrown 80 pitches, struck out 13, walked nobody, and hadn't allowed a hit. None of the Dodgers had made an error and no Twin got on via a dropped third strike. No Twin had gotten on: 21 up and 21 down. Kershaw had a perfect game going

And he was pulled.

After 7 innings and 80 pitches.

I get the arguments in favor. To the Dodgers and Roberts, a win is a win. You don't get extra points for being perfect. And Kershaw's fragile. He's gone on the IL so many times. You need him for later in the year. You need him for October. 

But a perfect game is a bit of magic dropped into our sad world. There have only been 21 perfect games in the modern era—beginning with Cy Young in 1904, adding Addie Joss' in 1908 and Charlie Robertson(?) in 1922; then nothing until Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series. Think of the great pitchers who never threw one: Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller. We got three in the swinging '60s (including Sandy Koufax's), none in the '70s when I was beginning to pay attention, three more in the '80s, four in the '90s, and two in the aughts (including Randy Johnson's). Then in the first three years of the 2010s we had five, including King Felix's perfecto on a sunny August afternoon at Safeco Field, and it seemed like it wouldn't be much of a thing anymore. But no, Felix's was the last. Silence for 10 years now. Magic is tough. Perfection is tough.

I doubt he would have done it—those last six outs, man—but I don't know how you don't give him a chance to go for it. “Anyone gets on, you're out.” Just that. Kershaw is the best pitcher of his generation, but he's 34 and faltering, he's not going to get more chances. And no Dodger has thrown one since Koufax in '65.

But intead of a chance at magic, at perfection, in came the set-up man, Alex Vesia, who was 26, who'd pitched well last year (2.25 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 40 IP), but was hardly Kershaw. He got a ground out, then gave up a single to Gary Sanchez (of all people) and a walk to Max Kepler, and there went that. But it didn't matter. Even if he and whomever from the Dodger relief corps had retired the next six in a row, it wouldn't have been a perfect game. It would've been a team perfect game and nobody cares about that, the way nobody cares about team no-hitters. Imagine a team homerun: Harmon Killebrew swings, Cesar Tovar runs to third, Rod Carew runs from third to home. Great. Nobody cares.

I should be the last person complaining. Now King Felix still has the last perfecto. And the Twins are already 0-2 in perfect games: Catfish Hunter blanked them in Sept. '68, and David Wells did it in May '98. If they'd been perfected again, they would tie the Rays for the worst record in perfect games.

But it's so indicative of Major League Baseball these days. Here's a chance for greatness, for magic. And ... nah.

7 IP, 0 Hits, 0 Runs, 0 BBs, 13 Ks

Posted at 07:19 AM on Thursday April 14, 2022 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Thursday April 07, 2022

Opening Day 2022: Your Active Leaders


  • SLIDESHOW: Albert is still with us, as is Miggy and Nellie, as is (sadly) Rob Manfred and the 10th-inning ghost runner rule. Who's gone? Mostly guys who didn't factor in on the active leaderboard: Nick Markakis, Buster Posey, Ryan Braun and Wade Davis. Oh, and Kyle Seager, of course. Next year we'll get huge turnover, since Albert, now back with St. Louie, says this is his final season. In the meantime, be prepared to scroll through a lot of Albert. And Mike, and Justin, and Clayton.

  • BATTING AVERAGE: Almost every year I expect Miggy to tumble and almost every year he kind of does—but not enough. Before the start of the 2019 season, for example, the difference between him and second-place Jose Altuve was razor-thin: .3165 vs .3164. And Miggy was seven years older. And since then, he's hit just .266. But Altuve hasn't hit well, either, so here Miggy stands, ahead .310 to .307. They're the only active players with career BAs over .305. Trout is third with .3048, then it's a scattering of guys between .303 and .300. Last year, I wrote that Miggy's .313 was “the lowest active batting average since ... ever.” Rinse. Repeat.

  • ON-BASE PERCENTAGE: Just three years ago, active leader Joey Votto's .427 OBP was tied with Tris Speaker for 13th all-time. It's a still an impressive .416, 26th all-time, but Mike Trout has eclipsed him at .419. No one else is close. Bryce Harper is at .391, then you got three guys in the .380s. Come Opening Day 2024, though, expect some competition. Baseball Reference has a 3,000 PA minimum for active leaders and Juan Soto is 2/3 of the way there. And he's at .432. And it's rising.

