Today, in the latest of HBO Max's simultaneous releases with theaters, is the latest from producer, director and star Clint Eastwood.
Based on N. Richard Nash's 1975 novel, it's Cry Macho. Nash's novel began as a screenplay he pitched and pitched without success - then it was just called Macho - so he reworked it into a novel and added Cry. The novel was enough of a success that he took the original screenplay around again, didn't change a word, and this time got bites. Hey, you're either seen or you're not.
It became another of those projects lost in seemingly endless production Hell.
Over the years it was optioned by Fox and several other studios, only to have the options run out and be out for sale yet again. Eastwood was offered the part back in '88, but passed because he was doing another Dirty Harry film (The Dead Pool). He offered to direct, and suggested Robert Mitchum for the role, but that went nowhere. In the early '90s Roy Scheider had the part, with filming begun but never finished. Attempts with Burt Lancaster and Pierce Brosnan started up and sputtered out. Arnold Schwarzenegger was lined up for it, but then put it on hold due to his gubernatorial run for California. In 2011 he was ready to pick that up again, but his divorce and the scandal over the son he'd secretly had with an employee scrubbed all of those plans. Nash himself had passed away back in 2000, and so 21 years shy of seeing the film completed. Considering the likes of Brosnan or, especially, Schwarzenegger in the role, it's likely a good thing it passed each of them by; it's more likely the role would have had to been rewritten around each of them.
In interviews the now 91 year old Eastwood's noted that he was interested in the role from the start, and reached a point where he revisited it as something he'd aged into. This film marks the first time since 1992 (for Unforgiven) that he was on camera on horseback. The wrangler for those shots was more than a little nervous about the thought that Eastwood might end up knocked out of the saddle.
This isn't the kind of film I'm strongly drawn to, but I'm intending to take a look at it sometime during its 31-day run on HBO Max.
Another portrait in things macho begins this Sunday, the 19th, as Ken Burns' four-part documentary of Muhammad Ali begins. It's airing as a roughly 2-hour piece for each of four consecutive nights, Sunday through Wednesday. It attempts to carve his complex life into four blocks, and as much as I'm interested in many of the details along the way, I'm probably most interested in the final block, as the fourth installment covers 1974-2016.
Ali is another of those 20th century icons whose primary claim to fame was never of any direct interest to me. I've always considered boxing to be barbaric, and both age and information have only reinforced that view. Given all of the knowns about the long-term damage, part of me is still taken aback that it's legal.
Instead, it's the man himself, his character, charm, showmanship, and the force of will involved in his social and political stances, that I find interesting. (There's a loose corollary here with Frank Sinatra, of all people. I am far more interested in Sinatra for his determination, force of will, and self-reinvention than I've ever been for his voice. I revisit Frank's recording catalog every so many years and have yet to understand why it was ever such a point of broad appeal. My current, general playlist has 1261 songs on it - some 79 hours 40 minutes of music - and Ol' Blue Eyes isn't currently in there once.)
I have all four parts set to record on the DVR, but I also know myself well enough to know it'll come down to a whim as to whether or not I start to tug on that thread in a timely fashion, or, failing that, will find myself deleting it unwatched because it's taking up too much space, fully intending to track it down later. This is one of those cases where I could argue it's being put out too quickly.
Starting back in April, HBO ran the limited series Mare of Easttown, which was set in a modified version of a section of Eastern PA, and shot reasonably nearby. An excellent limited series, it ran for 7 installments to much, justified, acclaim. Recently, Showtime began airing a murder mystery of its own, this time set in more Western PA, in part of the Rust Belt. PA is a large state, and different sections of it may as well be different states, or even separate countries in many respects.
This one stars Jeff Daniels as a police chief who is faced with a murder investigation where his connection to the accused makes the matter complicated. It's American Rust. Here's the trailer. The show is based on Philipp Meyer's much-lauded, 2009, debut novel of the same name. It's set in the fictional town of Buell, set in Fayette County (a real place), and so adjacent to Maryland and West Virginia. A place where industry boomed for decades, then collapsed, leaving the locals with their woods, guns and not much in the way of bright prospects unless they can move away.
Concerning this adaptation, whereas critics were quick to laud Mare, unadulterated accolades for Rust are more difficult to find. Praise for the lead actors, sure, but most of the critics need to see more than the first three episodes screened for them to decide if the story will support itself, concerned that all interest will fade if key faces and voices aren't in the scenes. New episodes airing Sunday nights, the third (apparently of 8 -- that number based on info in a wiki, otherwise seemingly concealed like a state secret) will be this Sunday.
As an audience-fishing move, they're leaving the first episode out on YouTube for anyone to watch: This is more likely something I'll be jumping into soon.
Hulu's just this week launched a new anthology series that's very broadly attempting to capture aspects of contemporary life. The creation of writer, actor, producer, and comedian B.J. Novak, it's a series of half-hour, stand-alone stories, packaged as The Premise. (As an aside: This is part of FX on Hulu, which is a bit of what's now, I suppose, legacy branding. FX was slowly developing content for a possible, eventual, streaming service of its own, but deals with Disney - which has full control of Hulu, and bought out all of Fox's entertainment biz - finds all of this now just a subset of Hulu's programming.)
Half-hour stories with interesting casts, tackling the general human condition and both timeless and contemporary issues looks like an easy "yes." Then it'll just be a matter of whether we come down on the same side of various issues.
