Archive for 2024
July 2, 2024
BURIED LEDE: A Rare Moment of Honesty on CNN (Video).
Must watch TV pic.twitter.com/6pQOlKtMeI
— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) July 2, 2024
RIP: Robert Towne, Writer of Chinatown, Dies at 89.
Writer-director Robert Towne, an Oscar winner for his original script for “Chinatown” and an acknowledged master of the art of screenwriting, has died. He was 89.
Towne died Monday at his home in Los Angeles, publicist Carrie McClure said in a statement.
During a long career that began in the 1960s, when he went to work as an actor and writer for B-movie director Roger Corman, Towne became one of the most sought-after script doctors in movie history, called on time and again to solve structural problems and create great moments for other people’s films.
Towne came to prominence in the 1970s with three critical and commercial hits released within a 14-month period: “The Last Detail” (1973), “Chinatown” (1974) and “Shampoo” (1975). All three screenplays were Oscar- nominated, with “Chinatown” winning in its year.
Hired as a “special consultant” by Warren Beatty for 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” Towne restructured the picture to dramatize the outlaws’ impending doom. He also turned an inert family reunion scene with Beatty and Faye Dunaway into one of the picture’s emotional high points. Clyde’s charming bravado falls flat when Bonnie’s mother responds, “You try to live three miles from me and you won’t live long, honey.”
Director Arthur Penn was delighted with Towne’s work. “It helped Warren play the scene, and it certainly helped Faye and the mother,” Penn said.
Though most of Towne’s script doctoring went uncredited — for example, in “The Parallax View” (1974), “Marathon Man” (1976), “The Missouri Breaks” (1976) and “Heaven Can Wait” (1978) — he received a rare honor in 1973 when “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola thanked him in his Oscar acceptance speech for scripting the touching and pivotal Pacino-Brando garden scene — a scene not in Mario Puzo’s book.
As Peter Biskind wrote in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, his seminal look at the Hollywood Young Turks of the ‘60s and ’70s, “Before the ’70s, screenwriters were disposable. If a project was going badly, the studio would throw another writer on the fire. Even they didn’t take themselves seriously. Towne’s was the first generation of Hollywood writers for whom scripts were ends in themselves, not way stations on the road to the great American novel. Towne’s forte was dialogue. ‘He had this ability, in every page he wrote and rewrote, to leave a sense of moisture on the page, as if he just breathed on it in some way,’ says producer Gerald Ayres, who would hire him to write The Last Detail. ‘There was always something that jostled your sensibilities, that made the reading of the page not just a perception of plot, but the feeling that something accidental and true to the life of a human being had happened there.’”
RONALD REAGAN WARNED US OF THIS: Trees Have Become a Hidden Source of Air Pollution in Los Angeles.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Breakthrough Study Links Gut Bacteria to Food Addiction and Obesity.
ANDY KESSLER: The Tyranny of Today’s Tipping: When did it become expected to shell out a 25% gratuity for soggy takeout fries?
The screen reads: “Add a tip: 18%. 20%. 25%.” For a takeout sack of burgers and soggy fries? C’mon. It takes extra taps to change it to 10% or zero. Instead, we sheepishly tip and feel resentful. Using Internal Revenue Service data, I extrapolate that tipping has almost doubled since 2013, when San Francisco-based Square turned iPads into cash registers with suggested tips.
It’s the American way to show gratitude for a job well done, but tipping has gotten out of hand. It’s become expected. Even required. A Mountain View, Calif., restaurant had a line on its bills: “For parties of 1 or larger, a 18% gratuity is applied automatically.” . . .
One study reveals that we tip because it’s a “social norm,” to “show gratitude,” and to “avoid feeling guilty.” Those answers ring true, but reasons also include the expectation of “poor future service if I don’t tip,” and that “the waiter may yell at me.” Those feel even truer. . . .
I recently hailed a Waymo car in San Francisco and didn’t tip the driver—because there wasn’t one, a gentle reminder that automation often solves pricing problems. Americans don’t hate tipping. We hate that it’s expected, that you’re labeled a tightwad if you don’t tip. How do we get back to tipping being optional? For great service. For promptitude. Not for soggy takeout fries.
I’m a generous tipper, but tipping retail cashiers — which is what Starbucks baristas are — is a bit much. I’ll stick a dollar in the jar, but 25% automatically added as an “option”? Another reason to pay cash. And all companies are doing here is shifting wage expenses to customers.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Axios Bungles the ‘Imperial Presidency.’
Axios has published a report this morning titled, “Behind the Curtain: The imperial presidency in waiting,” in which it proposes that, if he is reelected, Donald Trump “promises an unabashedly imperial presidency.” And I’m sorry to record that it’s . . . well, it’s almost entirely garbage.
I truly write that more in sorrow than in anger. We really do need to limit the power of the presidency, and, if it takes fear of Donald Trump to do it, I’m all in. Certainly, that fear is not imagined. Like Barack Obama before him, and Joe Biden after him, Trump was guilty of attempting to usurp Congress’s lawmaking powers, and, as I have written and said 359,701 times by now, he should have been impeached in January 2021 for interfering with Congress. But, as quickly becomes clear, Axios does not actually understand the problem that it believes itself to be warning about, and, as a result, those warnings fall flat.
The term “imperial presidency” was coined by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and it signifies two things: (1) the enormous growth of the president’s war powers over time, and (2) the president’s intrusion into areas that are supposed to be managed by Congress. Schlesinger was horribly biased as an analyst, and prior to his anti-imperial phase, he was one of the country’s most vocal champions of the presidency, but the phenomenon he described was real — and, if anything, it has got worse since he published his book in 1973. Unfortunately, though, what Axios includes as supposed examples of Schlesinger’s theory are not, in fact, examples of Schlesinger’s theory.
But the left, as Charles Cooke implies above, loves the “imperial presidency” — as long as they’re the party presiding over the empire.
QED:
THE COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS:
JUST IN – Hunter Biden has joined meetings with President Biden and his top aides this week at the White House, reportedly the reaction from some senior White House staff has been, “What the hell is happening?” – NBC News
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) July 2, 2024
Is Hunter cleared for this stuff and, if so — how?
I DON’T CARE ENOUGH: Fuck the Modern NBA.
THE GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL IS VERY NICE. COMING HOME TO THE MASTERCARD STATEMENT… NOT SO MUCH: 36% of Americans plan to take on debt for summer travel. Here’s why that worries financial experts.
ANOTHER REASON NOT TO GET COCKY:
I think they would want to stay out of the news no matter what they planned or knew.
I also think they want Biden to win because that means they call the shots. Dirty tricks seem inevitable. https://t.co/HK58YINt9e
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 1, 2024
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10mm vs. .40 S&W: Similarities, Differences and Uses.
IT ISN’T ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: Orange Man BAD Takes on HILARIOUS New Meaning After Bronzed Biden Appearance and X Takes are Comedy GOLD.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Traeger Grills Pro 34 Electric Wood Pellet Grill and Smoker. #CommissionEarned
LAWRENCE LESSIG: The Constitution Protects ‘Fake Electors.’
Arizona has joined Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin in seeking to prosecute Donald Trump’s 2020 electors. Mr. Trump and his party’s lawyers encouraged them to meet and vote on the date set by Congress, Dec. 15. Because Joe Biden carried those states, Democrats and journalists call these Trump electors “fake.” But the effort to prosecute them is unconstitutional, and the campaign to vilify them is stupid. A twist on a plotline from the HBO series “Succession” illustrates why.
In season 4, episode 8, a fire at a Milwaukee “vote count center” destroys more than 100,000 ballots, throwing Wisconsin—and the election—to the Republican candidate. Imagine a more complicated story: After the fire, the governor invokes federal law to order voting in Milwaukee be reopened. A state court holds that action unconstitutional. Democrats appeal.
While the litigation unfolds, the clock ticks.
Read the whole thing. I’d just add that anything being stupid or unconstitutional has never stopped Democrats in pursuit of power.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China Discovers Graphene on the Moon.
THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Trump Spox Sneaks Onto Collapsing Biden Campaign’s Conference Call.
BEATS A SLEEP STUDY: Blood test can help predict risk of obstructive sleep apnea.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: ‘Turning Classrooms Into Arenas Of Radicalism’: Teachers Union Tasks Anti-Israel Activist To Create Curriculum About Israel. “The Director of Training & Professional Learning for the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Ricardo Rosa, has a record of disseminating anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric. He referred to the United States as a ‘settler colony,’ glorified Leila Khaled, a terrorist who hijacked a plane, supported a professor who labeled Zionists ‘swine,’ encouraged protests in Jewish neighborhoods, and advocated for a ‘Free Palestine in the immediate days after the October 7 massacre by Hamas on civilians in southern Israel.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: University of Michigan wins NASA’s lunar lander challenge award.
STRAIGHT TO THE CIRCULAR FILE: AOC to File Articles of Impeachment Over Immunity Ruling.
THAT WILL WORK WELL: Americans show growing interest in microdosing psychedelics.
BAD THINGS LEAK — OR TALL TALES BECOME BELIEVABLE — WHEN A CAMPAIGN FLOUNDERS: Grab the Popcorn: Tucker Reveals What ‘Unusually Good Source’ Shared About Obama/Biden Relationship. “According to the source, Obama supports an open Democratic National Convention at this point.”
Is it true about Obama? Or is some other high-level Democrat trying to force an open convention?
CORN, POPPED: The Biden Campaign Is in Chaos.
On Saturday afternoon, DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a conference call with dozens of DNC members nationwide, and it did not go well. In fact, it arguably made things worse.
“Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslighted — that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the party’s predicament,” the AP reported. “The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors and other stakeholders.”
Participants on the call said Harrison offered “a rosy assessment of Biden’s path forward,” and no questions were allowed during the call.
Taking questions runs the risk of puncturing the bubble.