Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (and Two Never-Ending Online Debates)

(This contains spoilers of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, so proceed with caution)

This past week, I saw for the very first time Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is touring and was playing in Minneapolis, part of what will be a month-long tribute to the Boy Wizard in my house (including another concert, and a rewatch of all of the Fantastic Beast & Harry Potter films that I'll be chronicling with reviews, in some cases first logged reviews, on Letterboxd).  In the decade since this play first went to Broadway, this has been a top priority for me, to the point that it was the only Harry Potter-related thing I've never read or seen.  In all likelihood, given Fantastic Beasts reception compared to the original run of movies and JK Rowling's fall-from-grace, it may well be the last original Harry Potter idea we may ever get, as the next few years it seems certain that HBO's new remake will be the #1 priority for the Wizarding World.

Before we get to the two reasons that I am actually writing this article, I want to share my thoughts on the play itself, which I really enjoyed.  I am the biggest of Harry Potter fans.  In real life, I am linked first to movies & politics, and of course the Oscars, but probably name-checked as much is Harry Potter, which pretty much everyone associated with me knows I love (and if you've been to my house, you'll also understand this because there's Harry Potter stuff in virtually every corner).  My dad, who went with me, I could see smirking as he saw his 41-year-old son grin from ear-to-ear as they played the opening music and saw Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and a host of other familiar characters on the stage (no matter how old you get, your parents always see you as a little boy in their hearts).  The show itself reads, frequently, as fan service (occasionally even fan fiction), and therefore it's not quite to the caliber of the original books.  It offers little in terms of sacrifice of main characters (we are spared the pain of seeing any of the main characters from the original series die in the end).  But it's also fun and has moments of solid magic (I loved the stuff in the alternative timeline, and the set design in this is maybe the best I've ever seen give-or-take Matilda in a stage show), and in Rowling's distinctive fashion (she is, for all of the criticism of her, someone who is good at showing the sacrifices & truths of growing up), she gives us a real parable about a young boy who is coming to terms with his own sexuality.  In a shock that is proof that I didn't have this play ruined for me through the years, Harry Potter & Draco Malfoy's sons are pretty explicitly shown to be romantic partners by the end of the play, something that might in part explain why this hasn't been made into a Warner Brothers big-screen movie given the billion-dollar implications.

Of course, the other is that Rowling herself has basically torched her reputation (making stars like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, & Rupert Grint, were they even open to returning to the roles for likely 8-figure paydays, far more apprehensive).  It's not new news to talk about this, and indeed if you look back through the years on this blog you'll find I've weighed in a few times on the author who I grew up hero-worshiping in my twenties only to be disgusted by her in my thirties.  Cancel culture, in my opinion, has somehow not gone far enough and has perhaps in other ways gone too far.  Case in point for the latter-at a Netflix roast for Kevin Hart this weekend, Chelsea Handler made a crack about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, in the oppressive regime of Saudi Arabia where there is a long history of censorship and human rights violations...a comedy at which roast dais members Pete Davidson, Jeff Ross, & Kevin Hart all performed.  But in turn they're all still working (i.e. they're getting checks for appearing at this roast), with Hart starring in a $100M franchise entry in the Jumanji series later this year, likely making a fortune in the process.

This is, in part, because it's next-to-impossible to keep track of all of the things that people are expected to boycott or protest online.  Go on the social media of virtually any celebrity online and you will find a series of gloating and angry complaining underneath their posts.  Never mind that these platforms we're all using are owned by men with actual power who are actually destroying the planet (like Elon Musk & Mark Zuckerberg), so even using these platforms is tantamount to endorsing cruelty.  It's exhausting, and makes boycotts of entertainers impossible all-things-considered.  This is why Scream VII, despite many calls to boycott, ended up being a huge box office success, and why it appears likely that the Harry Potter TV series will be a blockbuster its first season (and perhaps its whole run)-people cannot be at 11 all the time, and if that's the expectation from online culture...you're going to find people tapping out and choosing not to protest anything.  This isn't necessarily me trying to have my cake-and-eat-it-too (I'm not endorsing complacency), but I will admit that the expectations of being a social progressive online feel, to a degree I have not experienced before, unrealistic.  I do not have the money, time, or knowledge to be able to successfully boycott every person & company whose opinions I disagree.  This doesn't mean that I won't continue to stay away from certain entertainers or places (I have never been to a Chic-Fil-A, and in a year I have devoted to action stars each week, you'll note that Mel Gibson is not one of the stars I'm going to focus on despite him being a staple of the genre and admittedly an actor whose career would be fascinating to profile), but it does mean that I am struggling to keep up with what increasingly inconsistent voices on the internet want from me.

