"maybe this is what happens when you spend too much time with a movie: you start thinking about it when it’s not around, and then you start wanting to touch it."

"i’ve been watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY regularly for four decades, but it wasn’t until a few years ago i started thinking about touching it, and then over the holidays i decided to make my move. why now? I don’t know. maybe i wasn’t old enough to touch it until now. maybe i was too scared to touch it until now, because not only does the film not need my — or anyone else’s — help, but if it’s not THE most impressively imagined and sustained piece of visual art created in the 20th century, then it’s tied for first. meaning IF i was finally going to touch it, i’d better have a bigger idea than just trimming or re-scoring...."

Writes Steven Soderbergh, and if you go to that link, you can watch his re-edit of "2001."

He would have been the voice of Shrek and was in talks to play Fatty Arbuckle in a biopic and Ignatius J. Reilly in a film of "A Confederacy of Dunces."

But he died. Had he lived, Chris Farley would have turned 50 today.

By the way, why has there never been a film version of "A Confederacy of Dunces"? Is it cursed? Look at the list of actors around whom projects were attempted. In addition to Chris Farley, John Belushi, John Candy, and Divine. There was another failed project, built around Will Ferrell (in 2005). At least Ferrell lived. Steven Soderbergh, who co-wrote that adaptation, said: "I think it’s cursed. I’m not prone to superstition, but that project has got bad mojo on it."

Too much gay sex?

1. Steven Soderbergh is asserting that all the movie studios turned down his Liberace biopic "Behind the Candelabra" (now playing on HBO) because it was "too gay." This is a story of a wealthy 58-year-old entertainer going after an 18-year-old guy and it includes explicit scenes depicting anal intercourse — 2 elements that major studios might reject even in heterosexual love stories, but crying homophobia may work to lure in the very viewers who would be repelled by old+young and anal sex in a heterosexual love story.

2. Meanwhile, at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme D'Or went to "Blue Is the Warmest Color," which has "intensely erotic, incredibly realistic, quite lengthy, and almost certainly unsimulated sex scenes" with 2 women:

I clocked the first sex scene between Adèle and Emma — replete with fingering, licking, and, as a friend called it, "impressive scissoring" — at an approximate ten minutes. Audience walkouts began around minute nine. That turned into spontaneous applause (and relieved laughter), when the women climaxed and finished a minute later. Was that scene, and the many other graphic, erotic moments to follow, "necessary to tell the story?" Film.com's Jordan Hoffman asked in his review. "Please believe the part of my brain that doesn’t house a lecherous voyeur when I say yes, absolutely."

What's going on?

ADDED: The more a movie approaches pornography, the more viewers are justified in deciding what they want to watch based on their own sexual proclivities.

AND: There's a point — and it may be different for different viewers — where a movie becomes pornography. At that point, you might walk out, as some people did at "Blue Is the Warmest Color." But let's say you like watching pornography. Still, you might prefer to watch it at home and in private. And you might get impatient with the excessive dramatic scenes around the sexually explicit parts. In "Blue Is the Warmest Color," I see that "[t]heir relationship falls apart because of subtle differences in social class and ambition." Well, that sounds awfully tedious by porn standards! And if it's porn, of course, you get to reject the actors — like Michael Douglas as Liberace — whose bodies are not sexually stimulating to you. That's not anti-gay. That's your own sexual preference, which you are entitled to.

IN THE COMMENTS: Misinforminimalism says it's "worth noting":

1. The protagonist is 15.
2. This is based on a graphic novel (i.e., a comic) that was far less graphic than the movie. Tells you something about the director.
3. The movie's 183 minutes long, so perhaps the ten minute sex scene leaves nearly 3 hours to develop the plot so it's all ok?
4. Did I mention the protagonist is 15? 

I had not noticed the age in this movie. As I said up there at #1, accusations of homophobia may be used to pressure us not to numb ourselves to something that we would otherwise object to.

Al Pacino avoided meeting Phil Spector, whom he's portraying in an HBO movie.

"It would have been meeting a different person. Now he’s been convicted and he’s in prison. I play him before his first trial."

After doing the film role, said Pacino, he didn’t feel he knew Spector much better – but that it didn’t matter, because his job was to explore the film character, not the real-life person.

“The play’s the thing,” said Pacino. “I was looking for the truth of the drama.”

It's not an impersonation, but something much deeper.  Or that's the PR for the HBO movie. Maybe it's a preemptive defense against the criticism that he doesn't seem like Spector at all.

ADDED: In other HBO celebrity impersonation news:

HBO’s new Liberace biopic was “too gay” for every studio in Hollywood, director Steven Soderbergh says.

What big name actor will be probing the depths of the truth of the drama of Liberace? Matt Damon? No. Damon's playing Liberace's younger lover. Liberace will be... Michael Douglas!

Aw, give me a break. The studios turned down this movie because it was (whine) too gay? It's obviously insufficiently commercial.

Promos of the film screened for TV critic in Los Angeles yesterday contain numerous scenes of the two male stars shirtless and about to kiss.

No one wants to see that. It's not anti-gay to say I don't want to see that. Who wants to see Michael Douglas shirtless and about to... do anything?

"What exactly is wrong with making a movie accurate?"

"And since when does an authentic film translate as an 'art' film?"

What really happened to Soderbergh's "Moneyball"?

ADDED: "We've noticed that studios like it when true stories are told through blatant fabrication!"

About Benicio del Toro's Che-related walk-out on the interview with that Washington Times reporter.

On Tuesday, I called foul at this Washington Times piece about how Benicio Del Toro walked out on an interview when pressed with questions about Che Guevara, the character he plays in Steven Soderbergh's new movie "Che." I wanted to respect the actor who sees his place to be acting a role, not mouthing off about history and politics.

The author of the article, Sonny Bunch, wrote to me and — when I asked — gave me permission to publish this response:

You know, I was hoping that the walkout wouldn't come across as a "gotcha"-type moment. Rather, I was hoping it could be used to demonstrate just how contentious the movie is: In the midst of an otherwise ordinary interview, the actor/producer largely responsible for its creation just up and walks out. I wanted that to set the stage for a broader discussion of the movie involving the director and the regime's dissidents.

And I say "otherwise ordinary" because it was--I thought the interview was going really well until he cut it off. It wasn't particularly heated or repetitious and never veered too far off topic; the last question he took was an innocuous one about how you portray a failed revolution on film as opposed to a successful one. (I hope that came across in the web video my editorial overlords asked me to tape...) We ended up cutting most of that context because the piece was too long, but I can assure you that it was your average interview with a movie star, with one key difference: I asked follow-ups.

The movie itself isn't nearly as interesting as the trailer makes it out to be: Guevara comes across as Jesus with an AK-47, healing the sick, teaching the illiterate to read, and mowing down enemies of the people. It's split into two parts, one about the successful Cuban revolution and the second about the failed Bolivian revolution. What's left out is the time Guevara and Castro spent ruling Cuba. It's an interesting artistic choice to make, but it's also one that leaves you open to criticisms of infidelity to history by way of omission. I was curious to know what he, as a producer, made of those criticisms. That's all...

Thanks.

By the way, I've seen this trailer for the movie several times — not voluntarily, as part of a captive theater audience — and it didn't seem to take sides about whether we ought to think well of Che. It ends with this question and answer: "How does it feel to be a symbol?" "Of what?" That sounded distanced and existentialist. It made me think the movie might be a work of art of some complexity. In that context, I imagined del Toro to be an artist who immersed himself in the role and, in doing that, lost the critical eye and political perspective the reporter wanted him to use.

I'm not blaming Bunch for asking the questions now, though.