I was so turned on by David Kittredge‘s Boorman and the Devil in Venice last September (seven months ago) that I naively presumed that a distribution deal would be announced within weeks or even sooner. How could distributors not pounce on this sucker immediately? Instead NOTHING happened for months and months.

I began to wilt or weaken within, thinking that perhaps a theatrical debut might not be feasible (although it’s a great audience film…it’s very funny in a sardonic, gallows humor vein). I thought, however, that a Bluray was certainly warranted, and that some kind of streaming thing had to happen. A Netflix or HBO Max or Criterion Channel deal…anything.

But for months on end Boorman was just roaming around from one hip horror festival to another, which is fine in itself but it’s so much deeper than that…it has so much more going on inside than a film aimed at horror fans. And think of the hundreds of thousands of ‘70s film buffs and Hollywood aficionados nationwide who would never see it without some kind of general access.

Earlier today I learned that Boorman and the Devil has finally found a supportive distributor, and that a specific announcement will be forthcoming during next month’s Cannes Film Festival. The doc will receive an Oscar-qualifying theatrical release, I’ve been told, and that Bluray, cable and streaming releases will follow.

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I guess I don’t understand why Jerry Maguire has been restored (did it ever look like it needed rejuvenation?) and why it’s getting the big 30th anniversary whoop-dee-doo treatment this weekend with a special three-day booking at various AMC and Cinemark theatres. Not over the actual weekend, though — it’ll screen between Sunday, 4.12 and Tuesday, 4.14.

The restored Maguire will also be shown at the TMC Classic Film Festival at month’s end.

One of my all-time happiest press screenings was seeing Maguire at Sony Studios four or five weeks before it opened (early to mid November of ’96). Before the film started I remember staring at producer Richard Sakai and thinking “this is very cool…I can feel a special vibe here…something is telling me this is going to be really good.”

10 or 15 minutes in I knew it would be a commercial hit, and once the Jerry Maguire-Dorothy Boyd relationship began to grow and build I knew it was an emotional powerhouse…one of those rare mainstream films that really touch the heart and melt you down. And that wonderful Dicky Fox finale…perfect.

In my mind Maguire was Cruise’s greatest career moment…his peak in the sense that Cruise wasn’t known for emotional connection movies, and this was a kind of breakout. For the first time audiences were really rooting for Cruise / Maguire, really felt an extraordinary emotional bond. Except for the surprisingly emotional Collateral, Cruise never made another sophisticated, deep-down heart movie after Maguire. On top of this he was playing a guy who was really struggling to stay afloat, and was on the verge of serious money problems.

Okay, he played a guy living on the proverbial knife’s edge in American Made, but his law-skirting character was always in command in a sense….always a rakish dare devil. Jerry Maguire, on the other hand, was a guy who seemed emotionally uncertain or unfulfilled, and certainly vulnerable.

During that first viewing I recall saying to myself “ahh, Cruise has new stress lines in his face…he’s acquired a certain amount of character.” And he was only 33 or 34 when Maguire was filmed.

Then again Jerry Maguire persuaded me that sports agents are bad guys because they raised the fees of athletes and subsequently made the price of tickets close to unaffordable to average wage-earning schmoes.

“Guy gets on the MTA in LA…dies. Think anybody’ll notice?”

Cruise’s “hello, I’m looking for my wife” scene in Jerry Maguire still ranks first, but Vincent’s final line in Collateral [4:15 to 4:40] is first runner-up. In a way it’s almost more moving than the Maguire scene because you’re not expecting cynical, hard-case Vincent to emotionally reveal himself.

Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome and Arclight plex has been closed since 2020…killed by the pandemic. And no one has come to the rescue.

No rich passionate filmmaker has come along to save the day, turning the Cinerama Dome into a film buff’s haven, more or less in the way Tarantino runs the New Beverly and Vista.

And yet the wealthy but ugly guy who owns the Dome, Decurion Corp.’s Chris Forman, hasn’t sold it to some ruthless, thick-fingered developer who might turn the place into a shopping mall of some sort.

No studio has bought it in the fashion of Disney’s ownership of the El Capitan or how Netflix owning the Egyptian Theatre.

And it hasn’t turned into the Alex Theatre in Glendale, which is still around but doesn’t function like a “regular theater” and is basically a giant museum piece much of the time.