This is in particular a situation that has come up repeatedly, and relates to Harry Potter in a different way-whether it is appropriate for an adult to be entertained by it at all.  Go on your social media, and you'll find that people are perpetually talking about the concept of Disney Adults, very much a cousin of the Harry Potter Adult.  These are people who regularly go to Disney parks, spend a significant amount on merchandise & travel expenses, and in some cases more than they have.  The latest round of this was brought on by a New Yorker article about people going into dramatic debt over the Disney trips.

I will say-you should not go into serious debt trying to live a Disney adult lifestyle, period, end of story.  I talked recently about 401k withdrawal penalties (and my support of them), and will own that I think people should be more respectful of their personal finances.  But I also think that, if you can afford it, you should do trips to places like Disney & Universal, even as an adult with no children, for a number of reasons.

For starters, these parks are fun, and not really wholly meant for children (even Walt Disney said that).  The detail, character work, and even some of the rides are created in a way to inspire magic for all ages, and honestly are way more in-depth than a child is really going to appreciate.  To pretend otherwise is to ignore that things like musical theater, Las Vegas & Atlantic City, cruise lines, and all sporting events that are things that are very much about play and make-believe, yet for some reason they are not considered to be "age inappropriate" for adults and (save for the gambling) are things generally enjoyed by children.  Additionally, given the disproportionately large amount of money that these major theme parks make as a result of childless adults visiting their parks, they basically couldn't stay in business were it not for these clients (there's a reason that they are creating things like food festivals at Epcot...to keep them coming back).  And these Disney adults are not the reason that these parks are going up in exorbitant costs-that's on larger nationwide financial policy, and also that it should cost more to take a family of four to a park than it does a single person or a couple (also, let's be honest here-the cost per person for a family of four going to a Disney park is WAY less than it is for a single or coupled group).  It's not single people's fault you can't afford this-that's on you (and, admittedly, Republican lawmakers who have made life considerably more expensive in the Trump era).

That said, and to close, I will say that Disney adults, I don't totally have your back even if I'm basically at this point counted among you (I have planned two trips to Disney/Universal locals over the past year, and will have two more if my finances hold in the next two years, albeit in four different cities for each of them).  You should have trips that see things other than Disney.  You should read/watch movies other than Disney and Harry Potter.  Occasionally, you need to challenge yourself by going to more traditionally adult spots like art museums, plays, R-rated movies, and even pick up a book written by someone like Dickens or Austen or Dostoevsky.  The play and "adulthood is hard, let's be a kid again" vibe of Disney and Harry Potter only work if you do, in fact, try to expand your mind in adulthood into things that are intended exclusively for you, not just in part.

OVP: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Film: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Original Song-"The Windmills of Your Mind," Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Coming off of the success of The Cincinnati Kid, for the rest of the 1960's, you'd be hard-pressed to find a film actor who was more consistently bankable and electric than Steve McQueen.  In 1966, he won his first (and only) Academy Award nomination for The Sand Pebbles, a commercial triumph which got 8 nominations in total (McQueen would lose to Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons).  But it was in 1968 that he arguably hit his peak.  The most famous film of his career came out that year, the action flick Bullitt, which would be considered by many to be the greatest action film ever made (I liked it, but am not going to be quite that superfluous).  But I'd already seen that film, and with the Saturdays with the Stars, we stick entirely with movies I haven't seen of these actors, so we're going to focus on the other Oscar-winning film that McQueen made in 1968, a movie that was more polarizing with critics but nonetheless continued his trend of printing money: The Thomas Crown Affair.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is odd, and I'm going to start that right out because the plot is a bit thin.  It essentially follows Thomas Crown (McQueen), a bored millionaire who recruits a bunch of men (who know neither him nor their conspirators) to rob a bank, which they do successfully (and somewhat amusingly) in the film's opening moments.  It then shifts gears, with us meeting Vicki Anderson (Dunaway), a breathtaking blonde who is also clever, and who quickly figures out that Crown surely robbed the bank.  But there's a problem-there's no evidence other than common sense (and intuition), and both Crown & Vicki are mad horny for each other.  So Vicki is torn into a game of cat-and-mouse, with her seemingly closing in on him...all the while not realizing that she's getting played.  The film ends with Crown attempting another robbery, one that works perfectly and that he's confessed to Vicki already, implying to her that she loves him too much to stop him.  When she does, by showing up in the cemetery, she realizes that he did not, in fact, trust her, giving her the money from the second bank robbery for sport (along with his spectacular navy blue Rolls Royce), while he jets off to anonymity with the money from the first robbery.

