Robert Redford (1936-2025)

Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand on the
set of 1973's The Way We Were (Rolling Stone)

The first time I saw a Robert Redford movie was in 1967. In Barefoot in the Park the newly married couple, Paul (Redford) and Corie (Jane Fonda) Bratter, move in to an apartment in New York City, nearly break up because of their incompatible approach to life--he is organized and practical, she is flexible and free-spirited--and reconcile at the end.

Barefoot was my first exposure to a Neil Simon play. The actors showed off their chops by dashing off rapid-fire repartee as if that was how everyone spoke in New York. The humor and secondary characters lightened the seriousness of the plot, a characteristic of other Neil Simon plays like The Odd Couple and The Goodbye Girl.

But back to Robert Redford. For several decades he was everyone's ideal of the blonde, blue-eyed movie star, until the baton was handed to Brad Pitt. Some movies, e.g., the Way we Were and the Candidate, played off his good looks explicitly, but the roles grew meatier. By the '80's he took up directing and founded the Sundance Film Festival.

Redford spent the next 50 years making and appearing in some of the industry’s most expensive and most commercially successful films. As the force behind the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, he also helped create an ecosystem for the industry’s smallest. Some films that premiered at the festival became popular with mainstream audiences, such as “Reservoir Dogs” and “Napoleon Dynamite,” but far more succeeded in finding a modest audience that appreciated them thanks to the infrastructure for independent films in the U.S. that Redford and Sundance helped create...

“You make the most of what you’ve been given—that’s how I see it,” Redford said in the 2015 WSJ. Magazine interview. “And you keep pushing to make more of it. I don’t see any reason to stop. I think retirement can lead to death, and that’s not for me.”

R.I.P.

St. Patrick's Day 2025

San Francisco's Front Street is traditionally closed on St. Patrick's Day, when crowds descend upon Harrington's Bar and Grill. Mayor Daniel Lurie posted photos on X (example right) earlier today to show that San Francisco party life is coming back.

This was the first major San Francisco example of California's "Entertainment Zone" bill that was passed last September: [bold added]

Existing law authorizes the creation of entertainment zones (via local ordinance) in the city and county of San Francisco. The legislation permits consumers to leave the premises of a beer manufacturer, wine manufacturer, or on-sale licensee with open containers of alcoholic beverages for consumption off the premises within an open container entertainment zone if the necessary conditions, requirements, and guidelines are adhered to.

Good on San Francisco and the State for legalizing what thousands of people do anyway every St. Patrick's Day. Below is a photo of Front Street on St. Patrick's Day 2005, when your humble blogger worked in the Financial District.

Front Street, St. Patrick's Day 2005

Winding Down the Business

Today I returned the last DVD I will ever rent. Netflix terminated its DVD mail service this month, and at this point I'm unlikely to sign up with another company.

We rented our first movie on VHS tape over 40 years ago from a small store in a local shopping center. We opened accounts at the large chains (e.g., Blockbuster, Hollywood Video) and sometimes rented from electronics stores like Best Buy and the defunct Circuit City.

We bought our first DVD player in 1998 and upgraded to Blu-ray in 2007. DVDs shortly made videotape obsolete because of quality and speed--not to mention not having to rewind the tape before returning it--and Netflix' DVD-by-mail soon put the bricks-and-mortar rental stores out of business.

The dwindling demand and the rising costs of shipping and handling physical media made the closure inevitable, freeing Netflix to focus on streaming.

I'm a sentimental person but am not particularly moved by the demise of a business model. DVDs aren't going to disappear. People will still buy them, much like they buy books instead of borrowing them from the library. Nevertheless, the loss of Netflix as a large buyer of DVDs means that some titles won't be profitable to produce, like books that become out of print. And that's something to be sad about.

And How Did That Make You Feel?

(Sleepstation image)

To the list of tips for falling asleep (turn off screens, avoid stimulating entertainment, don't exercise before bed, etc.) sleep specialists have added savoring: [bold added]

Savoring is well-studied as a strategy to improve our general well-being. A considerable body of research shows that it can boost mood and help reduce depression and anxiety. Now, psychologists believe it can help us fall asleep and have better sleep quality, and are starting to study its effectiveness.

Many of us ruminate as we’re trying to drift off. This is where savoring can help. “It gives your brain something else to focus on—something emotionally compelling and pleasurable,” says Dana McMakin, a professor of psychology at Florida International University, who studies savoring.

Savoring differs from other strategies you may use before going to sleep. When you savor, you try to re-create the positive emotional state of the experience. It’s not the same as practicing gratitude, which involves thinking about something rather than trying to feel it. And it’s different from meditating or trying to be mindful, in which the goal is to quiet your mind. Savoring aims to fill it up with positive emotion.