  • SLUGGING PERCENTAGE: Only 17 active players have career slugging percentages above .500, but only one of those, Mike Trout, is above .550—and he's at .583. So a bit of a gap. He'll get some competition when players like Aaron Judge (.554) and Juan Soto (.550) get their qualifying 3,000 plate appearances (2,465 and 2,003, respectively). Until then, can't touch this.

  • OPS: Same story. Seven active players have an OPS above .900. Joey Votto is second with a .936 mark, while Mike Trout is first with 1.001. A bit of a gap. A year or two from qualifying, Aaron Judge is at .940 and Juan Soto is at .981. More junior achievements: Vlad Jr. is halfway to qualifying with .884, Acuna Jr. also halfway with .925, and Tatis Jr. is one-third of the way to qualifying with .965.

  • GAMES: Only nine players in baseball history have ever played 3,000 games: Rose, Yaz, Henry, Rickey, Ty, Stan, Eddie Murray, Willie, Cal. With 29 more games, Albert joins the club. It's a pretty cool club even if no one knows it exists. Go, Albert.

  • HITS: Another milestone to look forward to: Miguel Cabrera is just 13 hits shy of 3,000. Barring a horrific start, he should do it in April. Serious question: Might he be the last to do this? Robinson Cano is 376 shy and he's only banged out 248 hits since 2018. Then it's Yadier Molina at 2112 and no one young seems on the trajectory. Getting hits feels like a lost art. Last season, the NL averaged 8.04 hits per game, which is the lowest since 1909. Oh, and yes, Albert is the active leader with 3301—12th all-time. Barring disaster, he'll wind up 10th: Paul Molitor is currently that with 3319.

  • DOUBLES: Albert has 672, 5th all time, but we're nearing another Miggy miletone: He's just three doubles from becoming the 19th player in baseball history with 600 doubles. That means he'd have 3,000 hits, 500 HRs and 600 doubles. How many guys in baseball history have done that? Talk about your exclusive clubs. It's just Hank Aaron and Albert Pujols.

  • TRIPLES: Not even sure who to put here. Dexter Fowler (82 triples) signed a minor league deal with the Blue Jays but he could be let go at any moment. Brett Gardner (73) is in pinstripe limbo. No. 3 Alcides Escobar (56) is apparently assured playing time on the awful Washington Nationals. The one thing that's certain? The most exciting play in baseball is the saddest of stats, because it's disappearing. Last year I wrote: “Fowler's 82 is the lowest for an active leader since 1883, when a dude named Tom York had 80.” Rinse. Repeat.

  • HOMERUNS: Albert's No. 1 with 679. Does he have 21 more in him? Last year, split between So Cal teams, he hit 17. Miggy, at 502, is on his last legs. No. 3 is interesting: Nelson Cruz. He turned 41 last July and between Minnesota and Tampa Bay hit 32, giving him 449 career. Does he have 51 more in him? I can't imagine a baseball fan in the world rooting against him. 

  • RBIs: Seven active players have more than 1,000. Albert is first with 2150 (third all-time), Miggy is second with 1804 (22nd all-time) and a distant third is Robinson Cano with 1302 (114th all-time). Fun stat: Asdrubal Cabrera has more RBIs than Mike Trout: 869 to 816. I guess that's what happens when the best player in baseball spends most of his career leading off or batting second.

  • RUNS: Same top three, more evenly spaced: Albert at 1872, Miggy at 1505, Cano at 1257. Trout is the first twentysomething on the active list: 967. The all-time record is Rickey Henderson, 2295, 50 more than second-place Ty Cobb. Albert is 14th. Eleven more and he passes Tris Speaker. 

  • BASES ON BALLS: Four guys have more than 1,000: Albert at 1345, Joey Votto on his heels at 1294 and Miggy at 1199. Any guesses as to the fourth guy? I wouldn't have gotten it: Carlos Santana with 1077. All-time, Albert is tied for 34th with Willie McCovey but doesn't walk much anymore: just 14 last season. 