Like I said, the plot doesn't resonate in a big way.  As I explained it above, it's quite straightforward, but doesn't read that way when you're watching the movie.  This is in part because it's severely underwritten-we don't get a lot of sense of who these characters are out of context with each other.  McQueen's Crown is essentially a thrill-seeker, a playboy, but we don't get much more.  Meanwhile, the only thing we learn about Dunaway's Vicki is that she doesn't play by the rules, which of course means that to all of the men around her, she's portrayed as a bitch (even though most of her best traits are lauded in Crown).  It's frustrating, and it feels stretched, like we're trying to make an excuse for this movie to exist.

But you see a 4-star review for a reason, and that's because it looks incredible.  The cars, the beaches, the costumes, the grand camerawork, it's all sublime.  There is a scene where Dunaway & McQueen, both just impossibly sexy, play the randiest game of chess you can ever imagine, us darting from his icy blue eyes to her pillow lips, each of them thumbing the pieces as if they're taking off each other's clothes.  Combined with a grand score, and the classic "Windmills of Your Mind" (one of the best movie songs of all time), it all adds up to film being a visual medium: who cares if none of it makes all that much sense when you are just looking for a cigarette to light afterward.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Film: The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen is a weird star persona today.  In his era, McQueen was a big name, one of the biggest in movies, but because of a combination of factors (movies that aren't entirely in the modern zeitgeist, as well as his estate limiting his visage in merchandise after death), he's not remembered in the same way as other stars of his era.  James Dean died younger, Elvis Presley was more ubiquitous, Robert Redford & Paul Newman lived longer and were therefore able to make movies with men like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, & Chris Evans (i.e. the next generations of action heroes).  McQueen is remembered today by pop culture for Bullitt, being really cool, and dying young.  But he made a comparable amount of hits to Redford & Newman, and certainly more than Dean or Presley and he started it earlier in his career.  While he spent most of the 1950's doing television, theater, and B-movies (like The Blob), a chance skirmish in the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra essentially fired Sammy Davis, Jr. from working on Never So Few after they had a fight) gave McQueen the chance to really prove his worth, nearly stealing the picture from Sinatra.  The following few years included some massive hits, all led by McQueen, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and The Carpetbaggers, a now-forgotten sudser that was the #4 film of 1964, behind certified icons of the year Mary Poppins, Goldfinger, & My Fair Lady.  All of this is to say that by 1965, when McQueen was leading an all-star cast of Old & New Hollywood figures, he was already one of the definitive actors of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite its name evoking a gangster picture, The Cincinnati Kid is not an actual action film (we'll get into a few of those to match our monthly theme with McQueen in the coming weeks).  The film is about The Kid (McQueen), a dynamite poker player who is tired of playing big games around New Orleans, and wants to move up in the ranks, potentially even moving to Miami, but knows he needs to beat Lancey (Robinson), the greatest poker player in the city, first.  The film's first half really focuses on the lead up to this, with Lancey clearly threatened by the Kid potentially coming for his throne, while the Kid's relationship with his best friend Shooter (Malden) and his girlfriend Christian (Weld) are thrown asunder, particularly as Shooter is blackmailed by local mobster Slade (Torn) into trying to fix the match for the Kid.  The film's most famous scenes are in the back half of the movie, when we see an aggressive, long-stakes game of poker between the Kid & Lancey, along with a host of other characters, most colorfully Joan Blondell as a boozy gambling diva named Lady Fingers.  The movie ends with Lancey once again beating the Kid, proving that youth and his cool demeanor are not enough to dethrone the champ.

