“Challe” is not a word in any language, but it reminds me of chattle, which basically means movable goods. The second word could be some kind of shortened slang abbreviation or cryptic allusion to people who come from Niger, the landlocked West African country.
Remember that climactic boardroom scene in The Social Network when Mark Zuckerberg says to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (aka “the Winkelvi”) — “If you could’ve invented Facebook, you would’ve invented Faceook“?
Yesterday Tatiana Siegel’s shocking 3.9.24 Variety story explored a claim by Frisco author Simon Stephenson that The Holdovers director Alexander Payne and/or the film’s screenwriter, David Hemingson, plagiarized portions of Frisco almost on a scene-by-scene, line-by-line basis.
Hollywood Elsewhere’s response to Stephenson: “If you could’ve written The Holdovers, you would’ve written The Holdovers.”
HE read a 2013 draft of Frisco this morning, and I’m not claiming that Stephenson is totally out to lunch on this matter. Yes, there’s a cetain thematic similarity and similar story strands shared by Frisco and The Holdovers.
Frisco is essentially a spiritual rebirth story in which Jeff Willis, a morose 50something Seattle pediatrician, is reawakened by Amy Morrison, a 15 year old terminal cancer sufferer, and how it all comes together during a brief shared trip to San Francisco.
In certain ways The Holdovers tells the same kind of story — Paul Giamatti‘s Paul Hunham, an ascerbic classics professor at a private Massachusetts boys school, experiences a spiritual reawakening while looking after a bright but contentious senior, Dominic Sessa‘s Angus Tully, and how it all comes together during a late-second-act trip to Boston over the Christmas holidays.
And yet Frisco and The Holdovers are also strikingly similar to (a) Johanna Spyri‘s Heidi (i.e., young girl reawakens the humanity of her grumpy grandfather), (b) Gus Van Sant and Mike Rich‘s Finding Forrester (’00 — a talented young writer of color reawakens a hermit-like, J.D. Salinger-like writer, and (c) Martin Brest and Bo Goldman‘s Scent of a Woman (’92 — private-school kid reawakens the heart and soul of a bitter retired military man).
Another similarity that hit me this morning was (d) Morton DaCosta, Betty Comden and Adolph Green‘s Auntie Mame (“Live a little!”) except this time the Rosalind Russell role is handled by Amy, the cancer kid. But the mission is basically the same.
Just as Mame eventually saves Patrick Dennis (author of the original 1955 book, and played by Roger Smith) from a life of conservative suffocation, Amy the cancer victim saves the morose and timid Willis from a life of terminal resignation and boredom.
For me, the key difference between Frisco and The Holdovers is that the latter is wise and well written and recognizably human and specific in dozens of different ways while Frisco is somewhat generic and plodding, not to mention awkwardly written here and there and occasionally speechy in a way that almost makes you groan.
I was a script reader in the mid to late ’80s, and I’ve read hundreds of interesting but not-quite there scripts in my time. Frisco is definitely one of these.
It’s not awful but it is, I feel, on the mediocre side. It needs a major rewrite or whatever. And it’s really whorish, I feel, to use a terminally ill teenager as the driving spiritual engine of the piece. And to throw in the lore of San Francisco beat generation mythology (City Lights bookstore, Jack Kerouac, Neal Casady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Howl”) as icing on the spiritual cake….well, okay, but it struck me as a bit precious.
Frisco is primarily composed of a series of vaguely awkward, on-the-nose, “this is who I am and what I want or need” scenes…essentially a lot of cliched material about a midlife crisis of the spirit (including an impending divorce) and how a 50ish guy is gradually rescued.
The on-the-nose theme of Frisco is “stop being morose, celebrate your time here on earth, we’ll all be dead soon enough.”
If you have compassionate feelings about the current plight of God knows how many tens of thousands of Gaza residents and the likelihood that many of them will be killed when Israeli troops finally invade…if you recognize that the number of hardcore Hamas cadres who murdered 1400 Jews on 10.7 and who absolutely have to pay the price for this genocide…when you allow that these fanatics almost certainly represent a modest fraction of the total Gaza population…there has to be some way of saying “don’t slaughter innocent Gaza residents” without sounding like an anti-Semite…there has to be some way to do this.
Oscar Poker urgency — Jeff and Sasha lamenting the Biden 2024 campaign situation & the suppression of Woody’s Coup de Chance, plus handicapping Hottest Best Actor & Actress Contenders, urging on Sunday’s Maher+ Carvillekick–around, etc.
In the same way that Mitch McConnell will never step down despite his freezing episodes, doddering Joe Biden will never throw in the towel until he’s forced to. He could be drooling and wearing diapers in a wheelchair, and he still wouldn’t quit.
Anyone who’s spent family time with an elderly grandfather or great-grandfather knows he’s too old to be President, and that it’s at least theoretically possible that he could become Woodrow Wilson during the last couple years of his second term, if not sooner…God forbid.
So given the impossibility of Trump winning against Biden, we’re all stuck with a muttering, slurring, wispy-voiced, physically healthy but obviously-less-than-mentally-alert President between now and 1.20.29, when Joe will be 86. (He’s now 80 — his 86th birthday will be on 11.20.28.)
Joe is holding things together and making some good moves (his strong support of the ongoing Ukraine defense effort is commendable) but there’s no question that he’s too old for the job. And I am literally terrified of Kamala Harris becoming president.
Every time I listen to Joe give a speech I sink into depression. God, how I miss the oratorical snap and cadence of Barack Obama or, for that natter, JFK.
If there was an activist God trying to make things better for American citizens from time to time, He/She/It would convince Joe to admit reality and throw in the towel and thereby allow the two most appealing gubernatorial heir apparents — Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer — to compete for the 2024 Democratic nomination. And then one or the other could run against Nikki Haley, and then things would feel right again.
Haley is a conservative, but she’s not a crazy sociopath — she’s sane and practical in the GlennYoungkin mode.
Just a slight reminder about Disney’s woke-feminist Snow White (’24), which everyone hates thanks to Rachel Zegler‘s remarks about how profoundly tiresome the 1937 animated version was (who wants a sappy love story featuring a stalker Prince Charming?) and how the forthcoming version is about Snow White becoming a progressive leader of some sort (perhaps vaguely similar to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman)…just a slight reminder that this proto-feminist version was co-written by Greta Gerwig and Erin Cressida Wilson. in other words, a fairy-tale version of manosphere pissnado…right?
The downside being that Elvis Presley is played by a towering, Paul Bunyan-sized Jacob Elordi, and lead protagonist Priscilla is played by a nearly dwarf-sized Cailee Spaeny.
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A week and a half ago The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Roxboroughreported (or reminded) that terms of the WGA strike bars guild writers from promoting their movies, as “the guild clearly states that members are ‘prohibited from making promotional appearances‘ while the strike continues.”
Which means that Killers of the Flower Moon screenwriter Eric Roth is likely barred from attending the big whoop-dee-doo Grand Palais Flower Moon screening on Saturday night. Or at least participating in any official promotion in Cannes (red carpet photo-op, post-screening press conference).
Which seems a shame. All that careful sculpting, honing and re-writing, and no Cannes crescendo. I’m sorry. (The same restriction applies to Asteroid City screenwriter Roman Coppola.)
Two days later Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver taped a segment that criticized the American bumblefuck brigade for their bigoted reactions to the Mulvaney campaign. The show typically tapes on Sunday at 6:15 pm. Given Oliver’s stated concern about dealing with old news (or failing to deal with new news), it seemed derelict that he didn’t at least mention Heinerscheid’s decision to take a “leave of absence“, which of course was not voluntary and clearly reflected concerns by Anhauser-Busch senior management.
It was reported yesterday by The Wall Street Journal that Heinerscheid’s boss, Daniel Blake, has also been made to walk the plank.
Jonathan Majors (aka Kang the Conqueror) has stepped into a pile of domestic dogshit, and it doesn’t look good. The 33 year-old actor was popped this morning in Manhattan on charges of assault, strangulation, and harassment after a reported altercation with a woman.
NYC police statement given to IndieWire: “On Saturday, March 25, 2023, at approximately 11:14 hours, police responded to 911 call inside of an apartment located in the vicinity of West 22nd Street and 8th Avenue, within the confines of the 10th Precinct. A preliminary investigation determined that a 33-year-old male was involved in a domestic dispute with a 30 year-old female. The victim informed police she was assaulted. Officers placed the 33-year-old male into custody without incident. The victim sustained minor injuries to her head and neck and was removed to an area hospital in stable condition.”
An industry rep told IndieWire that Majors “has done nothing wrong…we look forward to clearing his name and clearing this up.”