HR respects Wall Street Journal contributor Ben Appel, whose contentious article posted on 4.2.26.

It was announced yesterday 4.2.26) that David Kelley is writing a miniseries version of Tom Wolfe‘s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” with Matt (Let Me In, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Batman) Reeves inked to direct and executive produce.

This is a chance to properly resurrect Tom Wolfe’s great Balzac-Ian novel of mid ‘80s Manhattan…sharp district attorneys, hungry journos, Harlem hustlers large and small, and the Wall Street culture of “Masters of the Universe.”

Brian DePalma’s 1990 film adaptation was a total catastrophe, of course, which is why it’s an inspired idea to remake the Wolfe book as a ten-parter. If you listen to the “Vanities” audio book it lasts for 20something hours. This is one of those rare instances in which a miniseries is the smarter way to go.

I’m confident that Reeves won’t screw this up. He’s too good of a director to follow in DePalma’s clumsy footsteps. This is a golden opportunity to translate Wolfe’s labrynthian book accurately. The Kelly-Reeves miniseries will presumably be shot in period (mid ’80s).

Reeves has always been a fan of Wolfe’s book and has long believed he could make a filmed version turn out right some day.

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A week or so ago Ryan Gosling was anounced as the star of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert‘s next dazzling film. A week later Gosling bailed due to an alleged “scheduling conflict”…bullshit.

Variety‘s Clayton Davis: “Kwan and Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, aimed to start filming in Los Angeles later this summer, but the production was unable to shift to accomodate Gosling’s schedule, which has been packed as of late following a lengthy global press tour for Amazon MGM’s sci-fi epic Project Hail Mary”…bullshit.

Gosling may have just saved himself from the Daniels’ “sophomore slump” effort. Okay, I don’t know if it’s a slumper or not, but I do know that an army of EEAAO haters is out there in force, and that they’re determined to get these guys one way or another, and that their luck can’t hold out forever.

Your wife will love you a tiny bit more if you go to Prague or Istanbul and (a) get that older guy, neck-wattle, saggy-faced condition taken care of (LIKE I DID 14 years ago), (b) get your hair fixed in Prague (like HE fan JOHN MILIUS did four or five years ago — he wrote me and I referred him to my hair follicle transplant surgery place in Prague), and (c) get your teeth capped or at least bleached.

Worn-down, grayish, old-looking teeth will age you terribly, and your wife will never let on because, being a kind and gentle person, she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.

Compassionate women, bless ’em, will NEVER tell you the truth. Don’t ask your wife if you should fix yourself up. She will never, EVER be honest with you. She will gently caress your sagging neck and dropping cheeks, look you in the eye, smile lovingly and earnestly and lie right through her teeth.

You need to rejuvenate yourself for your own reasons, I mean. If you want to do this, do it and shave 10 to 15 years off your appearance.

That dreaded neck wattle can NOT be allowed to gain ground and/or proliferate. You need to defeat it the way Alexander the Great defeated Darius, that Persian king, and his ancient, spear-carrying horseback army.

You have to kind of melt into it, or wade into it like it’s the Gulf of Mexico from the Quintana Roo side. A salty lake with gently lapping mini-waves.

Either way you have to merge without the help (or really the hindrance) of all your acquired mental tools and skills and disciplines. You need to put aside the rational and in some cases judgmental constructs that you’ve been assembling for so many decades — all of those structural towers of intellectual, influential, scholastic, explorational and experience-based building blocks of your identity.

Attaining satori isn’t really about therapy or psychology (sorry, Cary) or this or that terra firma, furrowed-brow examination or rumination. It’s about stepping off a kind of misty, moss-covered cliff or, if you will, deciding that the rules, restrictions and governances that you’ve been living by are just obstructions, and that a blue-sky realm awaits.

You can’t really embrace satori without letting all that other stuff go…all of that material you’ve been accumulating and evaluating and sifting through since your early teens. None of that stuff really matters in the realm of the mystical.

What is the opposite of satori? Easy — just read the Hollywood Elsewhere comment threads any day of the week. 93% of what is posted in these oppressive threads represent an immersion into resplendent piss pools…they own these pools…a kind of snippy, dart-throwing, walnut-brained nowheresville, liquified and lemon-yellow. I realize that for some HE is a “hate read” and that’s fine, but I’m not a hater per se….I am (or am trying to be each day) an honest illuminator.

Tom Wolfe, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test“, pages 139 thru 142:

Many zoomers (1997 to 2012) are, I gather or have heard, freaked about how bruising and brutalizing the big, bad world is, and how rapacious everyone is.

Well, sorry but your helicopter parents did this to you. But there’s no percentage in blaming them or trashing them….you have to man up and brush yourself off and say “okay, that happened!” You have to somehow stand up on your own, make your own way.

“Fall down and get up…fall down and get up…fall down and get up.”

@orwell_fangirl

For @justpeers some life lessons on growing up

♬ original sound – Sasha Stone

For me the most striking part of Alec Guinness‘s story about visiting Los Angeles in September 1955 to work with Grace Kelly on The Swan…the most arresting aspect is the fact that a female friend of Guinness’s tried to take him to dinner at two or three swanky industry restaurants but was denied entrance because she was wearing slacks. A Hollywood professional, a serious smartypants, a player…and they wouldn’t give her a table because she wasn’t wearing a dress. And she was accompanied by effing Alec Guinness!

The pussies who administrate You Tube won’t allow the explosive finale of Brian DePalma‘s The Fury (’78) to be seen on Hollywood Elsewhere, but here’s the YouTube link.

When I first saw it in ’78 I thought The Fury was a fairly ridiculous film. It probably still is. I remember feeling genuinely sorry for Kirk Douglas, who was stuck with a character whose behavior made little sense. But the mad operatic finish makes up for most of the pain and frustration.

Amy Irving‘s ‘you go to hell!”…John Cassevetes‘ body blown into shards of meat, blood and bone…John Williams‘ riveting score. Only peak Brian DePalma (a period that started with Phantom of the Paradise and ended with The Untouchables) could have done this.

Again, the link.

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From Entertainment Weekly:

In addition to being hated and feared within the industry and regarded as nearly unemployable because she’s a hair-trigger troublemaker who’s not worth the risk, Blake Lively’s bullshit sexual harassment accusations against Justin Baldoni have been tossed…all ten of them! Eureka!

When it comes to graphically in-your-face gay cinema and Pillion in particular, any journo (even one in the employ of a trade publication) can talk about anything.

In some instances the point isn’t to offer police-blotter information or sage analysis but to (ahem) arouse.

I’ll restrict myself to the R-rated version, thanks.

If and when a hetero romantic drama with semi-graphic or near-porny depictions of whatever were to be made (such films were allowed in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s but are verboten today —- there are certainly no straight Pillion-type flicks), trade reporters would be discouraged from offering any sort of commentary, and would certainly be instructed to avoid descriptions of a woman having a “radiant post-coital face.”