The film's ending is maybe the most interesting part of the picture.  The entire high-stakes game is really something, and genuinely (and surprisingly, for a sports film) thrilling to see who might win.  It's pretty clear that so many of the side characters, especially Slade & Shooter's lusty wife Melba (Ann-Margret) want the Kid to win, which in movie language means that he won't, but the idea of the villainous older guy needing to make way for a new generation is also a trope of this genre that is ignored.  The ending also differs depending on the cut you see.  The one I saw was not what director Norman Jewison wanted.  He wanted a much more dour ending, with the Kid losing a game of penny-pitching against a kid who has been trying to beat him all film, ending with another shocking defeat for our leading man.  Instead, we get a more conventional ending with McQueen & Weld embracing, her forgiving him for having slept with Ann-Margret a few minutes earlier.

The movie's script needs tightening in this regard, but I get why this became storied in the world of poker, as it glamorizes the skill needed to make it in the world of poker, and the badass nature of it.  Most of the young cast is really hot, sexy cool spilling out from every corner of the film, including the end credits with a sleek, jazzy song by Ray Charles.  This might not shock people reading this about, say, McQueen or Ann-Margret or Tuesday Weld, but modern audiences will shocked to be reminded that Rip Torn at one point was a total Chad.  I can't quite put my finger on what might improve this film (one wonders if Karl Malden was miscast...you could see this part being played better by, say, Gene Hackman a couple of years later, and I say this as someone who generally likes Karl Malden), but most of it's great, including Robinson in one of his last roles, and Blondell totally stealing the picture.  As for McQueen-he plays this placid, unflappable, introverted character so well it makes sense it would become his go to for much of his career.

Saturdays with the Stars: Steve McQueen

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we talked about Charles Bronson, an actor who in the 1960's had a lot of promise as a performer who would, in the bluntest of terms, sell out for insanely high paychecks when Hollywood eventually found a niche for him in violent movies.  Bronson, in many ways, would become the template for a lot of the stars we'll profile in the back half of 2026, men who showed promise in early films but would frequently sell out their talent for bigger paychecks.  However, in May we're going to talk about a star who is so singular in Hollywood he doesn't really have a contemporary or a predecessor (though many have tried).  He therefore stands out as both an action star (he would star in some of the most successful action films of the late 1960's and early 1970's, and would rival Bronson as the highest-paid star in Hollywood), but also as an introvert's action hero, a man who would gain an Academy Award nomination during his period of great success for Best Actor, and would die far before his time, still shrouded in enigma.  This month's star is Steve McQueen.

McQueen's early childhood, like much of his life, has a sense of drama and mystery that feels clouded with a bit of tragedy.  His stunt pilot father abandoned him when he was less than a year old, and his mother eventually gave him up to live with his grandparents.  His mother would eventually remarry, bringing him back to her life (and an abusive stepfather), which led him to being sent to a reformatory school, where he matured quickly, and eventually served a brief stint in the US Marines before starting to act, first in New York and then in Hollywood, getting bit parts in TV shows and films, culminating in his first lead role in the classic horror film The Blob.  McQueen's big break happened later though, when Frank Sinatra (at the time in a feud with Sammy Davis, Jr. for comments that Davis had made about Sinatra's racist treatment of him, the rare time in their friendship where Davis stood up for himself), replaced Davis with McQueen in Never So Few, directed by John Sturges, who would put McQueen as the lead in his next picture The Magnificent Seven, a film that would cement his place as a leading man in Hollywood for the next twenty years.