One has to be selective in the positive memories one dredges up: memories from childhood with people who are long gone can turn sad; moments of triumph and vindication can be exhilarating...and stimulative; and of course, recalling savoring's original gustatory meaning, reliving pleasant dining experiences can make one hungry, not sleepy.

Come to think of it (or not), to get to sleep I'll just stick with emptying my mind, not filling it with thoughts, however pleasant they may be.

It's the Content That Keeps Us Wide-Eyed

(Cleveland Clinic photo)

The blue light on our smartphone is a minor factor in keeping us awake at night. The content is a much greater disruptor.

If we come across alarming news, a scary movie or an annoying work email right before bed or in the middle of the night, the stress hormone cortisol can rise. A spike in cortisol provides an energy boost by moving glucose from a stored state in the body to an active state. “It’s like eating a candy bar,” says Jamie Zeitzer, co-director of the Stanford Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences. Coming down from that energy rush can be difficult.

Positive content can be just as disruptive because it can increase the amount of dopamine or norepinephrine in the brain, two neurotransmitters Dr. Zeitzer says can excite the thalamus—the brain’s information-relay center—and disrupt the brain-wave oscillations needed for sleep.

Turning off the phone completely is an obvious solution. The sleep-tracking app is also effective; it dims the iPhone and Apple Watch 15 minutes before the targeted bedtime.

But if you must surf in bed, dear reader, I've been told this blog is an excellent soporific...

I Went to a Political Rally and a Game Broke Out

Brianna Turner (left) - WSJ photo

Politically active athletes have given up boycotts in favor of preaching their message when they visit states whose politics they abhor: [bold added]

State boycotts have quietly faded from popularity as a tactic, say activists, including those who successfully got NCAA and NBA events yanked from North Carolina six years ago over a law requiring people to use the public-facility bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.

These days, activists have pivoted to accepting that such events will go ahead—while pressuring athletes and organizers to use the money and attention generated to support their cause. It’s a demand that could end up being even more challenging for teams and leagues.

As the abortion fight shifts to the states following last week’s Supreme Court ruling, that’s the approach that politically minded athletes are taking too.

For example, Brianna Turner, a power forward for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, said that, rather than declining to play in areas with abortion restrictions, she wants to use her presence to promote her point of view.

Blocking events “is a tactic, but I think that maybe even better would be playing in the games and wearing shirts on the sidelines that say, like, ‘pro-abortion’ or ‘abortion rights are human rights,’” she said. Other ideas, she said, included using media availability around games to only talk about the issue.

I suspect that even some abortion-rights supporters just want to enjoy a game with their kids without being forced to explain what the rape-and-incest exception means.

We've already seen what excessive wokeness does to movie box office and TV ratings. If professional sports leagues want to turn off some of their audience, it's their right, so they should go for it.

Stephen Curry is Finally Slipping

Steph Curry, the greatest shooter in NBA history, didn't perform well at the Great America basketball booth, thereby proving that these games are "rigged."

Steph just confirming these games are rigged 😂 Hit all the money balls tho 🔥 pic.twitter.com/hJBr2TaAkA

— TheWarriorsTalk (@TheWarriorsTalk) June 23, 2022

Any rumor that his performance suffered due to days of hard partying after Monday's parade is just idle speculation.

Alternatively, maybe the pressure of winning a big stuffed animal was too much for him to handle.

Twitter: It's the Entertainment

So much for investing discipline.

After averring that I would stay away from trading stocks in general because of market volatility, or that buying Twitter specifically was too risky, I bought some TWTR on Thursday at $51. (It closed at $49.80 on Friday.)

In my defense, Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter looks very likely now that he's secured $7 billion from other equity investors. In fact $51 (actually $51.28) seems like a "fair" valuation based on a $54.50 acquisition price and a 90% probability of execution. The risk of loss is much lower than it was a month ago.

The second reason is that this was hardly an "investment." TWTR is less than 0.1% of the portfolio and the purchase was more to be kept apprised of shareholder communiqués than to make a killing. It's very rare that a small fry can be an arbitrageur.

Besides, I spend more on entertainment, and frankly after more than 40 years of being in the stock market I've never seen any story that's been more entertaining.

pic.twitter.com/TW2lLQakE5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 7, 2022

Aloha and Mahalo, Mr. Harrington

(NY Post photo)

Al Harrington took his place behind the lectern. The year was 1966.

