Welcome to the Buzzmeter, a report every few days of what makes my radar.

Universal did it right by slow-screening Wicked to the right people. First, just a handful of “friendlies.” Their response was ecstatic. Then, they rolled it out to those we call the “junket whores,” we say it with love. And they, too, were ecstatic. By the time Wicked dropped on Rotten Tomatoes, somehow, 2,500 people rated as “audience members” saw it to drive the score up to 99%. Full disclosure — Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango who Universal owns. So it’s one big happy family.

The reviews came out, and they are pretty good:

There are some detractors, of course, there always are. For the most part, it appears to be the kind of thing that no one can really HATE and many people will love. You heard a lot of reviews that went something like this, “I was skeptical at first, but it won me over.”

You can read the reviews at RT. The movie is tracking well. It’s fully saturated on TikTok and that tells me it will be a good box office player, certainly better than what we’ve seen all year from Hollywood, which is borderline catastrophic (even if no one will talk about it).

Rebecca Hall now admits she regrets apologizing for saying she regrets working with Woody Allen:

Here is what she said exactly:

I struggle with this one […] It’s very unlike me to make a public statement about anything […] I kind of regret making that statement, because I don’t think it’s the responsibility of his actors to speak to that situation.

I was in a tangle. Like, in this moment, it’s the most important thing to believe the women. Yes, of course, there’s going to be complications and nuances in these stories, but we’re redressing a balance here. So I felt like I wanted to do something definitive. But it just became, ‘another person denounces Woody Allen and regrets working with him’, which is not what I said actually. I don’t regret working with him. He gave me a great job opportunity and he was kind to me.

It is not Rebecca Hall’s fault. It was how the entire ugly game was played, how reporters and journalists kept cornering actors to force them to comment on their past with Woody Allen. It was a bizarre moment to live through and I’m afraid we’re not entirely out of it. We need more people with courage and alas, we don’t have nearly enough of them. The game was always to shove a mic in someone’s face — a “confess, witch” kind of moment. If they confessed, great, everything was fine. If they pushed back they would be swarmed and attacked.

The game is ongoing. It isn’t just Woody Allen. It’s the idea that anyone might put themselves in the line of fire for bad publicity. That’s why the publicists decided in unison to mostly blacklist me from events. Where I would get invites before, I mostly don’t get them. I am, according to the Oscar world of publicity, persona non grata. I can’t tell you how surreal it feels to have started in 1999 with Gladiator winning Best Picture as a total nobody and ending in 2024 with Gladiator II back to being a total nobody. It’s all going in the book, that much I can say for sure.

But here’s the thing. Speaking the truth right now is hard. But speak the truth you must.

We need more people with courage. So bravo to Rebecca Hall for showing SOME courage now.

Speaking of courage, Justine Bateman has a nice story about her in The Free Press:

“Three days after the election, Justine Bateman, the former Family Ties star, catapulted herself into the political muck with a tweetstorm to her 140,000 followers that began: “Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.”

She continued: “Common sense was discarded, intellectual discussion was demonized. . . Complete intolerance became almost a religion and one’s professional and social life was threatened almost constantly. Those that spoke otherwise were ruined as a warning to others. Their destruction was displayed in the ‘town square’ of social media for all to see.””

Courage is the kind of thing that’s baked into my generation. But here’s the problem. People like their stuff. They like their status. They like their wealth. They like to work. So they stay quiet. They keep their heads down. They wait for the hysteria to die down. Some of us, however, must always shake the tree, no matter what.

The reason I do it, and have done it, is because I know where it goes. Just look at history. No one ever sides with the witch hunters. They don’t side with the blacklisters. They don’t side with people who have power and abuse that power by punishing people for “wrong think.” The alternative is playing in the band as the Titanic goes down.

Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy | Episode 1: A Director’s Vision

Warner Bros. has dropped the series that aired in 2021 about Clint Eastwood. Yes, every episode.

You can find all of them at their YouTube site.

A Dylan Featurette

The Older Woman, Younger Man Trend

For whatever reason, a whole new genre has burst forth of late with older women in sexual relationships with younger men. It does seem to be part of the ongoing trend in Hollywood to emasculate their content (except for Gladiator II, of course). There has seemed to be a reluctance to bring back formidable male heroes, which really has brought the business to its knees. It is what it. The Babygirl trailer is a good example:

But also the Bridget Jones trailer:

I have to figure this is the “Trump effect,” which I will spare you explaining. Or maybe it’s just the idea that they think their core audience of women is going to want to watch grown women roll around with boys. I kind of prefer the manly men in love stories but maybe that’s just me.