McQueen is the "King of Cool" and as fascinating offscreen as he was onscreen.  He had a penchant for race-car driving, competing in a number of competitions alongside his movie career.  He was devoted to physical fitness, while obsessively using marijuana & for stints, cocaine.  When he was one of the most famous people on earth, he would be arrested for a DUI that somehow didn't remotely derail his career.  He would romance actresses as varied as Mamie van Doren, Lauren Hutton, and (most famously) Ali MacGraw, being one of the principal super-couples of the 1970's.  He was indispensably cool...but still voted for Richard Nixon in 1968 when that was a decidedly square thing to do.  And he would appear as a new type of action star-one who had some of the bravado of Connery & Bronson, but also with a sensitivity that would be more at home with Marlon Brando or Paul Newman.  And all of this he would achieve in just 50 years, for as we'll talk about this month, unlike Connery & Bronson, Steve McQueen wouldn't live long enough to have late-in-life career changes that would reshape his legacy.

A Brief History of Congress Members on the Supreme Court

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) & Mike Lee (R-UT)

In a midterm election year, one where the president has a trifecta in his party, it has become a common discussion around Supreme Court retirements.  Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, & Joe Biden all had appointments during their first midterm of a like-minded justice retiring and being replaced by someone whose belief system matched the president, and George W. Bush had this happen preceding his second midterm.  Rumors have abounded for weeks over a plausible retirement, many of them centering around Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and while Alito has claimed he'll stay on through the end of the year...I'll believe it when I see it.

One of the interesting things that has popped up with this conversation has been around politicians who are interested in Alito's seat.  Sen. Chuck Grassley has publicly floated the names of Sens. Ted Cruz & Mike Lee for a theoretical opening, and there are reports from Axios that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been "begging" for a job in the Trump administration, or even a shot at the open Supreme Court seat.  This all feels a little odd for most modern Court watchers, who have largely seen established or career jurists on the Court.  Of the current nine members, all but one (Elena Kagan) served previously on the federal bench in a lower Court but it's not crazy for jurists to have a more blatantly political background before joining the Court.  While none of the current members have held political office (the last Supreme Court justice to have held political office in their career was Sandra Day O'Connor, who was an Arizona State Senator in the early 1970's), many have served in political offices prior.  Kagan was a member of the Clinton & Obama administrations, Thomas & Alito both served in the Reagan administration (Alito would also serve in George HW Bush's, as would John Roberts), Neil Gorsuch served in the second Bush administration, and Amy Coney Barrett & Brett Kavanaugh were both attorneys for the Bush campaign during the 2000 Florida recall.  So I thought it'd be interesting today to take a look, specifically at members of Congress, and their history of serving on the Supreme Court given the possibility that Lee or Cruz might join them.

Prior to the 17th Amendment, there was a relatively common history of members of Congress being nominated for or even winning seats on the Supreme Court.  Edward Douglass White is maybe the most notable member to do this, having served as a US Senator from Louisiana for a few years, and was chosen as a compromise option by President Cleveland after two previous nominees he'd put before the Senate were rejected (White would go on to become Chief Justice, appointed by William Howard Taft, the man who would eventually succeed him to that position, and would serve a total of 27 years on the bench).

But we'll focus this article on those chosen after the 17th Amendment, when senators & House members were both elected directly by the public.  During that time, just five US Senators and one House member were chosen for the Supreme Court: George Sutherland, Hugo Black, James F. Byrnes, Harold Hitz Burton, Sherman Minton, & Fred Vinson.  The most recent of these was Minton in 1949 (it's worth noting that Earl Warren, who had been Governor of California prior, and is generally the most commonly-cited politician/Supreme Court jurist outside of Taft, was appointed later than this in 1953 by President Eisenhower), so there's not a lot of recent precedence for this.

Justice Hugo Black

Historically, senators had a much easier time in the very clubby upper chamber getting appointed to the Supreme Court.  George Sutherland, for example, was confirmed on the day of his nomination to the Supreme Court, as was James Byrnes, and Harold Burton was confirmed the day after his nomination, as was Fred Vinson.  The only two nominations of these six that appeared to have any sort of resistance were Black's and Minton's.  In Black's case, it was allegations that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (which turned out to be true), and in Minton's case there were allegations of cronyism, given he was a close friend of Harry Truman's from when they were in the Senate together.  But all six would be confirmed, either by voice vote or overwhelming margin.

