1/6/24
Newsletter #542
The Crack of Dawn
Listen, you screwheads, you motherfuckers, here is a man who would not take it anymore. Here is a man who stood up against the filth, against the shit, against the scum.
I’m paraphrasing Taxi Driver (1976), but those are my sentiments.
I paid $19.99 to watch Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) and after 100 minutes, with 106 more minutes looming in front of me, I had to bail out. They give you 48 hours to finish watching the film if you’re of a mind, but I was not of a mind; I was certainly never going to give that movie another try. It really sucked bad.
My first inclination is to say that it’s Mr. Scorsese’s worst movie, but that gives me pause because I think he’s really made nothing but crap since Goodfellas in 1990. That’s 34 years of consistent, almost unadulterated, bullshit, one film after another after another. If you’re buying horseshit like Cape Fear, Bringing Out the Dead, Shutter Island, or Hugo, plus ten other equally undistinguished movies, then you didn’t see his first ten movies. He should’ve done himself and us a favor and retired in 1990, at the age of 48. I Somehow miraculously stuck it all the way out through both The Irishman (2019) at 209-minutes and The Wolf of Wall Street at 180-minutes, even though in both films I felt like I was having the whole movie regurgitated back upon me over and over again. But life is too fucking short to watch one more minute of absolute utter shit like Killers of the Flower Moon.
What the hell, let’s parse shit for a minute. I don’t like Casino (1995), but it has some good scenes and performances, and even though it’s a slightly tired retread of his own material, I’ve seen it a couple of times. I don’t like The Departed (2006), and it has even fewer good scenes, but I’ve also seen it a couple of times. These films aren’t good, but are not hard to sit through. However, to me anyway, The Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), Kundun (1997), were fucking difficult, ass-burning movies.
As I now look back, Killers of the Flower Moon is certainly Scorsese’s worst movie. I’ll never go back to check out the part I missed. I haven’t read any reviews, I don’t know what people might be saying — like, “Native actresses deserve Oscars” — but every single indigenous Native part is terrible, miserable, and the non-actors playing them are awful. Artificial Intelligence could not write a worse script. There are no information or coordinates you could input into AI to write a script that bad (“AI, please make each page worse than the previous page”). At some point during preproduction somebody must have mistakenly said (I am of course assuming), “If this is the lead part, the one that Leo Di Caprio will be playing, shouldn’t it have perhaps the tinniest shred characterization?” And the aged, ancient Martin Scorsese painfully arose from his chair and hollered, “Characterization? You want characterization, you motherfucker? I’ll give you characterization.” Then blindly chose two pages out of the first 100 and wrote, “Leo: I love money,” slammed down the pen and said, “There’s your fuckin’ characterization! Now leave me the fuck alone!”
Meanwhile, these chubby Native gals who got stuck with the lead parts are embarrassingly bad, and therefore, stultifyingly dull. It’s not their fault, they’re not actors. blatantly so. But this worthless piece of shit script, co-written by Scorsese, leaves Leo so high and dry with nothing to say or do that his scenes are even more painful than the Natives’ scenes. For lack of any characterization, Leo has, in desperation, clearly stuffed something in his mouth, Kleenex, gum, chaw, but he should really have used a ball of socks. The same goes for Robert De Niro.
It’s a truly dreadful fucking movie.
But wait, I’m not done bitching.
So, Jeff Chandler would no longer be acceptable portraying Apache Chief Cochise, as he did so ably in Broken Arrow (1950), because he’s not a real indigenous Native. Warner Oland is no longer acceptable as Charlie Chan, although he did it exceptionally well for 16 films, and looks Asian. Jennifer Jones shouldn’t play the hotblooded Mexican vixen as she did in the high-budget disaster, Duel in the Sun (1946) – man, was she miscast, but she was married to the executive producer. Anthony Quinn could now neither play an Eskimo nor a Greek fisherman named Zorba because he was really Mexican.
Given those restrictions, why on earth are Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan both acceptable playing Jews in Maestro (2023)? Perhaps you majority of gentiles don’t see it, but both of them don’t look the slightest bit Jewish. Bradley Cooper is wearing a nose appliance. Is everybody mad? Quinn can’t play Zorba, but this yo-yo is perfectly OK for Leonard Bernstein?
From the time I was twelve and watched King of Kings (1961) on the Friday Night Movie on network TV and there was the ridiculously gentile, Jeffrey Hunter – blond hair, blue eyes – as Jesus Christ, also known as, the “King of the Jews,” I was befuddled. Then I saw The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Jesus was the brooding, Swedish, blatantly-not-Jewish, Max Von Sydow. Then there was The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) with the Jewish youngsters played by the insanely-not-Jewish, Millie Perkins and Richard Beymer. Didn’t anybody see this but me? That bad casting ruined the movie. Then, even a progressive, forward thinker like Martin Scorsese went and cast the certainly-not-Jewish Willem Defoe as Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
Why does this accuracy in casting rule have to apply to everyone else, but not in the case of casting Jews as Jews? If they make a movie out of Barbra Streisand’s new memoir, will they hire Taylor Swift to play her? She’s female and sings, and we must be blind to all else?
I’m just asking.
So... I can't play Taylor Swift?