9 am: Sports Reporters
9:30: Auuuggh. Why no Phil Mushnick in The New York Post? No Mushnick? No complaining about ESPN or Mike and the Mad Dog?
9:40: Ah. George Will. The GOP probably rode the gay-marriage issue back to the White House in 2004. They could do the same with immigration by simply saying, "First, we seal the border. Then, we'll talk." I've thought this for weeks; it is gratifying to discover that Will agrees."
9:50: Ebert's Great Movies. This week: The Shining. People forget, when the movie first came out it was a bomb, something linked to a contemporaneous movie, Heaven's Gate, as evidence of directors run amok. It was only later it demonstrated staying power, not least as one of Jack Nicholson's five or six most memorable performances. Stanley Kubrick was famous for driving his performers mad; here, Ebert advances the theory that his constant re-takes were designed to excerbate the sense of gloom and paranoia that the Overlook Hotel so inspired.
Ebert recounts Kubrick's style in a conversation he had will Shelly Duvall:
"How was it, working with Kubrick?" I asked Duvall 10 years after the experience.
"Almost unbearable," she said. "Going through day after day of excruciating work, Jack Nicholson's character had to be crazy and angry all the time. And my character had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week. I was there a year and a month. After all that work, hardly anyone even criticized my performance in it, even to mention it, it seemed like. The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn't there."
10:00: No This Week? (By which I mean George Will). Stupid World Cup. Stupid ABC.
11:00: Brunch.
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