He had played football in high school and had returned as a football coach. My expectations were low; all coaches were expected to teach a course. I assumed that freshman European History was not his primary focus.

(Teaching wasn't the priority for my 8th-grade Biology teacher who was also a world-class surfer.)

I was wrong about Mr Harrington. He was fully prepared for his lectures, speaking authoritatively in a voice that seemed almost theatrically trained. He assigned homework from the text every night and got it back to us promptly, marked with bold flourishes.

But what I remember most clearly from those days was the passion with which he spoke, and how he emphasized the points that were important. His wasn't the cheap and easy kind of history teaching, where the students are inundated with dates and genealogical charts, but the one that explicated the forces behind the Renaissance and Reformation, and showed how Napoleon arose from the French Revolution.

As a senior I signed up for AP European History. It was a breeze, and so was the exam, thanks to the preparation from Mr. Harrington three years earlier

In 1972 Al Harrington's talent was recognized by the producers of the original Hawaii Five-O when he was signed to the role of Ben Kokua. His entertainment career took off, and we lost a great teacher.

He died yesterday of a stroke. RIP.

Below is Al Harrington speaking at Punahou School at the groundbreaking for a new sports facility in 1979



Below is the Star-Advertiser's obituary:

The Popcorn is Cheaper at Home

Black Widow's value is abbreviated (AP/WSJ photo)

Significant but slow-developing issues don't get the public's attention unless a celebrity is involved. Such is the case with how movie actors are compensated now that theaters appear to be dying: [bold added]

Scarlett Johansson, star of the latest Marvel movie “Black Widow,” filed a lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Disney, alleging her contract was breached when the media giant released the film on its Disney+ streaming service at the same time as its theatrical debut...

The suit could be a bellwether for the entertainment industry. Major media companies are giving priority to their streaming services in pursuit of growth, and are increasingly putting their high-value content on those platforms. Those changes have significant financial implications for actors and producers, who want to ensure that growth in streaming doesn’t come at their expense.

During its July 9 opening weekend, “Black Widow” grossed $80 million at the domestic box office and $78 million overseas, and generated another $60 million from $30 at-home purchases on Disney+. It was the first time Disney broke out a film’s streaming performance in such detail. Disney shares ticked upward on the news that Monday.

The current model--theatrical release to streaming purchases to DVD sales to premium channels to non-premium channels with ads--is being upended again with the time compression between events, or in Black Widow's case, no delay at all between the theatrical release and initial streaming.

Apparently, Ms. Johansson's contract was not up-to-date with the latest market developments, further aggravated by the lack of future Black Widow opportunities (the character is less marketable because she died in an earlier movie). The issue of actors' compensation will recede as contracts adapt.

Honolulu's Cinerama theater, where I saw It's a Mad
Mad Mad Mad World, How the West Was Won, and
2001, is now an auto parts store.

The important takeaway is this: the coronavirus only accelerated the trend towards streaming as the at-home technology became cheaper and better. Brick-and-mortar theaters have high labor and plant costs, and last year's health issues were the killer blow (the opposite of the killer app that marks the birth of an industry).

No, theaters won't completely disappear but will be more like booksellers where only one or two major chains survive.

I'll start going to the movies again, but it won't be this year.

He Left Me Laughing

1988 in Sacramento, where his career took off (WSJ)"His
on-air presence in Sacramento was a lot more comedic."

I started listening to Rush Limbaugh fairly late in his career, not so much for his political views but for the entertainment.

During the George W. Bush Administration late-night comedy, including Saturday Night Live, became tiresome, vicious, and single-note, bashing the President and his supporters at every turn. Indeed, some bits were funny, but going after Republicans and their families personally while ignoring the foibles of Democrats was a sea-change from the light-hearted, even-handed joshing of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, and the younger David Letterman.

Those were the 21st century rules of comedy, I supposed, and when different politicians took over they would become the objects of mockery. However, when the Democrats swept Washington in 2008, powerless Republicans like Trent Lott and Sarah Palin continued to be the targets of scorn. Comedians refused to pick the Democrats' low-hanging fruit, such as President Obama's verbal miscues when he was off Teleprompter and Vice-President Biden's provable history of creepy behavior.

So I turned to Rush Limbaugh. His political commentary was interspersed with comic bits that you couldn't hear anywhere else; the refusal of the entertainment and media industries to "speak truth to power" when their guys were in charge only made him more popular.

Rush Limbaugh has been recognized by supporters and detractors alike as the founding father of conservative talk-radio. He spoke insightfully about politics, but it was his skill as an entertainer that made him unique. R.I.P.