  • STRIKEOUTS: There was a time when the active leader in K’s was a sure HOFer: Mantle, Killebrew, Stargell, Jackson, Schmidt. Now it's just as likely to be an Adam Dunn, Chris Davis or, this year, Justin Upton, who's whiffed 1948 times, good for seventh all-time. This is another question-mark active leader, though, since Upton was let go by the Angels a week before Opening Day. If no one picks him up, then insert Miggy. He's got 1930: 10th all-time. 

  • STOLEN BASES: Here's a Washington Post headline from a week ago: “Dee Strange-Gordon hopes to impress Nationals with 'lost art' of base running.” Truer words. The “lost art” part. If Strange-Gordon makes the team, he's the active leader with 333. If he doesn't, Elvis Andrus has entered the building with 317. Either way, it'll be the lowest active leader since Luis Aparicio in the early '60s. Last player to steal 50+ in a season? That would be Dee with 60 in 2017. Last to steal 75+? Jose Reyes, 78, 2007. How about 80+? You gotta go back to Rickey Henderson with 93 in 1988.

  • GROUNDED INTO DOUBLE PLAYS: As hits go down, will GDPs go down, too? It feels like it. Last season, the AL was near historic lows in GDPs, with only the hitless '60s comparing, while the NL was the same, but playing second fiddle to the early '90s for some reason. Anyway, if true, then this record is Albert's forever. Career, he's got 413, 63 ahead of second-place Cal Ripken, Jr. Second on the actives, and third all-time, is Miggy with 342. 

  • DEFENSIVE WAR: Andrelton Simmons's 28.1 dWAR is 13th all-time. Meaning, according to Baseball Reference, Simmons has provided as much value defensively as Paul Konerko did everywhere. Second on the active dWAR list is Yadier Molina with 26.8. They're the only actives above 20. Fun stat: No. 1 in dWAR last season is the guy who replaced Simmons at shortstop for the Twins: Carlos Correa with 2.9.

  • WAR FOR POSITION PLAYERS: Of the top five guys, two of them had their career numbers drop last season. No. 1 Albert went from 100.8 to 99.6, while No. 4 Miggy went from 69.6 to 68.7. Mike Trout played only 36 games, but they were stellar, and he improved from 74.5 to 76.1. Robinson Cano got bumped up a bit, too, 69.1 to 69.6, as did Joey Votto: 62.0 to 64.6. So which of the five is a HOFer? Albert, Trout and Miggy, obviously. Cano, sadly, no. Votto is the question mark. 

  • WINS: Seven active pitchers have 150+ wins, but only two have 200+ wins. The leader of the pack, Justin Verlander, who turned 39 in February, is also promising to become the first 300-game winner since Randy Johnson in 2009. More power to him. Currently he's at 226, and has won exactly one game in the last two years. Zack Greinke is second on the actives with 219. Verlander is currently 70th on the all-time list, three behind Luis Tiant and Sad Sam Jones. 

  • ERA: This stat used to be Clayton Kershaw's and no one was close. Now someone is. During his heyday, after the 2016 season, Kershaw's career ERA stood at an insane 2.37, and now it's a still stellar 2.49, but Jacob deGrom has all but caught up. Or down? After the 2017 season, his ERA stood at 2.98, and since then he's gone: 1.70, 2.43, 2.38, 1.09 (in a half season). All that adds up to a career ERA of 2.497. Third is Chris Sale (3.03), fourth Max Scherzer (3.16), fifth Corey Kluber (3.19).

  • STRIKEOUTS: This used to be Verlander's but if you miss a few seasons people catch up—in this case Max Scherzer, who now has 3020 Ks to JV's 3013. Verlander doesn't walk much, just 851 free passes, but Scherzer is even better: just 677 BBs. Back in the day, the only pitcher with > 3,000 Ks and < 1,000 BBs was Fergie Jenkins. In the last two decades, he's been joined by Maddux, Shilling, and Pedro. These two could make it six. 

  • BASES ON BALLS: Last season, Verlander was leading with 851 career passes but two guys were close on his tail: Jon Lester and Francisco Liriano. Lester passed him up, but both men retired, so it's Verlander's again. Ervin Santana is second with 776 and Oliver Perez(?) is third with 761. 

