"This is not his first rodeo. He is going to be quite careful and thoughtful about how he handles this situation."

"I’m sure he’s thinking about when he draws lines, how he draws lines, what the lines mean and what agenda it plays into."

Said Katherine B. Forrest, a former federal district judge, about Lewis A. Kaplan, federal district judge in the ongoing E. Jean Carroll trial. She's quoted in "As Trump Treats Trials Like Rallies, Judges Study How to Rein Him In/One judge was reluctantly permissive. Another came down hard. Their contrasting approaches may inform the jurists overseeing the former president’s criminal trials" (NYT).

I don't think Trump is treating his trials "like rallies." Have you seen his rallies? He's far more restrained in court. But he is using something of his own style and is finding ways to take what has been thrown at him and turn it into useful political discourse. What should a judge do? If he cracks down too hard, he's giving Trump new material. 

How do you like the expression "This is not his first rodeo"? I try not to let it annoy me. I try to be amused. I picture the 79-year-old judge on a bucking bronco. 

Even Michael Caine — even as he pronounces "rodeo" ro-DAY-oh — says "ain't." 

 

BONUS: Warning: language:

"Though it’s the film’s quieter absurdities – like its glorious shot of Crawford, sheathed in platinum sequins, descending a curved staircase while she scowls at a plate of cold, congealed steak – that tickle me more than its chaotic, cacophonous climaxes."

From "Mommie Dearest at 40: the derided camp classic that deserves a closer look/Faye Dunaway’s all-guns-blazing performance as Joan Crawford is one of many reasons why the reviled biodrama is not the disaster many have labelled it" by Guy Lodge (The Guardian).

Yes, it has been 40 years, and I rewatched it for the first time this week. Not because I noticed it's the 40 year anniversary but because it's in a collection of Frank Perry movies on the Criterion Channel, and I'd just watched one of them — "Diary of a Mad Housewife" — for reasons discussed in a November 9th post. And I'd watched another — "The Swimmer" — back in 2018, discussed here. Frank Perry is a strange director. All 3 of these movies have a heightened surreality. They're all heavily focused on an awfully unpleasant central character who's jammed right up in your face for 2 hours. 

There are 2 more Frank Perry movies collected at Criterion — "David and Lisa" (which I saw sometime in the 1960s and have never rewatched) and "Man on a Swing" (a 1974 movie that I don't think I'd ever noticed before).

Have you got anything to say about Frank Perry? If you know him at all, which of these movies is your opinion based on? If it's "Mommie Dearest," do you agree — as I do! — that these are the best 6 1/2 minutes in the movie?

"Over the last weekend of June she had a full on 'Mommie Dearest' meltdown and demanded that staffers at the Huntington Theater get down on their hands and knees and scrub the floor of her dressing room..."

"...sources claim. She allegedly threw mirrors, combs and boxes of hairpins at the staff of the theater. She also pulled gray hairs out of her wig because she wanted to play a younger version of [Katharine] Hepburn than the playwright had written.... This is not the first time [Faye] Dunaway has displayed erratic behavior in a show. In the early 1990s she toured the country as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s 'Master Class.' She showed up an hour late for many performances. She had bellhops rearrange her furniture in her hotel suites in the middle of night because she didn’t like the 'flow' of the room. Once, a theater in St. Louis sent her a white limousine, and she reportedly had a fit because she hates white. She demanded a rental car from the hotel to get to the theater. The limo company sent a black car instead, but it was too late — Dunaway was racing to the theater, trailed by both the white limo and the black one. I managed to track her down back then and she was charming on the phone. 'Your story sounds like a Fellini movie,' she told me."

From "Faye Dunaway fired from Broadway-bound ‘Tea at Five’ for slapping crew member" by Michael Riedel (NY Post).

The requisite video clip:



That's Faye as Joan Crawford, back in 1981, 37 years ago. A decade after that, she did the raging diva routine again as Maria Callas. And now, at the age of 78, they installed her in the grand persona of Katharine Hepburn. Do it again, Faye. Be the imperious diva.

Some day, somebody will play the role of Faye Dunaway. The fantastically beautiful actress, snagged into playing another beautiful actress, typecast as the actress who plays actresses, actresses who age and resist their predicament, and she get pissed off about it and rages in a way that is ludicrously like the way she played another actress in that movie back in 1981. Ah, she was so young then! Now, she's 78, she's ruined her legendary beauty with plastic surgery, and she's shocked to discover the Katharine Hepburn she's been hired to play is Katharine Hepburn at the very end of her life and Katharine Hepburn lived to be 96.

Oh, that scene where she tenderly lifts the wig and soliloquizes about the depredations of age, absent-mindedly rearranging the strands, plucking a hair or two, then finally ripping out handfuls, ranting loudly and breaking into sobs. She buries her ruined face in the ruins of the Katharine-Hepburn-at-90 wig. Oscar-worthy.



