Movies |
Rainy Day Butler: 9 films for winter’s first storm. Ryan O’Neal. A Hanukah story. And more…
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Published: Dec 10, 2023
Category:
Comedy
First, something NOT for you — here’s where much of America’s online attention will be focused: the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI trailer. It has 135 million views in 5 days.
“The Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, which is set to “Love Is a Long Road” by Tom Petty, includes zooming speedboats and sports cars, fluttering dollar bills in a strip club, and a woman in fishnet stockings twerking on the roof of a moving vehicle. Although Grand Theft Auto games have a central narrative featuring robberies, kidnappings and assassinations, they also give the player freedom to do just about anything — whether that is cruising the streets listening to the radio or shooting rocket launchers at police cars. Previous games have been set in versions of New York and Southern California. Grand Theft Auto V has sold about 190 million copies on the computer and several console generations since it was released in 2013.
A GREAT FILM FOR CHILDREN (AND NOT JUST FOR CHILDREN) TO STREAM ON AMAZON PRIME
I sent the link to our 21-year-old daughter. She texted me: “I still have the card they gave us when I was 8.” This is My Neighbor Totoro.
FILMS FOR ADULTS TO STREAM ON AMAZON PRIME
The House of Mirth To stream… or read. Edith Wharton’s best.
Lawrence Selden was infatuated with Lily Bart. He couldn’t help it. She was from a good family. She knew everyone. She was painfully beautiful. And special, yes, special: “He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her.” What’s wrong with Lily Bart? Just three things. Her family has lost its money. She’s unmarried. And she’s 29.
Blues Brothers. You deserve at least one dumb, classic comedy.
The Social Network. Young Mark Zuckerberg. I especially liked this scene.
At Eternity’s Gate. Julian Schnabel’s beautiful, heartbreaking film about Van Gogh.
RYAN O’NEAL
In 1991, I profiled Ran and Farrah for Vanity Fair. A one-of-a-kind experience: Ryan felt I was flirting with Farrah .
HANUKAH WEED (A VERY SHORT STORY, ANNUALLY PUBLISHED ON BUTLER AT THIS TIME OF YEAR)
What do three honors graduates from Oberlin get when they come to New York?
A shared office with a window at a WeWork in Brooklyn.
Mark, Ben and David scratched out a living doing piecework, mostly ghosting first drafts for writers who were inexplicably successful on Substack, and then, in the second phase of their employment, eliminating touches like “very unique” and “brutal murder” that the stars were capable of inserting.
They lived in an apartment owned by the father of their roommate Jake, who was no prize but was the reason for a heavily discounted rent.
By their second year in New York, they had created a network: women who believed in them, women who didn’t but hung out with them anyway, guys who worked in investment banks and were already looking for the exit, connoisseurs of weed who liked to smoke with Jake. Was his weed superior? It certainly had the best hype: every few months Jake flew to California, visited greenhouses, curated a collection that was so easy to sell he had his days free.
Jake went to Napa in November, met a winsome botanist, and didn’t return. Checks slowed — Mark, Ben and David were contractors, not employees, and they could be made to wait until January. They bought a case of ramen. Better to have weed and no money than money and no weed, but — worst of all — their holiday party was approaching, and they were running out of weed.
A week before the party, they smoked their last joint.
David put the stub in the menorah.
In the morning, there were two joints.