This would not, however, be the case for Homer Thornberry.  While Minton was the last member of Congress to be put on the Supreme Court, Thornberry was the last time one was nominated.  Thornberry was nominated by President Johnson in 1968 for the Supreme Court, and at that point in many ways his time as a congressman from Texas (who had succeeded LBJ into the House) had been eclipsed by his appointment to the 5th Circuit in 1965 by Johnson.  Johnson had wanted Thornberry to take over for Associate Justice Abe Fortas, who had been nominated to succeed the late Earl Warren as Chief Justice.  But Fortas was in a contentious battle at the time of his nomination with Sen. Storm Thurmond (R-SC), who alleged that legal (but questionable) payments that Fortas had received through American University would color his judgment, and Fortas's views on pornography in relation to free speech had made him a cause celebre for Thurmond.  Eventually Fortas's nomination was lost as a result of the filibuster (signs of things to come) and given Fortas was a sitting Associate Justice, without him getting a promotion, Thornberry didn't have a place to go (and for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Johnson didn't just try to nominate Thornberry directly to be Chief Justice), and so Thornberry remained on the 5th Circuit bench for the remainder of his career.

Thornberry is the last time that a member of Congress was formally nominated, but that doesn't mean that rumors haven't come up repeatedly in recent decades that the trend could return.  Ronald Reagan looked at Orrin Hatch, Howell Heflin & Paul Laxalt for his open Supreme Court Seats, and John Danforth was considered by George HW Bush.  This has continued on with Joe Lieberman & George Mitchell mentioned by President Clinton, John Cornyn, Mike Crapo, Mike DeWine, & Mel Martinez by President George W. Bush, and during the Obama administration Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, & Claire McCaskill were all mentioned.  In fact, during Trump's first administration Cruz & Lee were also rumored for spots.  The only recent president to not have publicly floated names of a member of Congress is Joe Biden.

All of this is to say that the Cruz & Lee thing feels right on schedule-it would be weird if we didn't have Senators on the list of potential Alito replacements.  But as we've seen in the past 70 years, just because you're on the list, doesn't mean you won't be considered.  Trump's atypical approach to the job could change this, but this is definitely "believe it when I see it" instead of expecting Lee or Cruz to be truly considered.

Murphy's Law (1986)

Film: Murphy's Law (1986)

Stars: Charles Bronson, Carrie Sondgress, Kathleen Wilhoite, Robert F. Lyons

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Charles Bronson: click here to learn more about Mr. Bronson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

After Death Wish, Charles Bronson would spend the remainder of his career making, for lack of a better word, schlock, most of these movies for Cannon Films, a production company that produced our picture today Murphy's Law.  Cannon would make some notable films, including Runaway Train with Jon Voight & Eric Roberts, as well as Street Smart which featured a breakout role for Morgan Freeman (all three of these actors would get Oscar nominations for their parts), but it was best known for producing lucrative action flicks that would play really well in the emerging home video market.  In many ways it was a predecessor to the direct-to-video trend of the 1990's (and the later phenomenon of RedBox movies featuring fading action stars like Mel Gibson & Bruce Willis), and the two actors they were most well-known for working with were Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson.  Outside The Indian Runner with Dennis Hopper & Patricia Arquette, after 1980 Bronson would work pretty much exclusively on the 1980's equivalent of Poverty Row movies, making a fortune in the process, but largely eschewing any sort of acting legacy as none of these films post-Death Wish have really lasted in the public's memory.

(Spoilers Ahead) This doesn't mean that all of these films were bad, exactly, but they were formulaic and they were decidedly not Sergio Leone or John Sturges.  Murphy's Law is about a man who essentially feels like he's on autopilot (or maybe that's just Bronson's blasé performance).  Jack Murphy (Bronson) is a cop who spends the film's opening scenes arresting Arabella McGee (Wilhoite), a young carjacker with a foul mouth.  We see intercuts of a mysterious woman we later learn to be Joan Freeman (Snodgress), who is bent on revenge against Jack for imprisoning her years earlier, and frames him for murder, which means that he and Arabella must go on the run as he tries to solve the case.  The film involves a series of dead bodies stacking up, along with some nudity, drugs, and (because this is a 1980's action film with a female lead under the age of thirty) sexual assault, and a variety of character actors getting killed, including Bill Henderson, who you may recognize as the Cop in the movie Clue (or at least that's how I recognized him, though perhaps more learned people will know he was an accomplished jazz musician).  The movie ends with Arabella & Jack injured but clearly friends (and maybe more), while Joan is flattened on a pavement after a fall.