  • INNINGS PITCHED: Last season, Zack Greinke became the 137th pitcher to reach 3,000 innings pitched. Verlander will join that club in April: He's sitting on 2988. Then it's Max Scherzer, 2586, Ervin Santana, 2486, and Clayton Kershaw at 2454. The all-time record is Cy Young: 7356. The modern record, Phil Niekro, 5404.

  • COMPLETE GAMES: Last season, his age 39 season, Adam Wainwright pitched three complete games, leading the Majors, and is now the active leader with 27. Verlander is second with 26, Kershaw third with 25. But as you know, this is barely a stat now. The all-time leader is Cy Young, with 749. How much is no one going to touch this? If you count every CG for every active pitcher in the Majors, you get 528. 

  • SAVES: The Dodgers let the No. 2 active saves leader, Kenley Jansen (350) test the free-agent waters, then traded for the No. 1 active saves leader, Craig Kimbrel (372). Will be interesting to see how this turns out. After several pretty horrific seasons, Kimbrel was Mariano-good for the first half of 2021, giving up only 2 earned runs in 36.3 innings. The Cubs then traded him across town. And in his third appearance with the ChiSox, Kimbrel gave up 3 earned runs. Against the Cubs! He did it again later that month—also against the Cubs. His splits last season are like Jekyll/Hyde: 0.49 ERA for the Cubs, 5.09 for the ChiSox. So who shows up at Chavez Ravine?

  • WAR FOR PITCHERS: Verlander's barely pitched for two seasons and he's still on top here with a 72.2. Then it's Kershaw (69.1), Greinke (68), Scherzer (66.2). After that quartet, no one is above 50. Are all four going into the Hall? To me, the only question mark is Greinke, who never dominated the way the others did. But he was fun.


  • EXIT MUSIC (FOR A SLIDESHOW): And exit music for baseball? The way the current lords are running the show, sometimes it feels like it.  *FIN*
Posted at 06:50 AM on Thursday April 07, 2022 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Monday April 04, 2022

Movie Review: The Batman (2022)

WARNING: SPOILERS

Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” is arthouse Batman: long, brooding and morally ambiguous. It’s reminiscent less of a superhero flick than David Fincher’s “Se7en”: two detectives, an elder Black officer and his white, hothead partner, attempt to solve a series of grisly, serial-killer murders. You know how recent Batmen swoop around Gotham the way Spider-Man swings around Manhattan—almost as if he had super powers? This ain’t that. This is a grounded Batman. He’s definitely a dude in a bat suit, who relies on gadgets and martial arts, determination and smarts. The first time he’s on the roof of some gothic skyscraper he doesn’t brood over the city in the rain but all but goes “Yikes!” Recent Batmen have been like ninjas, too—all of a sudden, poof, there—while the first time we see Robert Pattinson’s Batman, we actually hear him, slowly clomping up the steps like the Terminator. Nothing about him is fast. Nothing about the movie is fast. Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” plays several times on the soundtrack, which is appropriate because it’s the movie’s tempo. Exactly that. “The Batman” is like “Something in the Way” for three hours.

And it’s pretty great.

Who is director Matt Reeves and how the hell did he land this gig? Back in 2008, he directed the sleeper hit “Cloverfield”; then he was tapped to remake the great Swedish horror-vampire film “Let the Right One In” for American audiences, and did a great job. So he spent the next decade doing the “Planet of the Apes” sequels. Now this.

Oh, and Batman’s sexy again. About time.

John Doe
We begin the movie looking through the high-tech goggles of someone spying on a rich man and his kid in a townhouse. The kid is pretending to be a ninja and Dad is accommodating; he pretends to be stabbed. Then the kid goes trick-or-treating since it’s Halloween in Gotham City.

All the while, these were my thoughts:

  • Are these the Waynes?
  • Or is this another family and it’s the bad guy watching them?
  • Or is it Batman watching them?

Right out of the gate, in other words, Reeves blurs the line between hero and villain. That’s a lot of the film. And not in the way of “You created me, I created you,” the Batman/Joker dynamic in the Tim Burton movie. Nobody says it, but I kept thinking, “OK, so Batman beats up a bunch of skull-faced subway punks while the Riddler (an excellent Paul Dano) is taking down the corrupt officials of Gotham City. Batman is fighting the symptom, the Riddler is fighting the cause. So why is the Riddler the villain again?”

