First of all, Miss Jones, if you take away my knee-jerk naysaying, you’ll take away the very thing that makes me me. Rash judgments are my bread and butter, my stock in trade, my bailiwick, my sine qua non. They’re what got me through college and the
Peace Corps and the seminary and
Vietnam. They’re as Josh Rosenblatt as chocolate cake, as cigarettes, as long walks off short piers. Take away my rash judgments and you might as well do Film Fight with the movie critic for
Family Circle Magazine. Or
The Austin American-Statesman.
Second of all, much to my shock and dismay, I agree with all your assessments about
Orson Welles,
Ian McKellen, and
Maureen O’Hara. Technicolor was just made for her, wasn’t it? Have you seen
How Green Was My Valley, by the way? Man, is that an entertaining movie about Welsh poverty and collapsing mine shafts.
I just have to take issue with two points you made:
One, I don’t have a problem with
Ethan Hawke in general, just Ethan Hawke as Hamlet. And as a novelist, I guess. And as a director, I have a small problem with him. Oh, and as a pop philosopher in
Richard Linklater movies. And maybe as a painter in
Charles Dickens adaptations; I don’t remember. Other than that, I think he’s great.
And secondly, if you had bothered to watch any of
John Wayne’s underrated 20th Century Fox silent B-movie pirate classics, like
Daredevilry on the High Seas,
Hard to Starboard!,
The Big Storm,
The Big Storm II: Change of Socks, or
Jub Jub the Chimpanzee vs. the Barbary Pirates, you’d know that he spent the better part of his early career soaking wet. In fact he was the first and last actor to have a “constant dampness” clause in his studio contract, leading director
Raoul Walsh to comment on the set of
The Big Trail, “John Wayne is the soggiest actor I’ve seen since
‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.”
(Just a little touch of absurdity in the night.)
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