The movie almost works on a camp level, even if it's not remotely any actual good.  Wilhoite, whom you might know from either her years of voicing the title character in the cartoon Pepperann or from playing Luke's sister on Gilmore Girls, has some of the most ridiculous dialogue I've ever heard in a film.  She is asked to insult someone every 15 seconds, frequently with profane or even offensive (this movie is CRAZY homophobic, though notably there is in fact an actual surprise gay couple to at least make one of the insults feel accurate if still offensive), in a schtick that would basically suffocate your kidneys if you turned it into a drinking game.  We learn virtually nothing about Snodgress other than (as she goes) she's clearly mentally insane, but she tries her best to instill a sense of fun into these proceedings, but all-in-all, this film fulfills its purpose: it's fast-paced, feeding your baser instincts, and disposable.  That it isn't particularly good doesn't feel like Cannon (or Bronson's) concern since they already got your money.

This is where I put in that it's disappointing what Bronson would do with his later career, because he would never get a post-fame reassessment like some of his peers (I'm thinking specifically of Clint Eastwood & Burt Reynolds, both of whom would eventually become Oscar-nominated actors) would in the years that followed.  This wasn't for a lack of trying.  Bronson turned down the role of The Shootist (John Wayne's final role, and one of his best) because the main character was dying of prostate cancer, and Bronson didn't want to play that onscreen.  Ingmar Bergman was fascinated by Bronson, and tried to work with him, but Bronson didn't like Bergman's films & wasn't interested.  He tried out for a number of major movies of the era, including Capricorn One, Escape from New York, and bizarrely the lead in Superman, but wasn't "right for the part" and it went nowhere.

The most famous role, and one that would've changed his legacy that Bronson would turn down was of Curly in City Slickers.  Initially the role went to Jack Palance, but Palance had a scheduling conflict, and so they brought in Bronson for the part.  But at the time, Bronson's beloved wife Jill Ireland was dying of breast cancer, and Bronson wouldn't allow himself to work while she was suffering.  Bronson turned down the role, the City Slickers producers found a way to get Palance into the schedule...and Palance would go on to win an Academy Award for the role.  Bronson would never have a role of that caliber offered to him again, and would work irregularly until a hip surgery eventually made it impossible.  Toward the end of his life, before his death from lung cancer in 2003 at the age of 81, Bronson would walk with a cane, one that contained the ashes of Jill Ireland, whom he couldn't bear to be apart from, even in death.  The cane would be buried with him.

Next month, we're going to talk about a contemporary of Bronson's, and a frequent costar (they would make three films together), but one whose legacy post-fame was decidedly more critical-friendly...though his life would be considerably shorter than Bronson's which would have an even bigger impact on that legacy.

Abdul El-Sayed and the Limitations of a Blue Wave

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI)

This past weekend, the Michigan Democratic Party had their convention, where they nominated several candidates for major office, including Garlin Gilchrist for Secretary of State and Eli Savit (in something of an upset) for Attorney General.  The Senate race did not have a nominating component (the nominee will be chosen in the primary later this year), but that doesn't mean that the Democrats running weren't still speaking, and it was very clear which candidates had the most support.  Rep. Haley Stevens was literally booed at the convention, and as State Sen. Mallory McMorrow was leaving the stage, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed was already getting cheers from the crowd, with chants of "Abdul!" coming before McMorrow was gone from the podium.  Had the US Senate primary been decided by the convention, it's clear El-Sayed would become the Democratic standard-bearer to replace Sen. Gary Peters.

But conventions didn't decide this, nor should they (if you've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know that I think nominating conventions and caucuses are deeply undemocratic, and primaries choosing nominees is always preferable).  However, it's hard to ignore the clear momentum that El-Sayed has coming out of this with the base, and wonder what this could mean for the Michigan Democratic Primary, arguably the most competitive blue-held seat on the map in November (I think this is more at risk than Georgia).