Answer: He’s the villain because he’s insane and tortures people. Don’t do that, kids.

Anyway, yes, in the opening scene, it’s the Riddler’s eyes we’re looking through, after which the Riddler shows up as silent as a ninja in the townhouse and bludgeons the rich man—Mayor Don Mitchell (Rupert Penry-Jones)—to death. Then he gets out the duct tape. He’s big on the duct tape. When he stretches out a strip, it’s as loud on the soundtrack as gunfire in “Shane.” He also leaves clues/riddles and a message to the Batman. Not to taunt; I think he’s testing his smarts. He feels kinship. He wants partnership.

This is Year Two of Batman’s exploits, and he’s still this odd, caped vigilante around town. Most cops hate him, but he’s become the all-but-official partner of Lt. James Gordon (an excellent Jeffrey Wright), who is already using the bat signal when he needs to contact him. This is another stroke of genius to me. I’ve written about the bat signal before. It’s super-cool, I loved it as a kid, but it tends to mean we’ve left the Batman-as-vigilante phase (cool) and entered the Batman-as-institution phase (meh), which is a step away from Batman as camp (death). Here, Reeves manages to give us both Batman-as-vigilante and the bat signal. Because Gordon isn’t in charge yet. And the people who are in charge are corrupt.

Which is the point of the Riddler. Like John Doe in “Se7en,” he’s acting as judge, jury and executioner for the city’s sins. First it’s the mayor, then the police commissioner (Alex Ferns), whose face is eaten by rats during a livestream; then it’s the DA (Peter Sarsgaard), who is kidnapped and forced to crash a car, with a bomb locked around his neck, into the mass funeral for the mayor in midtown Gotham. All of these city officials are in the pocket of Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), the crime boss who runs the town from his penthouse above the Iceberg Lounge. So why doesn’t the Riddler just go after Falcone? Too logical, I guess. Way shorter movie. And how does the Riddler connect the dots between the mayor and the DA and the like? Was it common knowledge—like Mitch McConnell and dark money? Now there’s a Batman villain for you.

I keep using the term “the Riddler” but I don’t know if we ever hear it in the film, and he’s not exactly Frank Gorshin in a green leotard with question marks over it. (Though one of his lines is said with a very Gorshin-like inflection.) All the supervillains are mere suggestions of their comic book personas. The Riddler is a nerd accountant with crazy goggles and dark green hoodie. The Penguin (an excellent Colin Farrell), is a fat, squat crimeboss with a limp named Oz. Selina Kyle (a superhot Zoe Kravitz) is a martial arts-trained cat burglar, who, on the prowl, wears a mask with mere suggestions of ears. Plus the cats in her apartment. “I have a thing about strays,” she says to Batman, giving him a suggestive look. All three characters could fit into most crime/gangster movies and it wouldn’t look weird.

Meanwhile, Pattinson’s Batman looks iconically Batman—like a ’70s-era, Neal Adams drawing, but with dark cape/cowl rather than blue. He might look better than any Batman we’ve ever seen on screen. It should look weird—like “Se7en” with Brad Pitt in a bat outfit—but somehow it works. I assume because we expect it? I bet if you found someone who’d never heard of Batman, or superheroes, they’d think the whole thing was bizarre.

Pattinson makes it work, too. Like Edward from the “Twilight” series, he has a bruised, tragic stillness to him.* His Batman may mete out pain but he also exudes it. His Bruce isn’t the usual playboy, either. When he shows up at the mayor’s funeral, and the press goes crazy, Falcone (I think) calls him the only man in Gotham more reclusive than himself. He’s the city’s lost child, its poor little rich boy.

(* Has any actor played both vampire and Batman? I think Pattinson’s the first. He did it for the girls and now for the fanboys. OK, fangirls, too. He’s tall, quiet, tortured, mascaraed, passive. Selina makes all the moves. Their scenes together smoke.)

I like that there’s no slow-mo flashback to the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne; it’s assuming we know that story by now. I like that Wayne Manor isn’t a mansion outside of the city but a city skyscraper. Initially, too, Batman gets around on a nondescript motorcycle, which blends, and the passage to his “bat cave,” is serpentine, with secret walls, making it, you imagine, difficult to follow. To be honest, I was almost disappointed when the Batmobile showed up for the car chase with Oz—which, despite the one cool moment (the Batmobile leaping through the flames), felt overlong and unnecessary: an action-adventure bit for a noirish police procedural.