Decurion won’t re-open the Dome/Arclight because Forman knows it’ll lose money. Somebody with tons of dough has to step in and re-open it with the understanding that the operation will lose money, but that it will earn at least some reasonable amount on a monthly basis.

The only solution is that the city of Los Angeles has to step in and offer bountiful tax incentives to a possible rescuer, incentives that will at least allow the new owner to break even. Allowing the Dome to just sit there and collect dust is bad for the soul of Los Angeles….bad for the culture, for the joie de vivre of movie lovers, bad for the spirit of things, bad for the political climate.

I still say that the ultra-curved Cinerama Dome screen distorts the shit out of Scope films (2.39:1). The screen needs to be modified into a slightly curved shape.

I remember seeing Deliverance at the Dome way back when….loved the directional sound.

I felt a twinge of arousal upon reading that a Warner Archive Bluray of Clarence Brown‘s Possessed (1931), a hard-knocks, rags-to-riches social drama costarring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, will pop on 5.26.

This is a brand new 1080p Bluray, mind…the product of a 4K scan of the original nitrate camera negative…gimme!

Gable was 30 during filming. He wasn’t yet wearing his pencil-thin moustache (he grew one and kept it the following year), and wasn’t yet a big marquee name — he ascended into that realm with his starring role in Frank Capra‘s It Happened One Night (’34).

Crawford, born in 1904, was 26 or 27.

Brown was known as a reliable “house” director, not exactly given to visual flamboyance or artistic ambition. But consider the second half of this clip (starting at 1:34)…a left-to-right tracking shot of Crawford hungrily eyeballing the lifestyles of the swells as a train slowly passes by. This is a moment of serious cinema, one that took a lot of planning and crackerjack timing to get right.

Lenore Coffee‘s screenplay was adapted from The Mirage, a 1920 Broadway play The Mirage by Edgar Selwyn.

You’ll notice that in Criterion’s forthcoming 4K version of Point Blank (due on 4.21.26), the red-robed Angie Dickinson has an unhealthy pallor — pale, blood-drained, almost ghostly — while the orange-robed Dickinson in the 2015 WHE Bluray has a robust and creamy sun-tanned look.

HE to John Boorman acquaintance who has his contact info: “I want to reach out to Boorman and ask him why oh why he approved Criterion’s teal desecration of his 1967 crime classic. Could you please share his email? Or contact info for his business rep? I’ve respected the man immensely for many decades but I went into a state of cardiac arrest when I saw those DVD Beaver screen captures.”

Boorman acquaintance to HE: “Given Boorman’s current state of health, it doesn’t feel like now is an appropriate time to engage.”

HE to Boorman acquaintance: “You think that my respectfully and submissively asking Boorman why he approved Criterion’s teal-soaked Point Blank…you think that’ll cause the poor guy to have a heart attack?”

“Because that’ll be my big middle finger to you guys, because I don’t care about you. I don’t want you to win. You guys were nobody until I got here, and you’ll be nobody after I leave.”

I’ve always been into knowing background stuff about this or that significant film, but until this morning I’d never absorbed a truly fascinating Ben-Hur anecdote.

I’d never known the name of the unbilled guy who played the gruff and blustery Roman decurion** who denies water to a parched Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), but who drops the tough-guy posture when Jesus of Nazareth (Claude Heater) gives Ben-Hur a gourd full of water. He starts to admonish the Nazarene but loses his nerve — something tells him to chill down.

It’s arguably the most emotionally complex and emotionally affecting moment in the entire 212-minute film.

The actor’s name was Remington Olmsted (1912-2002), an American-born performer, dancer, singer, college football player and Roman restaurateur. In the mid ’50s Olmstead founded the iconic Da Meo Patacca, a popular restaurant in Rome’s Trastevere district. It’s still operating today.

Here’s Olmsted’s Grokipedia bio.

** In ancient Rome, a decurion was a cavalry officer commanding a troop of 10 to 30 soldiers (turma).

Right after Olivia Wilde‘s The Invite premiered at Sundance last January, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 91% positive rating while Metacritic only gave it a 76% score. Fuck does that mean? Critics can be such niggly-piggly pissheads.

I will be sorely disappointed if I can’t wheedle my way into a market screening of The Invite next month in Cannes. It’s a hot title. There will have to be a market screening or two.

Sen. Thomas Jordan (John McGiver) on a certain buffoon who might as well be a “paid Soviet agent”.