While there is currently what looks like a blue wave approaching, Michigan is one of the swingiest of swing states in the country currently, and someplace the Democrats shouldn't be worried if they want to have the Senate majority, but polling shows that the race is close for the general election between all three of the Democratic candidates and presumed Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers (who just barely lost here in 2024).  Aggregate polling shows Stevens up over Rogers by 2-points, while he's up by less than a point over McMorrow, and up 2-points over El-Sayed.  None of these aggregates, it's worth noting, has either candidate above 45% of the vote.  This indicates to me that while this looks like a close race, it's one that will be decided by independents, likely people who have voted for Trump (at least once), but have been open in recent years to Joe Biden, Gary Peters, Elissa Slotkin, and especially Gretchen Whitmer.  If you want to win this, it'd be wise to pull a play from Whitmer's playbook: someone who is results-focused, charismatic, and willing to bend across the aisle when needed to get stuff done for the state even if they're generally reliable blue.

El-Sayed does not have that reputation.  While Stevens (as the moderate) has clear crossover appeal, and McMorrow's plain-spoken directness (and honestly her really impressive retail politicking skills) cover that she's nearly as liberal as El-Sayed (a similar tactic that James Talarico is employing in Texas), El-Sayed has a number of red flags that are going to make winning over Trump/Whitmer voters challenging.  He has actively courted the support of Hasan Piker, the controversial far-left activist who has faced increased scrutiny from those in the party who think he's an unhealthy addition to the coalition (it's worth noting that Elissa Slotkin, who successfully won a Senate seat while Donald Trump won her state last year, basically the definition of whom we should model a race upon, has refused to meet with Piker).  He has also vocally endorsed the "Defund the Police" movement, something neither Stevens nor McMorrow have backed.  Regardless of your opinions on this movement, this is not a popular one, certainly not in purple state Michigan.

I will own, because I've gotten comments on various platforms about Graham Platner, that unlike Platner I would be able to hold-my-nose and vote for El-Sayed even though I don't agree with him on everything.  But I do sincerely feel that he puts this seat not just at risk, but I think he would be the underdog.  Stevens is a generic Democrat (and a lousy campaigner), but she'd win the seat because it's a blue wave and she's a left-of-middle House member.  McMorrow is certainly to the left of the median Michigan voter, but she'd also be able to win this race, and given her talent and age (she's only 39), having a talented progressive representing a swing state would be a great way for us to prepare our bench for the 2030's & 40's.  She'd have six years to basically pull a Jon Ossoff (i.e. be known as a workhorse who's secretly more progressive than her public statements let on), but she seems capable of doing that.

But El-Sayed-I don't buy it.  This is, at best, a Keith Ellison situation-where a much-to-the-left of the state candidate wins based off of a large swath of voters electing him even though though they don't like him much (and lucking out to get into two midterms that were either blue or abortion-focused).  But Michigan is not Minnesota (hence why, even though I'm not voting for her in the primary, Peggy Flanagan doesn't really get this sort of scrutiny from me as I think she'd still win the general, even if it's by less than Craig would).  A blue wave is not magical, and sometimes people's stats-based analysis ignores that there are outliers, and usually those outliers in a wave have something in common.  In 2010, Sharron Angle & Ken Buck lost races that they were expected to win...because they were lousy candidates and the states weren't willing to go that extreme with more generic Democrats as options.  The same can be said for Andrew Gillum & Mandela Barnes, the former losing a state that the Democrats had just barely lost two years prior (just like Michigan) by running too far to the left and the latter losing Wisconsin (about as close to Michigan as you can get) in a big part because "Defund the Police" was used against him.  These four candidates all feel very similar to Abdul El-Sayed, who like Graham Platner, seems unusually vulnerable to lose the same voters that his opponent (in this case a pretty generic Republican in the form of Mike Rogers) can take advantage of; the only problem is that while Platner has continually proven through polling that Maine might just discard its past trends (i.e. Susan Collins closing well with moderate, Dem-POTUS favoring women), polls in Michigan back up the theory that El-Sayed could easily lose to Mike Rogers.  And if El-Sayed loses here...the Democrats' Senate majority dreams go up in smoke.