Travis Bickle
Let’s ask the Mamet question: What do the characters want?

So Selina is trying to find out what happened to her friend, Annika, a fellow waitress at the Iceberg Lounge, who goes missing; that’s why she teams up with Batman. She’s also the illegitimate daughter of Falcone. Does he know? And was she working at the Iceberg Lounge to become part of his life or kill him?

Oz is the loyal henchman who turns out to be not-so-loyal. We don’t know much more about him.

We know what the Riddler wants but he keeps going astray. Yes, it’s weird to talk about a crazy dude who uses 1984-style torture devices “going astray,” but, to me, the Riddler does this with his fourth target: Bruce Wayne. Why does he go after him? The Riddler, nee Edward Nashton, was an orphan himself in Wayne Orphanage. But after Thomas and Martha were murdered, the orphanage wound up in the hands of Falcone and Oz, who pillaged it like Tony Soprano’s men, leaving the orphans starving. Yet every day he had to hear about “poor little Bruce Wayne,” surrounded by his wealth. And he came to hate him. He identified with Batman and hated Bruce Wayne, and he decides to kill him. But it’s off the mark: Bruce isn’t part of the city’s corruption. Is that why the Ridder’s M.O. changes? With the others, it’s close quarters and sadistic torture, but with Bruce he just sends him a bomb in the mail. Blah. Alfred (Andy Serkis) opens it instead. Blah. He survives. Blah.

Then Riddler goes further astray. For most of the movie, his cinematic antecedent is John Doe in “Se7en,” and the sinners who need eradicating are the city’s fathers—the rich and powerful. In the final act, he’s all Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” unleashing a real flood that, like Travis’ imaginary rain, will wash all the scum off the streets. It’s a big, grandiose moment but kind of a bummer. At least John Doe stuck to the plan.

Batman changes, too, but in a way that makes sense. He has a trajectory. He begins the movie saying “I’m vengeance” to the subway punks, then realizes how corrupt the city leaders are, and that even his father was hardly a paragon of virtue; and at the end he’s confronted by one of the Riddler’s acolytes, who, when asked who he is, responds, “I am vengeance.” So the hero comes to realize his path is wrong, and rather than hurt criminals he winds up helping citizens caught in the flood. If the storyline were true to itself, in fact, this would be the moment when he unmasked himself—like Zorro at the end of the original 1920 “Zorro.” Basically it’s the moment he needs to be Bruce rather than Batman. But: sequels; moola. We even get a glimpse of Barry Keoghan as the Joker in Arkham Asylum. Warner Bros. primes that pump. Least shocking part of the film.

Despite that, I think this is the best Batman movie ever made. I love the scene in the police station where Batman is surrounded by cops, love Jeffrey Wright as Gordon, think Dano is a revelation (again), think Pattinson makes a great, brooding Batman. They’ll have a tougher go in the sequel. How do you scare criminals when you’re a beacon of hope? Good luck. Just don’t forget the Nirvana.

Posted at 06:04 AM on Monday April 04, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 2022   |   Permalink  

Sunday April 03, 2022

The Other Bad Stuff that Happened at the 94th Annual Academy Awards

Before I get into the other bad stuff at this year's Oscars, here's something my onetime hometown newspaper tweeted midshow:

Never. Tweet. Early. 

Oscar's producers were lucky in a way. The Will Smith thing obscured/obliterated any other conversation about the Oscars, and that conversation should've been brutal. The people running the show are making the same mistake as the people running Major League Baseball: They're trying to appeal to the people who don't like their product while alienating those who do.

