LA Confidential: Very hush-hush

 

★★★★—One of my favorite films from the 1990s. Saw it in the theater my freshman year of high school with a girl I was trying to get with. She was not impressed. I wouldn’t shut up about it. I knew we wouldn’t work out. 

 

Still not as good as the book as a lot of the plot gets boiled down and some things don’t make a lot of sense as a result. The whole Exley sleeping with Lynn thing is confusing, there is no mention of any child killings at all (though that is like half the book), and heroine is more or less just MacGuffin in the movie. James Ellroy has a legit beef for what the film did to his novel, but I don’t think what he wanted would have been possible for a normal length feature film. Also, calling it a “turkey of the highest order” is a lot of hyperbole. 

Ger

The Johnny Stompanato stuff is extremely lame. It feels like we are going and meeting him in a video game. “Choose your own adventure. A. Good cop. B. Bad cop. C. Lean on him.” Everyone chooses option C. Lot of tooling on world famous thug Johnny Stompanato. Bud calls him a “wop cocksucker,” which he uncharacteristically lets slide. Exley calls his girlfriend, Lana Turner, the movie star, a whore. This also doesn’t get him killed, though Turner throws a drink in his face. 

Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, and Guy Pearce are all excellent and memorable. At the time, I was most impressed with Crowe, but now I’d unfortunately call Spacey the best of the bunch, but he’s an asshole. Supporting cast is great, too, especially James Cromwell, one of my favorite vegans. David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin, Graham Beckel (who always plays a cop), all good. Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger, they are okay. Basinger is hella fine though. 

Has an authentic 1950s vibe I am a total sucker for. This led to many noir flicks for me in the late 90s. It holds its own with the best of them, weaving together crime, corruption, and Hollywood glamour. 

Though I don’t think it is a truly great film—too confusing, not focused enough—it is one of my favorites, and one I’ve watched many, many times. Hell, the DVD was the first thing I ever bought on Amazon, this also being my first DVD… 

 

Something funny, once I fell asleep watching it. The home screen is DeVito saying “Off the record. On the QT. And very Hush-Hush.” I had a friend staying with me and he couldn’t figure out how to turn off the DVD player. He now hates this movie. 

The French Connection - William Friedkin - 1971

★★-Love a grimy, New York in the 70s movie, but I found this one to be astronomically overrated. At some point I realized I saw this when I was around 10 years old. Didn't blow me away then, either. Even back then, neo-noir like this was kind of my jam. Didn't appreciate it anymore this time around. Actually less. 

Stars Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as the detectives trying to get drugs off the street. These are two of the most normal looking movie stars of all time. They look like friends of mine's dads. 

Gist is NYPD detectives Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Buddy "Cloudy" Russo pursue the elusive French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier, played by Fernando Rey whom I only recognize from Luis Buñuel's film Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Known as one of the great car chase movies with Hackman chasing a train. It's pretty good, but I feel it's more of a chasing people on foot and then shooting them when they run movie. Anyway, Hackman gives a guy on the street ye old “Police emergency! I need your car.” “How am I going to get it back?” This guy is not going to be happy when he sees the damage after they tow his car to the impound lot for being illegally parked. Probably . Oh, I looked it up. Apparently this cop commandeering a civilian's car in an emergency is legit. This could happen to you. 

Directed by William Friedkin. He did two other films I love, The Exorcist and To Live and Die in L.A. Dig Blue Chips as well. Heavily influenced several movies I hold extremely near and dear, notably Se7en and Munich, two of my all-time faves. David Fincher said that it “had a profound impact” on his life and was why Brad Pitt chose to star in the film. 

Nominated for eight Academy Awards. Won five, for Best Picture, Best Actor (Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, made the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list, sitting at No. 93 on the 10^th Anniversary Edition. 

I don't really get all the hype. It's perfectly fine, but not the earth-shattering film I've been led to believe. It ends on some real bullshit, too. Basically one long flick glorifying reckless police work which comes to a whole lot of nothing. Was that supposed to be the point?

In the Heat of the Night - Norman Jewison - 1967

★★★★★-First ever viewing of this profoundly outstanding film. Skilled direction and compelling performances. Deserves its stop on the AFI Top 100. 

Set in a racially tense small town where a black detective, Virgil Tibbs, from Philadelphia helps solve a murder. That's the gist, but it's deeper than that, going into racial inequity in the deep South while telling a compelling story and not getting preachy. It refrains from contrived inspirational moments, thank fuck, and instead presents complex, flawed characters. Truly masterful filmmaking. 

Stars the Sidney Poitier as the black detective opposite Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront) as the racist sheriff. Commanding performances from both of them indeed. I got more impressed with Poitier as the movie went along. He drips poise and dignity. Sort of hard to believe he didn't even get nominated for an Academy Award for this performance. Feels like a glaring omission that he wasn't for a timely film about Southern racism. Though Steiger's performance also really blew me away as well and he definitely earned his Oscar. 

Others you might recognize include Lee Grant (Damien: Omen II, Mulholland Drive) who is a real beauty who holds her own, Warren Oats (Badlands, Stripes, The Wild Bunch), and a young Scott Wilson (he was Herschel in The Walking Dead,one of the killers in In Cold Blood, and had a small but memorable part in one of my favorite horror comedies of all-time in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon).

As much as any movie I can think of, the setting is also a character in the film. Feels like an authentic, hot and grimy small Southern town. Every scene is vivid, gritty, and real. 

The racist stuff can be pretty hard to watch. People in this town just lose their minds seeing a black guy. Pretty disturbing that this is how it was and probably still is in some parts. Multiple attempts are made on Virgil's life. The most powerful scene, for me, was when he goes with the sheriff to question the richest guy in town. Out front there is a racist statue and he employees black people in menial jobs that he obviously doesn't think highly of. He tells Virgil, while in his greenhouse, “Of all the orchids in this place, you should prefer the epiphytics. I wonder if you know why.”

“Maybe it would be helpful if you'd tell me,” Virgil says.

“Because, like the Negro, they need care and feedin' and cultivatin'.”

Uh, yeah, thanks for that insight, bra.

When Virgil questions him about the murder, the guy slaps him. Virgil, without missing a beat, slaps him back. Incredulous, the guy asks the sheriff what he is going to do about it. When it's clear he isn't going to do anything, he says he could have had him shot for that not long ago before crying like a punk. We then get one of the many attempts on Virgil's life, this seemingly unconnected to the slap. 

So, yeah, great film. All this said, however, the end was sort of a letdown. Builds and builds and then it's over. Also, for a hot shot detective, Virgil's police work and theories seem pretty suspect. Still though. Best movie about the South I can think of. Available on the Criterion Channel.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the greatest movie of all time

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I know what gold does to men's souls... Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges! John Huston movie from 1948. Amazing film. Winner of three Academy Awards. One for the father of Huston, Walter, for Best Supporting. Two for John, one for Best Director and one for Best Adapted Screenplay. When daughter Anjelica Huston won for Best Supporting in 1985 for Prizzi's Honor, haven't seen it and looks terrible, they became the first three generation family to win Academy Awards. The Coppollas have since done this as well. Filmed on location just because Huston was an adventurer and wanted to go to Mexico. Also get away from the studio. Humphrey Bogart is completely fucking deranged in this extremely dark flick. Huston's old man, Walter, becomes what we collectively think of when we think olde timey prospector. A first time watch, this instantly became one of my favorite films. Been on a John Huston kick since watching the documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead about the until recently unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind by one Orson Welles. Huston is like the Dos XX guy except not irritating and real. His look and his voice. Cool shit. Fathered the lovely Angelica Huston, hands down my female companion's favorite. Also, you may have heard, he's a pretty solid filmmaker. This film is considered one of his best though this is one of four he directed with a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes (along with Fat City, The Maltese Falcon, and The Misfits).

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Remade but never duplicated, this darkly humorous morality tale represents John Huston at his finest.

Gist of the movie is two dirt poor Americans living in Mexico, Bob Curtin played by Tim Holt and wild man Fred C. Dobbs played by Humphrey Bogart, desperate for money, decide to join a old prospector, Howard who is played by the director's father, Walter Huston, in the Sierra Madre Mountains to mine for gold. The three make a fortune but bandits and greed brings it all crashing down.

While Huston the elder won the Academy Award for Best Supporting, it is Bogie's deranged performance that is most memorable. First off, dude looks like complete shit. It is rumored that he was taking fertility drugs, he and wife Lauren Bacall were trying to conceive, but that may or may not be bullshit. What is known is that he showed up bald and aged which doctors blamed on heavy drinking and a vitamin B deficiency. Huston rolled with it though as it just made the character that much crazier. He goes from being a shortsighted bum asking an American, played by the director, multiple times for money for food, never bothering to look the guy in the eye, to a completely uncontrollable Gollum type figure, completely obsessing over his newfound wealth.

I mean, at first he was a guy who couldn't pick the guy giving him handouts out of a lineup, begrudged the guy keeping him alive rather than being thankful. Then he and partner Bob get a gig that involves a lot of work from an American contractor with a huge payday at the end which never comes. The guy completely suckers them. Next thing you know, they run into the guy at a bar where he tries to sucker them again. An extremely clumsy and realistic fight breaks out when the labor boss knows he's fucked and goes on the offensive, attacking them with a bottle. They eventually kick the shit out of the guy with Bogart's character reaching into the guy's wallet and taking only the money they were owed. Later in the movie, after they have found enough gold to support the men for a lifetime, not long after buddy Bob saves Dobbs's life when he gets trapped in a mine, the unhinged Bogart character comes completely undone, obsessively fixed on Bob and Howard cutting him out and taking his share for themselves. Late in the movie, when Howard is living it up in a Mexican village after saving a child's life, it is just Dobbs and Curtin making their way to town. But Dobbs is already gone by that point, his mind clawed out, he tells Curtin, whom he has attacked and has him at gunpoint, that once he falls asleep, he is going to kill him. The wild look in his eye after staying up for days is fucking chilling. You sure as shit don't want him in your party, you outlasting him in an endurance contest for your life. Yeah, he totally wins the movie.

A young Robert Blake, passing as Mexican

All of that stuff with the three guys finding all that gold and it destroying at least one of them and them ending up with nothing in the end reminds me of "The Pardoner's Tale" from the Canterbury Tales, my favorite among them. In that three men search for Death whereupon they encounter an old man who says he saw Death behind a tree. When they go to that tree they find gold and guard it overnight. At first all is good but when they draw straws, sending the youngest one to town for food and wine, the two left behind plot to kill him, which they do. But they soon discover that the younger man has poisoned their provisions and die a painful, grueling death. The difference between this tale and the movie, however, is that only Dobbs had murder on his mind. The other two, though they lose everything, literally laugh it off in the end at the absurdity of the situation.

Huston, looking fly

This is also one of those films with lots of great stories coming out of the production. Like how John Huston adopted an orphan child. Or how Italian American Our Gang child star Robert Blake, who would later go on to star in such films as In Cold Blood/play a minor but pivotal part in Lost Highway and eventually murder his future wife, played the little Mexican boy selling lottery numbers, which Bogart's character wins. But the weirdest of this has to be the story of one Hal Croves's presence on set and the theory surrounding his identity.

The gist of this is that the author of the novel that the movie is based on, B. Traven, was extremely reclusive with all the details about him, including his name or real identity, subject to dispute. As I read about this guy, I became certain that this is who Roberto Bolaño based his novelist character Benno von Archimboldi in the book 2666, one of my three favorite books of all-time. (A quick Google search showed I wasn't alone in this theory). Anyway, the author was supposed to show up on set and work as a technical advisor for $1000 a week but instead a guy claiming the name Hal Croves, said to be a close friend of the author, showed up in his stead. Pretty much everyone was like, uh, this is obviously Traven, though he denied it, but Huston didn't want to make a big deal about it. He was getting a knowledgeable adviser and translator for $150 a week instead of a grand and respected the guy's privacy. He later even wrote in his autobiography that he ultimately didn't think they were the same person because of the way he spoke and acted IRL was so different than their correspondence via letters and such. Huston further explained that a lot of this theorizing was the result of people on set asking Croves if he was Traven and him denying it in this bullshitty way that made people think he was indeed full of shit. However, Huston's wife at the time, actress Evelyn Keyes, who was apparently cool with Huston's impromptu adoption of a Mexican child, by the by, was sure they were the goddamn person. According to her, Croves said "I" instead of "he" and basically sounded exactly like the guy in the letters he had written to Huston. Fascinating shit you can read about along with who Traven may or may not have really been in "The Mystery of B. Traven," a nice piece of journalism, at Vice.

L.A. Confidential is the greatest movie of all time

L.A. Confidential. Love a period neo-noir flick. This one is one of the best. Up there with Chinatown and The Big Lebowski. Watch this shit once a year(ish). That Kim Basinger is quite a looker. She is a classical beauty, this film well establishes. The soundtrack is killer. LA in the 1950s looks like the shit, even with the crime. Everything about this movie is fucking sick. A perfect goddamned movie.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Taut pacing, brilliantly dense writing and Oscar-worthy acting combine to produce a smart, popcorn-friendly thrill ride.

Oh, cops. They all, like 90% of them, fucking suck. This movie, and like 400 others I've seen, and the news media and my personal experience (luckily I've got white male magic going for me) and anecdotal experience have led me to this position. This movie sure as shit hammers it home. In the end, they are all corrupt. Even the incorruptible. Isn't that right ole buddy boy? It is.

This movie is also one of the best examples of historical fiction that I can think of. Ellroy sort of went off the rails with The Black Dahlia from 2006 but then one was spot on. Atmospheric. Cool. Would have won a shit ton of Academy Awards but was up against Titanic in 1997 and that won nearly everything. Near. Far. And so forth. Though Basinger won Best Actress and somebody won a writing award.

Following three very different police offers in the unpopular straight shooter Ed Exley played by Guy Pearce, cool guy Jack Vincennes played by rapist Kevin Spacey, and thug Bud White played by Russell Crowe who reluctantly sort of join up to investigate a murder within the historically corrupt-ass LAPD. This made all of these guys stars though Spacey was well knownish for The Usual Suspects. Crowe easily wins the movie. He became an A-lister after this performance. But don't sleep on Pearce or Spacey. They are both great as well. Also get solid performances out of James Cromwell who is the Daryl Gates prototype and the spitting image of my grandpa and Danny DeVito who is the spitting image of my female companion's dad.

Bunch of Hollywood in the 1950s stuff in here which is cool. Basinger's character, Lynn Bracken, is a Veronica Lake, the star of Sullivan's Travels, which keeps coming up, lookalike call-girl. The plot revolves around this prostitution ring of girls that look like celebs. This leads Exley to mistake the real Lana Turner for one made to look like her because of the company she keeps, a real-life thug named Johnny Stompanato. Some interesting Hollywood crime shit going on here. This asshole Stompanato was a bad dude. He beat Turner, escalating to the point where her daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed the gangster to death in 1958. Yeah, piece of shit. The type of guy that Bud White hates and at one ridiculous point in the film, White grabs Stompanato by the balls, literally, which was one of the dumbest, most unbelievable things in the film. He basically makes Stompanato his bitch. No way this dude gets away with that shit. Cop or not. 

Rebecca (1940) is the greatest film of all time

Rebecca. Hitchcock's first American film. David O. Selznick produced. Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine stared. Gothic thriller. 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. No way this isn't great. And it is. Academy Award for Best Picture. It is the greatest movie of all time, after all.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: Hitchcock's first American film (and his only Best Picture winner), Rebecca is a masterpiece of haunting atmosphere, Gothic thrills, and gripping suspense.

What I thought I knew about the plot walking into this movie was from spoofs like an old episode of Mama's Family, "I Do, I Don't", where Thelma, Mama, dates an old rich dude and has spooky dreams where he tried to turn her into his dead wife, Rebecca. Because of this, I was thinking it was more of a prototype for Vertigo. However, no. As it turns out, Olivier's character, rich dude Maxim de Winter, fucking hated his wife and sort of kills her and definitely disposes of her body like he killed her. It's pretty fucked but his performance is so over-the-top that it is kinda funny. Like when Fontaine's character the Second Mrs de Winter is convinced by de Winter's in-fucking-sane housekeeper and homey of Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers who was masterfully played by Judith Anderson who does unhinged hella well, to dress up as this dead relative from a painting on the wall at this costume ball they are hosting. She should have known something was up when all of his friends who see her are like, "what in the actual fuck?" and so forth. But she is like, "eh, I'll roll with it," and de Winter sees her and loses his fucking mind. She thinks, "oh, shit, I remind him too much of what he lost," and Danvers is like, "yeah... you should kill yourself," which she almost does.

"Psst. I don't give a fuck."

But then de Winter surprises her with the old, "actually, I sort of almost killed her when she told me she was pregnant with this asshole I hate's baby and I sank her boat to make it look like suicide," bit. She takes that surprisingly well, we'll go with, and helps him cover up the crime until his dead wife's dude, Jack Favell, comes out of the woodwork to blackmail de Winter, saying that he will tell the po-lice that she wasn't suicidal and that he was dicking her real good and shit, I guess. But all is avoided when they do an autopsy on the dead wife and see that she was dying of cancer and she just wanted to ruine de Winter because she was cray.

Ah, all is good. The end. JK. When they go back, Danvers has completely lost her fucking mind and burns down the mansion, Manderley, screaming like a mad woman and ultimately dying in the blaze.

Little tidbit about Fontaine. She was the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland of Gone with the Wind (she was Melanie Hamilton) fame. Good stock, those girls. Fontaine lived to be 96 and de Havilland just turned 103! She was an adult in Gone with the Wind! That is crazy pants.

This movie was for real great. Of the bitch be crazy genre, this one is pretty near the top. Maybe around the 10th Hitchcock movie I've seen, while probably not my favorite or what would be the apex of his career, this is a top five, conservatively, from a critical perspective. Hell of a Hollywood debut. Got him nominated for Best Director and the film won Best Picture, the only Hitchcock movie to win that award, which is shocking.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is the greatest movie of all time

Continuing with the Academy Awards movies, talking about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I saw a few weeks back. One of those Oscar movies. Was up for a bunch of awards. Won the Golden Globe for Best Picture. Not that Oscar though. It was pretty alright though I feel it became cool to hate on it. Probably not the most zeitgeisty movie of 2018 and was likely to ruin everyone's careers if it won all those awards, like Crash did for whatever reason, but it is by no means a shit movie like I'm suddenly hearing. Part of it is was this a comedy? A drama? A comerama or what have you? Directed by one Martin McDonagh who did In Bruges and Seven Psychopatchs. Also movies of that is this like a joke variety. This guy.

This one is all about a mother, Frances McDormand, who puts up these three confrontational signs in her yard, maybe, calling out the local sheriff, played by Woody Harrelson (who is dying of cancer) for sort of not doing enough in her mind to catch her daughter's rapist/murderer who set her on fire. Also features Sam Rockwell who is a dick bag police who ends up being on good terms with everyone in the ends (but is still a dick bag). Mixed in with a bunch of dark as shit humor. Just having fun with it, I guess.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri deftly balances black comedy against searing drama -- and draws unforgettable performances from its veteran cast along the way.

Pros: Impressive ensemble cast. I'd watch a McDormand, Harrelson, and Rockwell. It was a good story (despite not being very taut) based on an interesting premise. Despite being way over the top, it felt pretty real.

Cons: All over the place. How they fit all this in one movie is crazy pants. Redeemed Rockwell's character too much for my taste. Sort of gives vigilante justice a pass.

This weirdo

The cast carries this McDormand does the McDormand thing that she does in all those Coen bros movies she is in. A brooding, stern, character of few words, and sort of funny performance. Like Fargo or The Man Who Wasn't There. Same shit if you like that. Woody and Rockwell too play characters that were probably written with them in mind and great. Rockwell's mom, who is also Mac's mom in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Grandma in Napoleon Dynamite, is the only person in the world that you would want if your movie calls for a hideous chain-smoking bumpkin of an aging single mother. She has that shit locked down. The dude that played Red though, one Caleb Landry Jones, who was that creepy brother in Get Out and that creepy brother in The Last Exorcism and was the creepy boyfriend in Twin Peaks, that dude was probably the breakout star here. You also get some Dinklage action as well as John Hawkes and Clarke Peters character actor goodness.

Again, the movie was pretty good but there was some shit. Not trying to give too much of it away here but you don't really empathize with McDormand's character in the end because of shit she does. Rockwell's Dixon is a fucking piece except towards the end when he does one thing that is okay. Then he is a piece again, kind of/sort of. And the end is irritatingly vague in that dumb you have to draw your own conclusions way which in this case was unnecessary. But, yeah, if you want to see some top-notch (perhaps over) acting, then this is a movie to check out. Especially keep an eye on Woody who is like his generation's most underrated thespian. Plus he is super cool. Gotta love a pothead vegan. 

I, Tonya is the greatest movie of all time

Academy Awards are tonight. And the Oscar goes to... Damn. That Margot Robbie is really something. Really, really, really something. I have seen her in three movies. In all of them (Wolf of Wall Street, Suicide Squad, and I, Tonya) she was phenomenal. This was her best though. She is the new Meryl Streep, this one, and this solidified it, for me anyhow. On her performance alone this would have been of the greatest movie of all time variety, but seriously, so much more that fucking rocked. Kenyon grad Allison Janney was fucking great. As was the guy who played douchebag Jeff Gillooly. It was nice reliving this little chunk of insanity through this medium and fucking believe the world is a better goddamned place because of this movie. Though it does give Tonya too much benefit of doubt. Like her mom would say, “fuck her.” Also, Nancy still seems like a bitch, which will never not be unfortunate (a lot of negatives there, I mean it always be shitty) since she was the victim and all.

Alison Janney. Known for playing great mothers.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Led by strong work from Margot Robbie and Alison Janney, I, Tonya finds the humor in its real-life story without losing sight of its more tragic -- and emotionally resonant -- elements.

Pros: Margot Robbie. OMG is she good. Ditto Allison Janney. Pretty much a flawlessly acted film. The way the iceskating is shot is super cool and impress. You are on the ice with her basically and Robbie looks like an Olympic figure skater (for the most part). Pretty funny considering it's about a real life shit show.

Could you imagine if this chick played you in a biopic?

Cons: Sort of amounts to a Tonya Harding apology (in the classical sense) film. Nobody is really on board with that. Music is a little much and too on the nose (do we really need to hear “Devil Woman” when Tonya's mom is being terrible?).

Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the activity is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband's people do the thing. You know the story. This is absolutely the Tonya version, hence I, Tonya, which has some basis in fact but is super kind when it comes to its subject matter. So if you fucking hate Tonya, which I imagine we all still do, keep that in mind.

She had me at "suck my dick"

This is not the movie for you if you are squeemish when it comes to domestic violence. It is brutal and fucking sucks. We start out seeing little Tonya acting exactly like you'd expect, her mom (played by Janney) drinking like a chimney, chain-smoking, so forth, is super abusive. Doesn't like it when Tonya doesn't land tricks like many a Olympic parent, I'm sure. Beats her for all kinds of stuff. Then she meets Jeff played by the guy who is Bucky in the MCU movies and was the asshole 80s guy in Hot Tub Time Machine. He beats her for the rest of the movie and even almost shoots her once. He is fucking terrible. They all are. But it's great.

Probably the thing I was most impressed with aside from the performances, again, fucking sick, was how they shot the skating. Not only does it seem that Robbie is an Olympic level skater (which she obviously is not) through effects and what have you but you end up on the ice with her as she rushes through her routines. It's a pretty dope effect. 

Favorite scene though was when she got screwed at an event early in her career and the judge told her it was because she looked like a bull-dyke and Tonya told her to "suck my dick." Classic and classy. My kind of gall, that one. 

Overall, it was pretty cool to go back in time and relive all that shit with an insider's perspective. Up to that point it was some of the craziest shit ever. I mean it is still nuts. Reality train wrecks were already carving their way through the zeitgeist in the early 1990s (before Tonya there was Buttafuoco, John Wayne Bobbitt, the kid getting caned in Singapore, Lyle and Erik, the Gulf War, so forth)   but at the time it seemed like that really escalated it. Then, like we see at the end of the flick, OJ came along, did his thing, and now fucking Trump is the goddamned President. But yeah. Dope movie.