300 Million Dollar Bash

(WSJ photo)

Bob Dylan has sold his entire music catalog to Universal for more than $300 million. He's the rarest of celebrities who have been in the public eye during the lifespan of the baby boom generation. Growing up in then-remote Hawaii, even we grade-schoolers knew the words to 1962's Blowin' in the Wind.

Given its enormous impact and the prices paid for other cultural influences, the Dylan songbook seems underpriced. Perhaps there was some financial structuring involved. ("Name the price, and I'll set the terms.")

The WSJ briefly discusses some of the financial considerations: [bold added]

In selling his copyrights, Mr. Dylan creates more tax certainty and potential benefits for himself and his heirs. He likely will pay a one-time capital-gains tax of 23.8% in addition to state taxes, as opposed to paying 37% plus state tax on the annual income his catalog generates. Doing the sale now means he pays the capital-gains tax in accordance with today’s rates and rules rather than facing the potential higher rates and tighter restrictions that Democrats have proposed on both capital gains and ordinary income. For his estate, he can plan tax strategies on his remaining assets without his heirs and the government engaging in a lengthy fight over the value of the copyrighted assets after his death.

Frankly, it would be surprising to your humble blogger if this were an all-cash deal. Bob Dylan's financial representatives would not be doing their job if they didn't capture for their client some of tomorrow's upside from streaming and other technologies barely imagined. Tomorrow is a long time.

Interlude

The Hallmark Channel began running its Christmas movies a couple of weeks ago, and though many of the plots are familiar love stories where the boy and girl build snowmen, decorate trees, bake cookies and find the meaning of Christmas together, sometimes one wants to escape from a clangorous world into stories that are as comfortable as an old sweater.

Recently Hallmark has been putting more bucks into production. Stories have been filmed on location in Rome, Paris, and London. Song-and-dance productions are occurring more frequently. It's a pleasant surprise how many of the regular actors have musical training.

One actress that I had never seen before was violinist Lucia Micarelli, who stars in The Christmas Bow.

Actors and actresses can fake being singers or pianists reasonably well, but not the violin (note to producers of Sherlock Holmes movies: you can ruin an otherwise good show by having the esteemed detective try to fiddle around).

Lucia Micarelli not only plays the violin, she also shows off her vocal chops in the movie. In a clip from one of her concerts below she sings an old standard by Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne and includes a short violin interlude:



If you're going to fiddle around, do it right:

Apple One: Distractions Welcome

Because seven(!) hours a day of screentime is not enough, I signed up for Apple One on Sunday. Apple One is Apple's bundled subscription to a number of its services.

The Premier plan, which has been shared with each member of the household, costs $29.99 a month and is a bargain.

It includes Apple Music, TV, News, Arcade, 2TB iCloud storage, and a soon-to-be-released Fitness app.

I had not heretofore explored the game and music libraries, and they are a welcome distraction from the post-election scrum.

We won't know definitively about who controls the Senate until the runoff elections for two Georgia Senate seats on January 5th. As for the Presidential race, it looks like Mr. Biden will soon have the necessary 270 Electoral votes, but there seems to be evidence of vote fraud that could reverse the result.

So it looks like we'll have at least two more months of politics to obsess over, argue about, and ruin our Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but being distracted by games, music, and video entertainment will be a better use of time than the alternative.

Killer Box Office Killer

Mulan Rouge (Disney publicity photo)

Movie companies (those who want their pictures to be profitable--a necessary qualifier when producers knowingly make money-losing "message" movies) aren't pleased when stars take a position on a controversial issue. It doesn't matter which side the actors take, there will be potential viewers who find the politics so repugnant that they will stay away from the film.

The phenomenon isn't confined to Americans. Liu Yifei, star of Disney's 2020 live-action remake of Mulan, has taken the side of the police (that is, mainland China) in the Hong Kong protests.

Liu unadorned; not unadored...yet

Liu, in her own post, added in Chinese, “I also support the Hong Kong police,” and included heart and strong-arm emojis. Liu has 65 million followers on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. The original post received over 2 million likes and an outpouring of support, and Liu’s post was liked 81,000 times.

Liu Yifei, also known as Crystal Liu, was cast as Mulan in 2017 after Disney saw nearly 1,000 candidates for the role, according to the Hollywood Reporter...

Although her sentiment received an outpouring of support, Liu also quickly faced backlash from many across the world who support the protests, with the hashtag #BoycottMulan emerging on Twitter. “She could be a powerful voice for justice but instead, she supports this brutality,” one Tweet said of Liu.

If Liu Yifei's political stance gets no more publicity, there's a good chance it will be forgotten when the film is released. So Disney, stay on the good size of Donald Trump; the last thing you want is for him to tweet about Mulan, reviving the controversy and potentially killing the American audience.