As Faye Dunaway says, "Your story sounds like a Fellini movie." Speaking of Fellini, there's this in the Faye Dunaway Wikipedia article:

During the filming of A Place for Lovers (1968), Dunaway fell in love with her co-star Marcello Mastroianni. The couple had a two-year-live-in relationship. Dunaway wanted to marry and have children, but Mastroianni, a married man, could not bear to hurt his wife and refused, despite protests from his teenage daughter Barbara and his close friend Federico Fellini. Dunaway decided to leave him and told a reporter at the time that she "gave too much. I gave things I have to save for my work." She later recalled in her 1995 autobiography:

There are days when I look back on those years with Marcello and have moments of real regret. There is that one piece of me that thinks that had we married, we might be married still. It was one of our fantasies, that we would grow old together. He thought we would be like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, a love kept secret for a lifetime. Private and only belonging to the two of us.

Mastroianni later told a reporter for People in 1987 that he never got over his relationship with Dunaway. "She was the woman I loved the most", he said. "I'll always be sorry to have lost her. I was whole with her for the first time in my life."

I gave too much. I gave things I have to save for my work....

Faye Dunaway in a Gucci ad might amuse you.

It made me laugh because of the surreal lolling about within extreme wealth and Dunaway's gently emerging grandmotherliness (which comes to full bloom when she goes out to play tennis). It's an effective ad (in my view) because it caused me to look up the price of the handbag and to be stunned at the lowness of the price (when it was about $2,300).

The Hollywood plot thickens.

I'm not letting go of my conspiracy theory, because it's a conspiracy theory about movies, and movies are full of conspiracy theories. If there's one thing I know from watching movies, it's that if there's one person who thinks something is not what it seems, it's that one person who's right.

The new evidence I'm seeing today is about how bitterly Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway fought, before the big Oscars show, about who would get the honor of saying the name of the Best Picture winner.

Warren Beatty gave Faye Dunaway what she demanded during rehearsal ... the honor of reading the winner of Best Picture, and he watched as she failed in spectacular fashion.

Sources who were present at Saturday's rehearsal tell us, both Faye and Warren wanted to announce the winner and went back and forth, but eventually Warren backed off and Faye got her way.

That shows a motive on the part of Beatty to stage an elaborate prank. (Here's my original post on the subject, which I sat down to write as a satire about Hollywood egos and race and wrote myself into halfway believing.)

And I see that there's been a big effort to pin the blame on the accountant. Yes, the fall guy. Would you believe the accountant-did-it parry in a movie plot? But let's say it was the accountant screwing up. Then why should we believe any of the vote counting and reporting? The Academy uses Price Waterhouse to vouch for the security and legitimacy of the vote. Is that all just theater? Why are we watching a bunch of insiders pass statuettes around? It's a complete con. If the accountant theory is true, let's just turn our backs on the Oscars from here on out.

I thought that Oscars mixup was some kind of political performance art.

I didn't watch the Oscars last night, and I'm sorry I missed the real-time WTF fun. I saw the news on my iPhone in the middle of the night, then slept on it before reading the details and seeing video.

As the NYT explains it, I don't think it was fake news: There's video, and there's a transcript of what happened. We've got Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway on stage and presenting, and the only reason I can think of why they'd give those two the honor of announcing the most important award is: White Privilege. Rich, old, white people. They rule America and they rule Hollywood. And of course, the white movie "La La Land" wins in their world. All the white La La people file up on stage to take the naked-man statuette, and they start blah-blahing about their la la-ing, and then it's: Oh, no, white people! There's a revolution! The real winner is "Moonlight," the black movie. All the black people come up on the stage. Yay! Victory! Things are not what they seemed! What you thought happened didn't really happen. Who you thought won didn't really win! Wake up from your nightmare! If only President Donald Trump were only a nightmare. Ha ha. La la. Blah blah.

Now, I know Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were Bonnie and Clyde. This here's Miss Bonnie Parker. I'm Clyde Barrow. We rob banks. American outlaws. To put those 2 together is to wink: the rules don't apply. And Warren Beatty has some political wit. (Isn't Trump a bit like Beatty's Bulworth?) So Beatty hesitates over the card, then hands it to Dunaway and she finally says "La La Land." The NYT reports that Beatty says that the card they looked at was the card for the Best Actress award, which said "Emma Stone/La La Land." That's an explanation for why they said "La La Land" for Best Picture? Obviously, that would be the wrong card, though it is a (feeble) excuse for saying "La La Land." It's the only name of a movie on the card.

I said I thought the NYT did a good job of reporting, using transcript and video. And they've got a quote from Beatty:

“I opened the envelope, and it said ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny. This is ‘Moonlight,’ the best picture.”

I trust that he said that, but I don't know that he's not lying. He might have wanted to make the big political gesture. He might have thought it's justified because the world in which Donald Trump is President is not a normal world. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. You can do it and you can lie too. It's art, and it's poetic justice. White people — unhand that Oscar. Donald Trump — ungrab that pussy. Unbreak America's heart!

Warren Beatty for President.