Arriving next Thursday, September 23rd, on HBO Max is the start of the third season of Doom Patrol. I make no apologies for saying that this is much more to my immediate, arguably arrested, tastes. Barring life going well off the rails, I expect to watch this fairly soon after it appears.
In what is now typical fashion for these DC series on HBO Max, the first three episodes will arrive on day 1, then we'll get a new one per week as it rolls out this thirteen-episode season.
Indications so far are that they learned the lesson of the contrast between seasons one and two, and have given more attention to bringing in eccentric villains. (Season one's Mr. Nobody, played by Alan Tudyk, was hugely important in keeping it fun.) New to the mix in season three are the Brotherhood of Evil, and the Sisterhood of Dada, Madame Rouge, and the Deadboy Detectives. The trailer has me a little concerned that they went too light and wacky, but there's no point in pre-judging any of it, especially from a trailer. Pandemic interference caused season two to be cut down by a full episode, rushing some elements of the finale. Seeing where it picks up will be the first point of interest for me.
I'm hoping for a fun time. While continuing to hold out so far, the pile-on of positive recommendations for items on Apple tv+ have been continuing. Ranging from The Morning Show, to Ted Lasso, to Schmigadoon! (heard about it at length during one of Terry Gross' Fresh Air interviews on NPR - that's a link to the 36-minute interview), it's been continuing to build. Next Friday they're launching a new series, an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series. I'm not yet sold on it, as I'm afraid that they're going to fall down the path of gimmicking it up with explosions, violence, and gratuitous sex in an attempt to make it more commercial, and that the desire to hold the cast in place longer it may fail to make the great leaps in time that the source novels did. It's too difficult to tell from the trailer, in part because I don't know how much of the series they're mining for clips. While I'm so far not drawn in by the ads I've seen for the action drama series set in a mostly blind world, See, such upcoming science fiction dramas such as Finch (a man, his dog and a robot he's training to take care of his dog film starring Tom Hanks) and Invasion (sci fi series following an alien invasion from the perspective of different people around the world), along utterly non-sci-fi items such as a comedy starring Rashida Jones, Marlon Wayans and Bill Murray - On The Rocks - have at least made their way onto a mental list.
As it's all on a streaming platform that this programming was developed for, it's not going anywhere -- just broadening and deepening -- so there's no rush. Note: I don't have any apple devices (many viewers got access as part of a package that came along with a new piece of equipment) and don't have any plans to change that. All mentioned to prevent someone from making that suggestion to me.
I have a bad habit of adding services but not cancelling them. With respect to Apple TV+, I see that the monthly fee is $4.99, or there's a less-advertised annual plan of $49.99, so a savings of $9.89 -- all pre-tax. Again, though, no rush -- but it's creeping in as a next likely addition. I have to look into the details as to number of users/devices a single account can be used for. Disney+, and Paramount+ have already been recurring, annual subscriptions I've made as a general family entertainment gift. If I add this one, it'll be the least expensive so far.
Almost the end of this week's piece, and the weekend nearly here, it's time to reach back into the 1950s/early '60s for another b-list sci-fi or horror film. Feeling a little peckish? This week it's the luridly mis-titled The Brain Eaters (1958 61 min.).
This was a Roger Corman-adjacent production, with Corman as an uncredited co-producer. TV and film character actor Bruno William VeSota had wanted to direct another film, so he approached Corman with a script, looking for guidance in lining up financing. The script is credited to Gordon Urquhart, an Illinois-born actor and writer who was apparently an associate's of VeSota, likely from his time in Chicago. Urquhart had died of cancer in 1957, at the age of 33, and so was gone before this project got rolling. That's mostly of note with respect to a point I'll pick up later. Anyway, the film was shot in six days on a budget of $26,000, which is about as Corman a detail as I can think, this side of stories of actors being asked to park and use their cars' headlights to light a scene.
The film's historical elements include a very small role by Leonard Nimoy (misspelled "Nemoy" in the credits) as Professor Cole, and that upon release it was the target of a lawsuit by noted science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, claiming it was plagiarized from his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters. Corman claimed ignorance of Heinlein's work, though once he read the novel he agreed about the similarities, and settled out of court for $5000. As part of the agreement, though, Heinlein didn't want his name in the credits. Actor John Payne (perhaps best remembered as the romantic lead in Miracle on 34th Street) had been chasing a deal to produce a film version of Heinlein's novel since 1953, managing to get a deal signed by 1959, but felt that the story was now too damaged by the plagiarized version, and so abandoned the project. Payne is noted as (one of) the first in Hollywood to try to pin down rights to make a James Bond film in the '50s, too, having paid fees to do so for Moonraker (1955 -- the novel), but reportedly balked because he thought he'd get rights to the series --?! He was a sharp cookie in some respects - he carefully negotiated his contract once he had enough clout, insisting that his films be shot in color, and that following their theatrical runs the rights would revert to him, so he would have the rights to income from eventual rebroadcasts on tv. A lifelong Republican and conservative, though, he mainly seemed to see things only as they would benefit him.
Now, after all that, here's a fall-back access to The Brain Eaters. Fortunately, though, the ever-wonderful Tubi (and if you can access this, you can access Tubi) has a much better copy. It's free, an easy sign-up, and they're pleasantly light on the commercial interruptions. Go watch it there if you have the choice.
That's enough for this mid-September week.
Take care, and come back next Friday. - Mike
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