Despite the cliché, not all publicity is good publicity.

New Job for a New Century

Maya coaching "Bald Soprano" actors (Chron photo)

A new job for a new century: Intimacy Choreographer. The Chronicle profiles Maya Herbsman:

Her work, staging intimate scenes in plays, “could include a simulated sex scene, a kiss, a hug between family members, nudity, a first touch between ‘Romeo and Juliet’ … whatever feels vulnerable and intimate” ....

Herbsman makes those scenes “specific, technical, repeatable and highly choreographed.” She compares her job to fight choreography, in its use of standardized practices to keep actors and everyone else in the rehearsal room safe — physically, emotionally and psychologically.

In the era of the #MeToo movement, provoked especially by bad actors in the arts and entertainment industry, the Intimacy Choreographer fills a need that didn't seem important a few years ago:

“But I find when I work with actors over the age of 40, it sort of takes on this whole new meaning, because they realize all that they’ve been putting up with for their whole career. In that moment they realize the things that they didn’t know how to say no to, they didn’t know they could say no to, they didn’t know they were allowed.”

There are lots of choreographers on LinkedIn but so far no "intimacy choreographers." That omission should change in the near future.

Two Icons and the Man Who Loved Them

The cover photo (by Richard Landers) of My Girls

All right, I admit it, I really like the cover photo on Todd Fisher's My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie.

Todd Fisher, 60, spent his life in the presence of two Hollywood icons, his mother, Debbie Reynolds, and sister, Carrie Fisher.

More than just a chronicler, Todd helped them through failed marriages, financial problems, and substance abuse:

The author turned patriarchal in his teens, when he discovered his mother being cheated out of program sales during a Broadway show and observed [Debbie's second husband Harry] Karl’s lawyers shoving her around in their divorce negotiations. Mr. Fisher’s role expanded beyond son and brother into lawyer, bouncer, doctor, stage manager, business adviser, psychiatrist, gate-keeper and pal.

Fun fact: Todd Fisher was named after his dad Eddie Fisher's best friend, Mike Todd. When Mike died in a plane crash, Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds to marry Mike Todd's widow, the A+-lister of the 1950's and 60's, Elizabeth Taylor, in 1959. So that's what my parents were talking about and why they changed the subject when we kids entered the room.

San Francisco / Oakland Comic Con

When the storm trooper asked for ID
(yes, really) the proper response is, "I am
not the droid you are looking for."

If the New York Giants can play their football games in New Jersey, then it can't be a problem for the San Francisco Comic Con to be held at the Oakland Convention Center.

A weekend pass for $80 seemed a bit much for this newbie (to conventions, not comics), so your humble blogger bought a $50 Saturday ticket and strolled around the convention floor.

Most people seemed happy to be there, with about 20% garbed in costumes---Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, and Star Wars characters were the most prevalent.

The booths consisted of comic collections--no surprise--but it was disheartening to discover that half the titles and most of the artists were unfamiliar to me. Also disheartening was the monetization of everything; one could easily blow $100 on an autograph and selfie with a C-list celebrity. Even the Oakland Convention center got into the act, charging $22 for 4 hours parking on a Saturday. (I paid $15 for all-day Saturday in SF a couple of weeks ago.)

I'm glad to have experienced Comic Con, but once is enough.

Not #MeToo But #MeAlone

Sole female Grammy winner Alessia Cara (NY Daily News)

Action: The Grammys joined other awards shows by lambasting Donald Trump.

Reaction: Grammys ratings were the lowest in a decade.

Not-as-I-do Dept.: Only One Woman Won a Major Grammy Award. The Internet Is Sounding Off With #GrammysSoMale.

Progressivism's sacred text: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

People listen to their betters. Maybe that's why they're not listening.

[Encore: check out the respect shown women--for that matter, everyone--by the award-winning rap song.]

His Pride Was Pricked

His IMDB photo drips with humility.

Justifying a Will & Grace episode that shows a bleak portrait of historical NYC, executive producer Max Mutchnick said in EW (12/8/17): [bold added]

"It's important to note no matter how much complaining that a certain part of this country is doing, the good ol' days weren't actually that good when you jump back 90 years...The world we live in now is better than it once was."

Comments:

Max, why can't people agree with both premises--the past wasn't that good and the world is better than it once was--and still disagree with you politically?

Way to go, dissing a good chunk of your customer base. I guess I wouldn't care either, if my net worth was $100 million.

We can't enjoy sports or entertainment as an escape. It's all politics, all the time.