Not Sport, Executive Art

I looked forward to the June 27 debate all month. As soon as I heard about it, I hoped for something good. I wanted a good news day. Oh my god. I got an hour of sleep on Thursday night. Friday afternoon I took some old Compazine prescribed in November/December 2019 for what was probably the original coronavirus or at least COVID-18 or -17 or whatever but the stuff is for nausea and severe stomach cramps. And schizophrenia. I went to go look at a location for a film shoot and I was woozy, unstable and slurring my words after six years without a drop of alcohol. Never was a drinker, but this reminded me of when I would grab a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and chug it to the wide eyed gapes of my friends.

And I haven’t done LSD since then, or probably ever—whatever was in those tabs was not LSD-25. The rest was what it was, but there were a few debates that year, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney; October 2012, I was at Ram’s Head Live in Downtown Baltimore in the balcony at a Godspeed You! Black Emperor show, scrolling Twitter for scraps from the Presidential debate I was missing. GY!BE were inert in that environment (if you haven’t been, Ram’s Head is a bit like if Rainforest Cafe were a 1000+ capacity venue), but I’d never seen them live, I had to go, even though I didn’t care anymore, I wanted to get stoned and watch MSNBC.

Bizarre.

Now no more news until/if Biden drops out. Nothing new in movie theaters. (Nothing else matters). Dual WGA-SAG strikes last year leave us with yet another compromised year of American films, nothing to see in the summer after people were gradually acclimated to moviegoing again. The conditioning was not complete when Barbie and Oppenheimer premiered nearly a year ago to crowds and grosses that haven’t been seen in a decade. But that was it—there was nothing else that big that summer either and the same thin crowds would continue to support a cinema that may be on its way out.

Kinds of Kindness opened this weekend, a new Yorgos Lanthimos film just six months after his award-winning Poor Things. Emma Stone, our surprise! Best Actress, stars in an ensemble featuring Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Hunter Schafer, Joe Alwyn, and Mamoudou Athie. Three separate stories, mostly the same actors, told consecutively, all titled “R.M.F. IS” fill in the blank. Anamorphic widescreen. A projector that should’ve been brighter.

But that’s just not possible now.

BUT—there were people there. Lots of them, on a balmy Saturday night. Night and day from the Poor Things screening at the same place at the same time six months ago. I’m glad Lanthimos had this one in the can and ready to go for the dry summer, and while I’m still thinking about it, I’m not sure there’s that much to think about. Lanthimos is at his best when he’s being funny, playing dialogue games. “Where are we gonna fuck, on the table?” The second story is the best. But he’s a mile wide and an inch deep, a relatively nice looking movie with a great cast that doesn’t drag at 164 minutes—but I heard a couple couples mutter on the way out, verbatim, “What just happened…?”

I didn’t feel that way, and I’ll write more about the movie later. Kinds of Kindness was some good-good news, cinema as soma, and the debate, bad acid—but oh boy, what a high.

—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith