My mother never saw THE IRISHMAN. Somehow this seems important. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have, it was right there on Netflix. And she had already seen numerous Martin Scorsese films over the decades which, of course, is what you did in New York. She’s the one who took me to see AFTER HOURS, my very first Scorsese in a theater. This is a memory that matters. Years later we saw GANGS OF NEW YORK at the Chinese during one of her holiday visits out to L.A. and of course she also loved GOODFELLAS as everyone did even if as time went on she only remembered the funny stuff, but that’s normal. She even expressed interest when the film was released in late 2019 but her health at the time made me think that she might not want to be reminded of certain things, since so much of the film is about The End and being close to it, and I didn’t try pushing it on her. So when she passed late on Thanksgiving night, 2022 as far as I know she had still never seen THE IRISHMAN. It doesn’t really matter. If a film means something to you, it might be for your own reasons more than anything that’s actually in the film so whatever the reasons might be THE IRISHMAN has grown to mean a lot to me over the past few years. It makes me think about events in my own life from long ago and what they really meant, it makes me wonder about a future I still have to find my way into and hopefully somehow will. It’s a film about the past leading to a future that is a long, slow, inevitable end which the main character refuses to acknowledge, even after he’s done so much that he can never atone for. Can any of us move past what we’ve done? Can any of us move past whatever our parents were, what they were to us? I suppose we have to, since the alternative isn’t worth facing. THE IRISHMAN is not about my mother, this is obvious. But maybe certain feelings get mixed in there, maybe also some feelings about my father who incidentally may have preferred CASINO to GOODFELLAS, along with other things I don’t want to think about. At the very least, it’s a film about things that happened which we maybe don’t want to remember as well as something we’re all going to face eventually, however long it takes. THE IRISHMAN is also about America, just as many Martin Scorsese pictures are. The mid-70s horror of TAXI DRIVER, the stylized post-war of NEW YORK, NEW YORK, the media future of THE KING OF COMEDY, the financial orgy of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET and this is just for starters. THE IRISHMAN is easily the most sprawling of them, taking us from a version of America that used to exist back in the twentieth century, when the adults were seemingly in charge and we thought they knew what was best. It was an America of unions and storefronts and music by Jackie Gleason and glossy hotel ballrooms and a glorious future that seemed to go as far as the eye could see. This is a country that once had Howard Johnson’s, after all. We used to have Roger Mudd on TV every night. Through all this it’s asking how the events of the twentieth century created people and how did they in turn go on to shape the rest of it, whether anyone knew or not. This glorious world of mid-century America is basically the same as the world of crime it depicts so if one dies then the other dies, I suppose, or it all just turns into the present we’re living in right now. To bring up another film starring the same two leads, if THE GODFATHER PART II is about the dual journey of a parent and child through twentieth-century America showing what all that leads to, then THE IRISHMAN feels like it’s more interested in peering silently backward at the lives our parents once lead, the world they were a part of, the damage it all caused when they thought things were so much better and where they live now in our minds, like it or not. For whatever reason THE IRISHMAN is also only partly THE IRISHMAN since it also goes by I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES, the name of the book by Charles Brandt it’s based on which is how the movie defiantly begins; both titles appear in the end credits. Maybe they could have come up with something better but, of course, Robert De Niro had already starred in a film called ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Whatever the name, it’s the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), talking to no one, talking to us, about working as a truck driver long ago and his chance encounter with mobster Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) which led to a life as a hitman for the mob aka ‘painting houses’. This new path took him up the ladder to the top of where unions and organized crime merged, becoming a close friend and advisor to none other than famed labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and what Frank’s involvement with trying to mediate some sort of peace between the two sides eventually led to. There’s something about the special feeling of sitting in a theater waiting to see the new Martin Scorsese film. That feeling of anticipation which grows undeniably stronger each time leading to this point where we have to be honest and admit we can no longer be sure just how many more times this is going to happen. Then from this comes the initial discovery on first viewing of what each film really is beyond any expectations, beginning from that first rush of pure exhilarating cinema before deepening into whatever it really is and how we can accept that. It’s a feeling which keeps so many of them rewatchable as we return to get that contact high followed by the cold water of reality right before the credits roll. Not even five years since its release, THE IRISHMAN has already become one of those for me even if it does that without ever achieving the rush of exhilaration we might have expected, cinematic or otherwise. It’s not that kind of film and doesn’t want to be, instead showing in minute detail the steady pace of becoming part of this life in a way that feels addictively meditative, allowing me to continually focus on what happens from one moment to the next. I’ve already lost count of how many viewings there have been for me so far, from the one time I got to see it in a theater all the way through the comfort viewings circa Covid lockdown and then continuing past my mother’s death which brought an undeniable extra layer to it all. The reflection brought out in it feels like this is meant to be the ultimate statement on the guys the director has been making movies about for decades by now, starring people whose very presence adds immeasurably to how much this means. It’s a film that shows reaching the top of the mountain, a mountain the guys in MEAN STREETS never had a shot of climbing, but that film is part of a scrappier, younger man’s aesthetic, not fully aware of the gravity of it all just yet. This film feels like it’s meant to be the summation, the final word, a film about the end even if we already know it isn’t really that for the director. Ahead of release much of what anyone knew about it was the gangster movie aspect and the de-aging digital effects that some people spend too much time harping on. Now it’s five years later and some of those things matter, some of them really don’t at all anymore. Frank Sheeran’s life is long and the film is long. Maybe it doesn’t have to be as long as it is but nothing has to be anything and there is so much pleasure in each of the side trips taken by the film, each new viewing revealing another detail which makes it that much richer. What stood out to me recently were all the silences as someone, often De Niro, keeps glaring silently, beats where the film held on shots as if wanting us to remember these places where things happen, forcing us to remember such moments as everything changes. If the film wasn’t so long those moments wouldn’t matter as much, the way time proceeds forward until we can barely tell anymore how far it’s gone. The narrative as laid out in the screenplay by Steven Zaillian is careful and methodical, with a beautiful clarity to the dual framing device that breaks things down, the map of the trip being taken and the way Frank Sheeran’s own life becomes mapped out, each leading to the exact same destination. Like the drive, the film doesn’t need to rush. The seemingly unimportant stops are there for a reason so the metronome pacing carefully laid out by Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker brings a focus to every single moment that keeps it going, a ticking in Frank’s head he ignores but it’s always there. It begins to feel like a movie about the feeling that comes within those cuts, pacing that allows each moment to get deep inside us as it just keeps going and going. CASINO and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET are both a shade under three hours which seems contractually deliberate i.e. “don’t go one second over a 180 minute runtime” while THE IRISHMAN gets even more breathing room at three-and-a-half, more time to focus on all the wrong choices being made and all the silent realizations that come when it’s too late, although you can cut that down by about ten minutes if you don’t want to count the credits. And through all that is the Robbie Robertson theme with the low notes of that cello which cut down into the soul, pressing on and on. The widescreen approach that Scorsese has largely used over the past few decades is here eschewed in favor of something more visually hemmed in, focused more on the simple act of people dealing with each other up close with so much going on around them, whether because this was made for Netflix or a byproduct of the complicated effects work (incidentally, the only other film of his in recent years not in some form of widescreen was HUGO) is unclear but there is what feels like the gleaming, perfect look often found at the streaming site which is still evident on the Criterion Blu-ray. Either way, the look brought to it by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (now best known for shooting both BARBIE and KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON which came out a few months apart from each other) is impeccable and he brings such emotional life to each of those closeups. Those shots are an integral part of the visual effects concept to the whole film and even after multiple viewings it still works better at certain points more than others with the overall smoothing out nature of the appearances almost always unavoidable. Even if it’s a miracle of technology it’s maybe a flawed miracle and whether it’s one that serves any real purpose here or in any other film is still open to debate. But the very existence of the effects becomes so much a part of the very subtext of the film anyway that how perfect they might be only seems to matter up to a certain point. Besides, these are men who were always old to begin with so it wouldn’t work as well with younger guys in the roles anyway, no matter what age they were playing, so the way that genuine advanced age is always felt makes total sense and with each revisit any nitpicking over it all seems to matter less and less. “I met what was gonna turn out to be the rest of my life,” Frank tells us after being formally introduced to Russell Bufalino which serves as this film’s version of Henry Hill recalling “It was when I met the world,” about the first moment Jimmy Conway entered his life in GOODFELLAS. For Henry it really does feel like the start of something but for Frank, even at the beginning, it’s like it was already over for him with everything decided thanks to the war that essentially created him, the ‘good war’, which gave him the ‘whatever happens, happens’ philosophy he chose to live his life by. To break the narrative up into pieces it’s Frank’s arrival into this world, his ascension and the falling to Earth after the death at his own hands of the most important person he’ll ever meet. It’s framed by the journey to this event which is doubly framed by him looking back at all this as he tells his story, maybe to us, maybe to no one at all, simply trying to convince himself that it all had some sort of purpose. He somehow becomes a close confidant of Hoffa almost unnervingly fast and they become like an old married couple in their pajamas almost instantly, which pleasingly gives us a De Niro/Pacino friendship we’ve really never had onscreen before (let’s forget about RIGHTEOUS KILL), just as everything that happens in Frank’s ascension from mere truck driver almost seems a little too good to be true to have really taken place, no matter how willing he was to ‘paint houses’ but even that portrayal of the American dream feels like part of the dark humor which is there and has to be there, as undeniable a part of that world, just as it’s an undeniable part of a Martin Scorsese film, as it is. People used to seem older. Or maybe I was just younger. Either way, they were adults then and it makes sense that everyone in this film always seems older than the age they likely really are. In Frank’s mind, he always was old so when Bufalino calls him ‘kid’ the first time they meet it seems a little crazy, digital de-aging technology or not. The chronology of the film could be looked up to break it all down to exact dates and as much as it may be common knowledge when certain events took place, it still all feels like it takes place in a general sort of past. Scorsese likely remembers dates by when certain films came out anyway so when a key arrest is made Don Siegel’s THE SHOOTIST is playing across the street, because of course it is and it feels like the end of the road that began all the way back when Harvey Keitel went to see RIO BRAVO in Scorsese’s first feature WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR. This matters too, the feeling that we’re traveling through the past of various Scorsese films we’ve already lived over and over making references to both American history and his own cinematic history, whether the Copacabana or Don Rickles, trying to remember what happened in Columbus Circle whether in films or reality, plus one historical point that even briefly involves David Ferrie, previously played by Joe Pesci in Olver Stone’s JFK. Brushing up against another film, brushing up against some form of actual history. Even the details involving the Joe Gallo hit manage to cross over with the recent making-of-THE GODFATHER miniseries THE OFFER (sort of enjoyable in a Chinese takeout way but not much more than that, RIP Al Ruddy) and without getting into what’s true or not I’m more open to believing the version this film presents than the idea that Joe Gallo being killed allowed Francis Ford Coppola to film on location in Sicily. Even the use of scores from older films, such as a lyrical track from THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA under one sequence, are a key part of this approach and it’s something Scorsese has done before, most notably the way CASINO utilized Georges Delerue’s theme from CONTEMPT to underscore its own portrayal of marital agony. There’s of course a certain similarity to the way Tarantino has utilized scores from other films over the years as a sort of meta-commentary through his own versions of history and since this never happened before 1997’s JACKIE BROWN it’s hard not to wonder if he was at all inspired when CASINO was released a few years earlier. The specific choices come from different eras just as the two men do but when used they feel equally personal, additional pieces of the past somehow trying to be heard and remembered, no matter how distant they may be. That undeniable feeling of The End is made clear right from the beginning in the prolonged opening shot where we eventually find Frank in that nursing home, all by himself and seemingly ready to talk. It’s also the way people are introduced alongside a title card describing their eventual, often violent, deaths which becomes this film’s version of the BARRY LYNDON epilogue showing how the only thing that defines them is a very specific kind of end that makes them all equal. Nothing that happened when they were alive will be remembered except for the fate of the one guy ‘liked by all’ which provides one of the biggest laughs of all. Aside from him, only Frank somehow makes it all the way through, past the point where anyone will remember. For a film where it feels like that main character takes absolutely no pleasure in anything, so much attention is paid to the way time is spent enjoying those tiny pleasures in our lives, often food, the ones we barely even think about as they happen, all of it seems like it’s part of a world that doesn’t really exist anymore. The steak, the ice cream sundaes Jimmy likes not to mention the ginger ale, the hot dogs at Lum’s that are steamed in beer, the choice Frank is given of having corn flakes or Total for breakfast, the cigarette breaks the wives insist on during their drive. There’s a sense in the film of wanting to hold onto the past, whatever it was, hold onto those pleasures and the way things were, no matter how horrible what was going on was. The way Scorsese alums like Don Rickles and Jerry Vale turn up here as played by Jim Norton and Steven Van Zandt as if makes total sense for them to be here and even if they’re gone it’s still going to happen, he way he’s just as insistent on De Niro, Pacino and Pesci still playing characters much younger than they really were at the time so the film wouldn’t have any meaning otherwise. The way we can’t move on from what we’ve done and the things that were done to us. “They wouldn’t dare!” Hoffa chokes out when the anvil is coming down and there’s nothing he can do about it. There was nothing we could ever do to change things. Frank stays quiet so much of the time, saying nothing to silent orders he’s given but never really saying much of anything at all and it’s almost a surprise when he willingly speaks so it’s even more of a shock when he actually makes a joke, like suggesting ‘twelve and a half minutes’ as the middle ground for how late it’s acceptable to arrive at a meeting. Maybe his most likable moment in the whole film is early on when he says he doesn’t mind the cold, feeling relatable for a brief moment even amid the drudgery of a workday. His silence is the perfect opposite to Hoffa’s bluster, even when no matter how close they are Hoffa doesn’t notice him standing a few feet away during one of his screaming fits. It takes time for the film to get to Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa but when he turns up and, forgetting whatever the real Hoffa was like, the effect he gives off is a bolt of lightning in how alive and energetic he seems, human in a way that no one else in the movie is with all the foibles and passion that come with it. He’s not a man who gingerly dips his break into some wine, he wants to enjoy his hot fudge sundae and have a good time while doing it while making sure that know one messes with that enjoyment to bring out his temper, that glare of resentment as he chews his steak. After all, some of us spend our lives getting annoyed by the people who wear shorts and show up late and Hoffa just seems to know that sometimes all you can do is make sure the fight doesn’t end until you say so. But as Frank learns, when the most important person in your life is gone, nothing else is going to matter and things fall apart anyway. Frank does all these things never questioning what he’s supposed to do, the way Lee Marvin as Walker in John Boorman’s POINT BLANK barely seems to know or remember why he cares so much about the money he’s owed by the mob, just as Frank has no answer for why he blindly follows these orders. An abrupt edit placed when Frank calls Jo Hoffa on the phone even feels as if he’s trying to slice the particular memory of this one solitary moment out of his brain to somehow avoid remembering but in the end has no choice but to forever live by himself with the only thing he feels any guilt over. This is set in an east coast that always feels like what the past is to me, even if this is centered more in Philly than any New York that I knew, but I still connect it to those distant memories of restaurants in Queens or Long Island that I was taken to as a kid. And that’s the mood it has more than shots. Trying to one-up the GOODFELLAS Copacabana shot wouldn’t be right. The closest to the expected virtuoso Steadicam shots coming during one hit with bouncy Percy Faith music on the soundtrack that ends as the camera moves in on a peaceful arrangement of flowers, whether appropriate for a funeral or a scene in VERTIGO and the much later scene depicting the hit at Umbertos Clam House which almost feels dreamlike, Frank floating through the orders he’s silently been given. More than the cinematic rush we get from such great shots it’s about the mood, the looks between the actors, the rhythms of those cuts placed into a montage running over the entire film. So much is revealed in the greatness of the testimonial dinner sequence and the way it presents how these guys deal with each other individually and what their own loyalty really is as the weight of it all begins to come crushing down. The sequence is highlighted by The Golddiggers singing “The Time is Now” in the background with that refrain of “Yesterday is Over” heard under conversation as if there’s really going to be a future for any of them. It already feels like an underrated musical selection by Scorsese and the choice is so completely shallow in its period hollowness, so perfectly plastic in its pastiche style it feels even more perfect that it barely even seems like a real song with lyrics that seems to ask how much the past even matters, how much anything we do matters and doesn’t it seem like it’s mattering less and less all the time. Maybe it never mattered anyway, considering where things ended up. The life of Frank Sheeran as presented comes off as a Forrest Gump of mob killings but that alone still makes him important in American history, one that’s more aware of the suffering around him but I’m still not even thinking about if a word the main character says in his narration is even true, just that the film is choosing to print the legend, to take a line from a John Ford film that seems pertinent here, whatever legend Frank has chosen to justify to himself. Someone I know and shall go unnamed here has a family connection to Russell Bufalino and was angered by the film, telling me he was nothing like the way he’s portrayed here. Does even this matter? Does anything we’ve ever known about our parents or our past really matter? Whatever Peggy knows about her father, it’s clear she knows what’s going on. Maybe she doesn’t know what she knows, but she does know and from a very young age, the payoff to all those shots in earlier Scorsese films of kids silently watching the goings-on between their parents and forever marking them. In his own silence to her, Frank doesn’t even deny it while “Pretend You Don’t See Her” plays as she dances with Hoffa which both recalls when it was heard long ago in GOODFELLAS as well as serving as a message to Frank telling what he needs to do, to pretend he doesn’t see her. Or hear her. Or speak to her. And he never even thinks about it. What he would do is never even a question. Played by Lucy Galina as a child and Anna Paquin as an adult, the role is the lynchpin in everything that Frank ignored, Paquin almost completely silent in the role and if she’d gotten a nomination simply for the way she asks “Why?” as part of her one real line of dialogue it still would have been deserved. In the end, that silence he caused is all he gets and when he does find one of his daughters willing to talk, anything he does has to say is far too late. I’m not sure if there’s an actual reconciliation that really lasts in Scorsese’s entire filmography. When something is over, it’s over. Those who judge you do so by their silence, to use the title of another film. “It was no more complicated than that,” he says about what happened to Hoffa and it becomes harder to shake the film’s final glimpse of him the more time goes on. The film is about those moments in our childhood when our parents didn’t speak but we knew something was going on. It’s asking what you have done in your life, what do you have at the end because of that and what really mattered. Whether or not this is the truth about Jimmy Hoffa doesn’t really matter. We all fall short in the end, but it’s up to us how far. But it also wouldn’t be a Scorsese film about these things if it all wasn’t as funny as it is so much of the time, those moments where someone gets a little too annoyed by nothing at all even if it’s more gallows humor than ever before, the laughs cutting deep until you bleed and choke on them before the sound can come out. Those tiny pleasures are all through the film, the horrible laughs are there depicting the danger of sitting in a car’s front seat with someone behind you. The tone feels a little like the way we imagine Scorsese laughing incessantly, the way he does at Fran Lebowitz, but this drops away more and more until he’s silently remembering everything he never wants to think about. It’s none of our business. It’s easy to get lost in all that Teamster infighting and bickering of the middle section but the big showdown with Stephen Graham’s Tony Pro over traffic and how late you’re allowed to be to a meeting gets funnier every single time then from the testimonial dinner for Frank on the film is never less than masterful, the big event held up by the curious delivery of a frozen fish—another one of those pleasures in life that Frank will never know— that never gets fully explained and even that joke is diffused by the tension brought to it by Frank. The last thing we hear Russell say as he’s being taken to church is, “Don’t laugh, you’ll see,” which could be a warning given at the start of any number of Scorsese films and the last 45 minutes are devastatingly brutal, nothing left to laugh over or get any pleasure in. In the blink of an eye it’s the twenty-first century and he stays alive past the point where he literally can’t stand up anymore. Something similar happened to my mother this way and after that night she never got to go back to her home again which is what I’m always thinking of when this happens. Like the narrative span of so many other Scorsese films, it’s funny until it’s not. It’s funny until two people are in a room together too long, no more patience for any of those jokes. It’s funny until somebody refuses to realize how unfunny they really are. It’s funny until there’s a dead body left behind as you leave the room. This is what you are to some people and where you wind up, like it or not. It’s what it is. In the end, Frank is alone with nothing that ever mattered to him but that gaudy ring on his finger that will probably still be there when he dies, no one left to care that he was one of a few to ever be given it and a few photos of the past, whatever that past ever really meant including one of his wife, the one he ended his first marriage to be with, who we never learned much about beyond that she smoked. Maybe he never learned much more either and he’s not even going to be buried next to her. So maybe his ‘whatever happens, happens’ philosophy was never enough. Fuck it, Bufalino basically says at both the beginning and the end. Frank doesn’t seem so sure about that anymore but it’s still how he always lived, he just hasn’t put it into words. He hasn’t really said anything and now he’s left trying to justify it all, whatever the truth really is. The one moment that haunts him years later isn’t even one where he actually killed someone but what he did after. Eventually all he has left is the crypt he buys and the green coffin which is probably the snazziest purchase he’s ever made in his life and maybe the most individual choice he’s ever made, while still ignoring everything that the very idea of burning up in cremation symbolizes. “In the Still of the Night” is played at the start and it returns later as a sign of doom that can’t be turned away from and we remember it, taking us to the end, long after the music has stopped as they always do when the fun stops in Scorsese films and the world feels completely dead. It feels like a fair question to ask if there’s anything to the memory of a life at all if it doesn’t come with any guilt. And Frank doesn’t have the answer. Of course, it’s the end of THE SEARCHERS being recalled when Frank is seen in the final shot, having long since made the choice to stay on the other side of that door. Only in this case it’s a door not completely closed, as if waiting for Hoffa to reappear, waiting for Peggy, waiting for anyone, but also a refusal to commit just like Frank spent his life doing but more than that he’s alone at the end just as any number of other Scorsese protagonists have been through the years. But Travis Bickle still had his cab, Jimmy Doyle had his nightclub, Jake LaMotta had his nightclub act, Paul Hackett had his job, Henry Hill had his exile, Ace Rothstein had his ability to pick winners, Howard Hughes had his madness. All Frank Sheeran has is the inevitable, even as he’s hoping for something more, desperately bargaining for a way out. So much of this feeling is found in the sheer sense of focus coming from Robert De Niro in every scene and the result is at times overwhelming, very likely one of his most underrated performances with every ounce of that silent power exploding from the very stoniness of his expression and how his eyes are registering it all, whether saying anything or not with each movement carrying so much weight, especially that little nod he gives to Pacino at a crucial moment to get him into a car. He’s essentially playing a walking, talking brick wall and how much his eyes alone tell the story of what he’s doing, playing somebody who did all the wrong things for the wrong reasons and only realizing this at the end, not even understanding reasons why or why he should ever feel any different. He’s a thug, nothing more than that, but it’s balanced out by the ultra-dry humor that comes through more often than you’d think with his narration of the line “They steam them in beer” about the hot dogs from Lum’s that is maybe one of the best line readings Robert De Niro ever given and now all I want is one of those hot dogs. As De Niro remains constantly still, Al Pacino is all about movement and he delivers a gloriously huge performance in a portrayal of someone, however accurate it is to the real person, who despite what he does and knows makes him seem to represent all that is good in the world and what could possibly be. He barrels through and it’s a thrill to see him do this especially when he’s playing off Joe Pesci in their big scene together is one of the true underdiscussed pleasures of the film, one actor so angry, one staying so calm, so quiet, the way he repeats ‘some people’ multiple times. You can’t say that Joe Pesci steals the movie, it’s not that kind of performance, but the way he seems to choose each word, each syllable, each gesture, very carefully, causes you to lean forward to catch every single word he says and the impeccably quiet nature of it is unforgettable. No surprise, there are too many others to mention. Harvey Keitel for the way he explains what saying, “I do” means when offering up an answer to a question he posed, Ray Romano as Bill Bufalino, Stephen Graham as Tony Pro, Kathrine Narducci as Carrie Bufalino, Jessie Plemons as Chuckie, Welker White as Jo Hoffa (particularly for the way she turns down a Lum’s hot dog), Louis Cancelmi as Sally Bugs (particularly for the way he grills Chuckie about the fish), Marin Ireland as Frank’s other daughter Dolores, Action Bronson as the casket salesman, Dascha Polanco as the nurse who’s never heard of Jimmy Hoffa and doesn’t need to hear Frank musing about how fast time goes. “The most personal is the most creative,” was what Bong Joon-ho said in quoting Scorsese about making a film when accepting his Oscar for Best Director at the Oscars the same year THE IRISHMAN home empty handed, clearly the most emotional moment of that night. And the best films do feel personal for the one who’s making it, just as personal for the person seeing the film, seeing it again, returning to it again and again for the hit or to be reminded of that feeling. Just as personal for the person writing about the film, trying to understand, trying to remember, trying to accept the past and how awful it may have been at times because otherwise how will we ever remember when it was good. I remember these things just as I watch certain Martin Scorsese films over and over. You can probably guess a few of them and THE IRISHMAN has become one by now as well. On each new viewing I feel some guilt myself, but that’s my own business. The film ends and I want to start it again but instead I wait a little, keeping that Criterion Blu-ray close by which means it may get rewatched almost to the point of obsession anyway. But it does mean that Netflix has accomplished at least one good thing while it’s been around, much as we may hate to admit it. Of course, several other Scorsese films already became this for me long ago. You can probably guess a few of the titles. I remember those films just as I remember the world of my mother, the world of both my parents, which is no more. There were things she said to me about memories she had, wanting me to know how she felt long ago. I remembered other things, but I didn’t say that. But it still makes me think about where they came from and where I wound up. How much time we have left to remember things. And if any of that really matters.

How long has the cover-up about Biden's deterioration been going on?

From the June 10, 1994 Chicago Reader. — J.R.

THE FLINTSTONES

* (Has redeeming facet)

Directed by Brian Levant

Written by Tom S. Parker, Jim Jennewein, and Steven E. de Souza

With John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, Rosie O’Donnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Halle Berry, Richard Moll, and Elizabeth Taylor.

When people come to see an entertainment based on another, earlier entertainment that they have affection for, there are things about it that people want to see. They want to hear Fred yell “Yabba-Dabba-Doo!” They want to hear Wilma and Betty say “Charge It!” They want to hear Dino bark “Yip, Yip, Yip, Yip, Yip” and knock Fred down and lick him silly. And we’ve done those things because we love them, too.  — Brian Levant, director of The Flintstones, quoted in the film’s pressbook

It’s quite possible that when someone writes the history of the first hundred years of movies — a period corresponding fairly closely to the 20th century — two decades of that century will be singled out as the most artistically barren: the first and the last. And the principal reasons for that barrenness may turn out to be related: in each decade film, rather than flexing its muscles as an expressive medium, was a relatively inert, inexpressive receptacle for works already fashioned, often in other media. Read more

It's already happening.

When the state of North Carolina first proposed a mask ban this year, advocates from across the country warned lawmakers that it would embolden anti-maskers and lead to a surge in harassment and assault. Days after it passed, a woman with stage 4 cancer was assaulted by a man for wearing a mask. He told her wearing a mask was illegal. When she tried to explain her medical condition, he cussed her out and then started coughing on her.

He told her he hoped she died.

At a Chicago airport, an infectious disease expert was denied service at a restaurant for trying to enter with a mask. When she asked why, the staff simply repeated, "It's the policy."

She was told to leave.

There's one point continually missed by mainstream coverage of the North Carolina mask ban. Politicians keep saying nothing has changed, but they're lying. Under the new law, anyone who considers themselves an "occupant of public property" can demand someone remove their mask for identification. In the bill's exact words, anyone wearing a mask for health reasons "shall remove the mask upon request by a law enforcement officer or temporarily remove the mask upon request by the owner or occupant of public or private property where the wearer is present to allow for identification of the wearer."

This intentionally vague language allows virtually anyone to take it upon themselves to "request" someone "temporarily" remove their mask for identification. If they don't, they're breaking the law and they can be arrested, even charged with a felony. Maybe that sounds like a compromise to someone who doesn't understand viral transmission.

It's not a compromise at all.

Any mask ban threatens public health

Advocates of mask bans routinely say they simply want to restore the status quo laws that existed before the pandemic. It's a nonsense argument that ignores current reality. Not only is Covid itself still driving a mass disabling event, but other diseases are resurging. Then there's the likelihood of a flu pandemic. It's never been a better time to wear a mask.

Peak viral exposure happens within five seconds of a personal encounter. In other words, there's no point during a conversation when you're safe. You're in danger the instant someone opens their mouth and starts talking. That's why anyone who cares about their health needs to keep their mask on. It has nothing to do with hiding their identity. Making someone remove their mask, even for a few seconds, is sentencing them to chronic illness or death.

There's zero evidence that mask bans will reduce crime or violence. According to science, sunglasses do a better job of concealing your identity than an N95 respirator. Even our own intelligence agencies have said that wearing a mask doesn't impede facial recognition software.

So a mask ban does nothing but intimidate protestors, at the expense of threatening the rest of us and reinforcing an atmosphere of hostility and fear around masking. Nobody deserves to be harassed and assaulted just for wearing a mask, but that's what lawmakers are inflicting.

They have already killed people.

Mask bans are starting to proliferate.

In addition to North Carolina, New York has begun considering a similar mask ban. Chicago and L.A. are also trying to ban masks now. The major of L.A., Karen Bass, has said she's going to "examine" mask bans at protests, but we know these laws never exist in a vacuum. It's shameful that liberals, progressives, and Democrats have recently become the ones proposing and advocating for these bans, and they're doing it with no concern for who it impacts.

Mask discrimination has intensified as a direct result of anti-mask rhetoric coming from state and local officials across the political spectrum. People are being harassed, assaulted, and denied service even when they're clearly wearing medical masks for health reasons. They're being persecuted at work, at home, in healthcare settings, and even losing their jobs.

I've started a survey to collect information on these disturbing trends. With 700 responses so far, trends have already emerged.

Here's a look:

Mask wearers never get a break

Nearly half of the survey respondents say they've been harassed or physically threatened in public for wearing a mask. Strangers call them names, yell at them, or pretend to cough and sneeze on them.

Here's what they describe:

Several men have spat or coughed on me for wearing a respirator, one man tried to start a fist-fight with my male friend because we were wearing respirators, and another man on a bicycle circled me and a friend while yelling at us and calling us "f**king idiots."

Being asked to speak louder as cant hear me under my mask. Coughing in my face. Blocking aisles at the grocery store and staring at me as I walk by. Shaking head and tssking as come into store with my masked family.

I was told I was not allowed to mask around customers anymore as the company didn’t like how it looked.

The receptionist at the doctor Im office said to me “no one should be masking covid is over. You should have been dead by now.” The harassment has increased ever since Fauci said people would “fall by the wayside.”

Mask wearers can't get service

Anti-mask rhetoric is converting into laws that push those who wear masks out of public spaces. Stores and other venues are increasingly denying service to anyone simply because they wear a mask.

Here's what they describe:

I was told to take my business elsewhere, by three different establishments, when I was looking for covid cautious environment to get my haircut.

I kindly asked a dentist if they would consider wearing an n95 or ffp2 during my oral surgery. This resulted in them refusing to treat me.

I have had people cancel as a lyft driver bc i am wearing a mask. I have also had them leave negative reviews bc of my mask.

Nine percent may look like a small number, but many respondents say they already limit or restrict their time in public spaces because of mask harassment. They have to go out during specific times a day, or have groceries and services delivered to their homes, when they can afford it. Some mask wearers have given up on public life altogether, choosing to stay home except when absolutely necessary. Others have become chronically ill or disabled because of prior Covid infections, so they can't leave home.

Ironically, they're mocked for "living in fear."

As more cities and states move to pass total or partial mask bans, more businesses feel emboldened to deny service to anyone in a mask, often for no clear reason. They're finding it especially difficult to get dental, eye, or medical appointments without having to risk their health.

Mask wearers have lost family and friends

Those who mask often receive negative, judgmental, or condescending remarks from their friends or family. Nearly half of them report a friend or relative pressuring them to take off their mask.

Here's what they describe:

Friends/Family think we’re paranoid, and have said so. They have refused masking in high risk situations including masking around my vulnerable mother. She eventually passed away after 2 covid infections and a heart attack. They also refused to mask at her memorial service.

A relative announced that "masks weren't allowed" at her place, so my husband said we would go home. She relented. Another relative has passive-aggressively described continued masking as "weird."

A friend who is 5 years behind on COVID-19 science repeatedly called me "hysterical" and other names for wearing a high-quality respirator. The friendship was no longer a safe space and I was experiencing sanctuary/betrayal trauama, so I ended the friendship. No regrets. Since then, I have made new and better friends.

Not me, but my daughter, 11, masks in school. Many kids have told her covid is over, made fun of her, touched her mask etc, tried to get her to shut the window in class.

I had a relative (by marriage) who's an ICU recovery nurse of all things tell me that COVID was no longer an issue, and that I needed to get back to normal. She also pressured my young son to remove his KF-94 respirator for a photo when I wasn't looking...

My husband has been harassing me about mask-wearing for several years and we are now in the process of getting divorced. He said that he can't live with my Covid mitigations. He refuses to be in the world with a mask and said he can't be married to me if it involves masks.

My child frequently has children grab his mask and try to remove it.

In many cases, a handful of traumatic encounters was enough to convince mask wearers to end friendships, to protect their physical and mental health. Their friendships threatened both. Some mask wearers have ended up estranged from their families, even their children. As one respondent said, she can only communicate with her daughter over video chat now because the rest of her family convinced her to stop wearing a mask under any circumstance. "It breaks my heart." In many cases, mask wearers seek out new friendships and form new communities. Not everyone can do that.

They try.

Mask wearers can't trust healthcare workers

Nearly half of those who mask report healthcare workers making negative, judgemental, or condescending remarks about masking. More than a third say they've been pressured to unmask.

Here's what they describe:

While hospitalized for 3 days in Dec 2023, the male day shift nurse came into my room and saw me wearing Flo Mask. He spent 15 minutes trying to convince me that masks and vaccines do not work. I asked him to leave and shut the door.

I had to go to an orthopedic urgent care clinic, affiliated with the orthopedic surgeons’s office, in December 2023 because I fractured my toe. The male physician assistant threw an actual man tantrum when I requested respectfully that he put a mask on for our brief visit in a tiny unventilated exam room. He became very agitated, started yelling that he didn’t have Covid, told me that Covid was over and what I was asking was unacceptable. This was actually during a viral surge. I relayed that I was immune compromised and was in an age group for a higher risk of adverse outcomes from Covid, but it wasn’t until I relayed that I was a longtime registered nurse that he finally grudgingly went out and put on a loose fitting surgical mask.

During a colonoscopy the anaesthetist demanded I remove my mask (allow I had checked before I could keep it on). I felt too vulnerable to refuse.

I have only had negative experiences with healthcare regarding mask wearing. Medical care is almost impossible to access now, and I have a disability.

2 nurses aids made of point of bragging about how they won't wear masks while I was wearing one during my appointments.

I only get medical care if there is written agreement they will N95. Even so the mammogram tech complained the whole time, the receptionist talked to their colleagues in front of me about how weird it feels to mask. My dentist stopped providing care.

Most often, healthcare workers make a point of telling mask wearers that they "don't need to wear a mask" anymore, or that it's only necessary to clean and disinfect surfaces. Some respondents reported healthcare workers trying to persuade their children to unmask during appointments, going against their wishes. Others say healthcare workers have tried to convince them that masks don't work, or that the pandemic is over.

It's bad enough that healthcare workers are either misinformed about masks or refuse to wear them when caring for patients. Mask wearers also have to endure pressure and ridicule from their own doctors and nurses.

"Do no harm," apparently doesn't apply.

Mask wearers have a hard time at work

Harassment extends to the workplace, with about 37 percent of respondents saying that coworkers made negative, judgmental, or condescending remarks about their masks. Nearly 25 percent said a coworker, client, or customer had actively pressured them to unmask.

Here's what they describe:

He came in once, positive with COVID. He immediately accused me of "freaking out" and that "he knew I'd be a problem"... He played the victim, he was told to go home and not come back until he tested negative. When he came back I got the usual lines of 'It was nothing' 'It's just a cold' 'The media has overblown everything' and that I was 'being paranoid'.

When seeing customers colleagues commented that I ‘scared’ them and told me it made the company ‘look bad’.

When working with a new team, a coworker told me to take off my mask so my boss could see my face.

They questioned my wearing a mask, became condescending and mocked me; colleagues joke "it's just a cold" knowing I was badly affected by the virus. I find it reprehensible being in NY and hearing this, especially from those who lost one or more relatives.

"You're babying your immune system by wearing that thing....You're healthy you don't need it."

A co-worker laughed at me while wearing a mask outside. He then raged about how masks are ineffective. He was stopped by a supervisor.

They'll make jokes about wanting to see my face or say that I'm a hypochondriac.

These coworkers often try to pass off their anti-mask comments as jokes or casual asides. Taken together, they make the workplace uncomfortable and unsafe. It sends a clear message that they would prefer mask wearers to "get back to normal," even when many of them have had serious infections and can't catch Covid again (or anything else). Mask wearers have to work in an environment of intentional disregard for their wellbeing. Some describe it as passive-aggressive, similar to the racism and sexism they also navigate.

Mask wearers risk losing their jobs

Many of those who mask live with varying degrees of anxiety about losing their jobs. They worry about the day a supervisor will make them choose between their health and their careers. The fears are real. In fact, more than 13 percent of respondents report a boss or supervisor pressuring them to unmask. Nearly 4 percent of respondents report being disciplined at work for wearing a mask. Some of them have lost their jobs. It should never happen at all.

Here's what they describe:

My boss, fully knowing he had Covid from a recent trip... called me into two separate long meetings with the door closed. Despite my wearing an N95 mask, I got Covid for the first time.

One hiring manager told me that they wouldn't want to hire a candidate who "still insisted on" wearing a mask & thought it was "crazy" to wear one outdoors when unable to socially distance.

I had a meeting with my boss and HR, and they said that I shouldn’t have taken this job. I finally got terminated 2 months later, even though my performance results were good.

Have been fired for wanting to use an air purifier at work...

I'm lucky in that so far I've mostly been able to "get away" with masking at work, but I can't mask while teaching and keep my job in the long term. (This is unwritten and unspoken, but almost certainly true.) If I had tenure, I'd mask in the classroom, but in my pre-tenure state, the best I can do is to stay in the stream of my air purifier and never step outside of it without holding my breath. In other words, the reason I've made it this far with my coworkers only expressing intermittent slight annoyance is that I haven't crossed the lines I know are there.

Supervisors told me that masked faces are “threatening” and “unwelcoming”

I discussed to my store manager that my mom got covid and i was worried... Within a couple of weeks, I was let go.

I have lost job opportunities because of my mask and it know it because they will mention it and ask if I have something or they'll make a point how they want people to see your "smile."

I can't even get a job as a masker let alone be fired from a job.

I was working on a PR job and my boss asked me if I intended on removing my mask anytime soon. He implied I had mental health problems. I got upset and took a day off after our conversation.

My husband was the only one masking and he was fired. The reason was not enough sales even though he sold plenty.

Employers refuse to hire my wife and I because we mask.

It's bad enough that these supervisors are disregarding safety. In many cases, they're exposing mask wearers to diseases while doing it. And yet, it's the mask wearers who are disciplined, not their bosses.

Workplaces skirt disability and discrimination lawsuits by citing other reasons for firing someone who wears a mask. Sometimes, they give no reason whatsoever. They often don't even have to explicitly fire a mask wearer. Many mask wearers have voluntarily resigned from their jobs, seeking out remote work and self-employment because their old workplaces refused to make accommodations or even upgrades to air quality. Others have simply had to leave the workforce altogether due to post-Covid conditions.

Many feel trapped.

Forced out of society

This survey highlights disturbing trends in societies that profess to practice equality and tolerance. Those who wear masks for their health encounter resistance and discrimination in virtually every aspect of their lives. They're losing friends and family, even relationships with their own children. They're being forced to give up jobs and careers.

They're also losing access to medical care.

Politicians and public officials don't talk about this discrimination because it's not politically expedient. They see masks themselves as a political liability, so they aren't going to talk about mask harassment. This kind of discrimination was happening before cities and states started stoking fears about masked criminals and associating masks with crime and moral vice. Now that mask bans are underway, it's going to get worse. More people will be forced out of society for trying to protect their health.

As Lucky Tran has pointed out, neoliberal think tanks have begun crafting model legislation for lawmakers who want to pass mask bans. This model legislation offers talking points that "someone who wears a mask for health reasons probably should not be congregating in large groups of people." In other words, you can't protect your health while participating in society. Roey Hadar explains the implications: "Sorry, fellow maskers. Apparently, this legislation thinks you shouldn't be attending a sporting event or a concert anymore, let alone a protest." As a sign of things to come, universities already started banning masks at their commencement ceremonies this year.

It's scapegoating, plain and simple.

There's one oversight in this survey that calls for a finer analysis. Many of those who report not being overtly disciplined or fired from work also report working from home or giving up their careers entirely because of Covid or the harassment they faced. They have limited employment options. Others report difficulties even finding a job where they'll be allowed to mask. That indicates the problem is even worse, something the next update will explore.

Here's the bottom line:

Even before official mask bans, unspoken policies and a general culture of hostility pushed many of us who wear masks out of society. We don't participate because we don't feel safe or welcome, or we physically can't. This problem goes unrecognized and underreported in a culture that celebrates diversity and inclusion. Four years ago, liberals accused conservatives of politicizing masks. Now liberals are doing it, to the very people who elected them. Even worse, they're doing it as a range of other diseases, including Covid and now bird flu, make it more important than ever to wear a good medical mask.

We're often told that when we're presented with uncomfortable truths, we should resist the urge to tone police and make excuses. Mask wearers are trying to tell their friends, their families, their coworkers, and their bosses that they're unsafe and unheard. The science supports every single one of their claims about the damage Covid is doing to our minds and bodies, not just the vulnerable, but those who consider themselves invincible.

Nobody listens to them.

Proposed mask bans will make life far worse for anyone who chooses to protect themselves, regardless of whether they participate in protests. Masking for your health is a human right. It doesn't matter what you're doing or where you're doing it. It doesn't conceal your identity.

It harms no one.

It saves lives.

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Please consider completing this survey if you want to help raise awareness about mask discrimination. I'll share a detailed report soon.

If you appreciate this work, please support it.

Israel looks like it is about to bite off way more than it can chew in instigating a hot war with Lebanon.

Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a company shipping products, not those of a non-profit devoted to preserving the open web.

Those are different things and are very much in conflict. They picked one. They picked the wrong one.

In light of Mozilla's recent parade of increasingly terrible decisions, there have been cries of "why doesn't someone fork it?" followed by responses of "here are 5 sketchy forks of it that get no development and that nobody uses". And inevitably following that, several people have made comments in the "Mozilla is an advertising company now" thread to the effect that it is now impossible for a non-corporate, open source project to actually implement a web browser, since a full implementation requires implementing DRM systems which you cannot implement without a license that the Content Mafia will not give you.

This is technically true. ("Technically" being the best kind of "true" in some circles.)

Blaming and shaming:

• It used to be that to watch Netflix (and others) in an open browser required the use of a third party proprietary plugin. That doesn't work any more: now Netflix will only work in a browser that natively implements DRM.

• That step happened because Mozilla took that license and implented DRM.

• That happened because: "it's in the W3C spec, we didn't have a choice."

• How did it get into the spec? Oh, it got into the spec because when the Content Mafia pressured W3C to include it, Mozilla caved. At the end of the day they said, "We approve of this and will implement it". Their mission -- their DUTY -- was to pound their shoe on the god damned table and say: "We do not approve, and will not implement if approved."

  But they went and did it just the same.

"But muh market shares!" See, now we're back to the kitten-meat deli again.

If you were unable to watch Netflix in Mozilla out of the box, yes, that would have impacted their market share. You know what else would have happened? Some third party patch would have solved that problem.

When Netscape released the first version of the Mozilla source with no cryptography in it due to US export restrictions, it was approximately 30 minutes before someone outside the US had patched it back in. I'm not exaggerating, it happened that night. This is the sort of software activism at which the open source community excels, even if it is "technically" illegal. ("Technically", again, being the best kind of illegal in some circles.)

Mozilla had a duty to preserve the open web.

Instead they cosplayed as a startup, chasing product dreams of "growth hacking", with Google's ad money as their stand-in for a VC-funding firehose, with absolutely predictable and tragic results.

And those dreams of growth and market penetration failed catastrophically anyway.

(Except for the C-suite, who made out quite well. And Google, who got exactly what they paid for: a decade of antitrust-prosecution insurance. It was never about ad revenue. The on-paper existence of Firefox as a hypothetical competitor kept the Federal wolves at bay, and that's all Google cared about.)

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Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

As I have said many times:

In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3. There is no 3.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.