Here are some of the lowlights from last Sunday's broadcast:

  • The “In Memoriam” segment: It was not somber. It was New Orleans. They had a choir onstage, and people dancing, and those dancing people often partially obscured the faces of those who died. And occasionally it would quiet down for a live person (Tyler Perry, Bill Murray, Jamie Lee Curtis) to talk briefly about one of those who passed (Sidney Poitier, Ivan Reitman, Betty White). And it was all wrong. Just give us the faces, and occasional clips, and some measure of respect. Please. Think of what Anthony Hopkins said before presenting lead actress: “Let's have peace and love and quiet.” That.
  • Twits: Apparently the Academy teamed up with Twitter on two polls: “Oscar fan favorites”  and “Most Cheer-Worthy Moment.” The former was for 2021 films, the latter for any moment in movie history. And shockingly, for that, there was a recency bias among the voters. We didn't get Gene Kelly in “Singin' in the Rain,” in other words, but it did go chronologically. No. 5 was the old one from the deep, dim past: Neo dodging bullets in “The Matrix” from 1999. No. 4 was Jennifer Hudson singing “I'm Telling You” from “Dreamgirls” in 2006. Those were the oldies. I mean, who knew they made movies way back then? No. 3: Avengers assembling against Thanos in “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) and No. 2 was the Spider-Men teaming up in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021). As for the most cheer-worthy moment in movie history? “The Flash enters speedforce” from Zack Snyder's retooled “Justice League,” which played on HBO in 2021. Of course. And that should be history for Oscar's Twitter polls. There's nothing democratic in it. It's dominated by those who dominate the platform, and who are organized, and the Zackflaks are certainly that on Twitter. They're better organized than his movies. So much so that he won the other poll, too, as his “Army of the Dead” was voted the Oscar fan favorite of 2021. So fucking embarrassing. Stop it. Just ... stop.
  • Regina Hall's sexual harassment extravaganza: Didn't she do it twice? With this group of hunks and that group of hunks? It wasn't funny the first time so I guess they tried it again. Reverse the genders and see how it flies. Seriously, the double standards in our modern world are out of control.
  • Jackson Schmackson. But overall the worst of it was what the producers thought worth our time and what wasn't. Lifetime achievements to Samuel L. Jackson and Elaine May? Nah. Kids don't want to see that. Pre-tape it. Oscars for film editing? And sound? And hair and makeup? What does all that matter anyway? Pre-tape. A clip segment of 60 years of James Bond films introduced by three extreme sports dudes who have nothing to do with movies? Hey, now that needs to be part of the show. So fucking embarrassing. Stop it. Just stop.

 I liked Amy Schumer. Bring her back. 

Posted at 10:55 AM on Sunday April 03, 2022 in category Movies - The Oscars   |   Permalink  

Friday April 01, 2022

The Best Take on the Will Smith Thing

“The experience of seeing it live was just baffling. Like: What? What?? What the fuck just happened? 

”A few things in retrospect now that we've got a little distance from it. First off: It was wrong. There's no conversation about, 'Well, I don't know, Will had...' No. 'But Chris...' No. 'I mean, seriously, if it was his wife...“ No! It was fucking wrong. You don't go up and smack someone in the fucking face anywhere. It was wrong. I mean, there's no conversation about that.

”And that other idea that, 'Is this what happens when we tell jokes? Are we afraid to tell jokes?' No! It had nothing to do with the joke. ... 

“In that moment, all that happened in terms of the discussion, is: The guy who's spent the last 30 years of his career managing his personality to be one of the nicest guys in show business, and have everyone like him, lost his fucking mind. That's what happened. I don't know what's going on with him, how far back it goes, I don't know if it's relative to a past thing with Chris, or if it's relative to his marriage, to the pressure he's been under, what he exposed about himself in his memoir—I don't know what caused it. But in that moment that guy left reality, no longer had a context, and decided, impulsively, and without much reflection, to go onstage and hit a peer on national television. That's what happened. A guy fucking snapped. It could happen to anyone, I guess. Not great timing. But it's got nothing to do with 'Can you tell jokes anymore?' It's got nothing to do with whether it was virtuous or not, it's got nothing to do with any of that. 

”A guy snapped. And it was a bad time for it to happen. And it was wrong. That's it. ...

“When he went up and hit Chris, he was not at the Oscars. I don't know where he was. All he knew was he was following a red-hot rage impulse, and I think by the time he got up there to accept that Oscar, he was still sort of out-of-body, and he was still reckoning with I-don't-know-what. ... It was the most profound display of self-sabotage I've ever seen.” 

-- Marc Maron, on his WTF podcast, which dropped yesterday. Give it a listen. It starts at 3 1/2 minutes in.

Posted at 05:06 PM on Friday April 01, 2022 in category Movies - The Oscars   |   Permalink