OVP: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Film: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson, Nanette Fabray

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound, Scoring)

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 Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn lasted as a movie star for decades, but as one who was pretty much unimpeachable in terms of his box office, this period lasted roughly from 1935-1942, at which point he was oftentimes the biggest star on the Warner Brothers lot, give or take Bette Davis & James Cagney.  During this time, Flynn was married to the same woman, actress Lila Damita, but he had a history of womanizing.  Like Gary Cooper before him, he had an affair with Lupe Velez, and would get drunk off of William Randolph Hearst's vodka.  This reputation as a party boy was in stark juxtaposition to the men he'd play onscreen, frequently honorable scoundrels, or in the case of today's movie, a truly honorable man stuck in an impossible situation between two women.  This would also pair Flynn with both of the actresses that he'd be most associated with in his career: Olivia de Havilland, whom he would have a largely amicable relationship with, and Bette Davis...with whom he would not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a glossy historical melodrama, one where facts should not get in the way of a good monologue.  Private Lives is about an aging Queen Elizabeth (Davis, in de facto kabuki makeup), who is clearly desperately in love with the handsome, popular Earl of Essex (Flynn), but cannot have him in the way that she wants because it would put at risk her power.  She instead constantly finds herself at odds with him, usually in open court, and has fights with him, using her lover as a pawn in a number of battles, oftentimes risking his life as punishment for not returning her love in the way that she wants, because he's also power-hungry.  This all happens while the beautiful Lady Penelope (de Havilland) is also pursuing the Earl, which in the film's final moments we're led to believe was nothing, and that Elizabeth was his own true love.  Of course, at that point Elizabeth has publicly demanded the Earl's head for trying to be her equal, and there is no way out for the Queen, doomed to forever remain unmarried & unloved (except by England).

This is territory we've been to cinematically-Elizabeth's inability to find love because she is not beautiful and demands power instead has been informed by everyone from Helen Mirren to Glenda Jackson to Cate Blanchett to Margot Robbie (even Bette would go to this well twice).  Davis, at the peak of her power and beauty, wears intense makeup that makes her look, well, hideous (and years older than she was), in some ways foreshadowing her later triumph in Baby Jane Hudson.  But the movie, despite looking divine (the costumes, art direction, & cinematography are all a triumph, though why it got a special effects nomination at the Oscars is beyond me...the Scoring nomination is a bit cheeky given there's a song sung by Olivia de Havilland's character written by the actual Walter Raleigh, here played by Vincent Price in an early role), is kind of a snore.  Davis overacts to the rafters (with diminishing returns), de Havilland is fun but too small of a part, and Flynn's performance is a bit underwhelming.  Flynn is so grand in swashbuckling roles, but (as we'll see in the coming weeks), he was a somewhat limited actor when it came to going beyond that ken.  He is breathtakingly beautiful in this-it takes an actress as confident as Davis to appear in this kind of makeup against Flynn, who looks like a Raphael painting in some scenes, and risk being thought ugly, but I don't think he can land some of the scenes, save for the last 15 minutes, when he's betrayed by Davis & they both seem to be in a much better movie.

Offscreen, Davis and Flynn were not close in the same way that he was with de Havilland, and it's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of their relationship given that Davis would outlive him by decades, and therefore be able to go on talk shows (and discuss in memoirs) what she thought of him, and regularly change her mind.  She seemed to not like his ethics as an actor (finding he preferred celebrity more than the serious craft that Davis believed screen-acting), and also thought it beneath her to share billing with him in the film (you'll note, watching it now, that Davis, not Flynn, gets top billing, which makes sense in retrospect given her legend, but at the time would've been a genuine debate as both were equally valuable to Warner Brothers).  Davis wanted Laurence Olivier, who wasn't famous enough to get a role like this in 1939 (Wuthering Heights had not come out when production was in motion), and at one point (according to Hollywood legend) actually slaps Flynn for real in one scene, rather than faking it as would be typical on a production, which caused Flynn to become ill.  Davis, though, had kinder words about Flynn than I do in this movie, conceding that she thought him very good years after the fact while watching the movie, and telling de Havilland "he can act!"

Can Trump Beat the Six-Year Midterm Senate Curse?

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) & Donald Trump

The conventional wisdom about November's elections from most pundits seems to be that the House flipping blue is a foregone conclusion (perhaps even exacerbated by the mid-decade redistricting arms race President Trump insisted upon), but the Senate remains a very steep climb.  This feels accurate on its surface.  Of the competitive races, it does feel like Democrats are in-line to hold all of their current seats (with Michigan or Georgia the toughest hold, but even then Team Blue is in the driver's seat), and that there are true tossups in Maine & North Carolina that, with a blue wave, probably tilt to the Democrats (this past week Republicans got their best recruit of the cycle in the form of Susan Collins running for another term, but even then Collins is in for the toughest environment she's run in since 2008, a cycle she was largely ignored despite the Dems having a good recruit...something that won't be the case in 2026 even if she might arguably have a lesser opponent).

But beyond that, people seem to be operating under the assumption that the Senate contest will not be an even playing field, and that the Republicans seem likely to lose seats, but not their majority.  This is fair-other than Maine & North Carolina, there is no seat on the map that Kamala Harris won by less-than 10-points that the Democrats can target, with the next bluest state (for Harris) being Ohio which she missed by just over 11-points.  This is exacerbated by recent presidential midterms for Donald Trump & Joe Biden where their party actually had a net gain of Senate seats (in 2018 & 2022), with the assumption being that we just don't see swings like that anymore.

However, I want to introduce a new idea here that I don't see discussed a lot, and that's because we haven't really experienced since 2014: the six-year midterm itch.  The second midterm is typically when the public becomes tired of the sitting president-six years of having to endure the same face as a fickle American public results in the American electorate getting restless, and it has historically done some odd things for the president's party in the Senate.

For the sake of this article, we're going to look at the four most recent six-year midterms: 1986 (Reagan), 1998 (Clinton), 2006 (Bush), and 2014 (Obama).  In these cycles, with the sole exception of Clinton (more on that in a second), the president's party got destroyed at the ballot box.  In 1986, the Democrats picked up 8 Senate seats, in 2006 the Democrats won an additional six seats (I'm counting Joe Lieberman as a Democrat here), and in 2014 the Republicans netted 9 seats.  This is a gargantuan turn, and in all three cases, it was worse than what the president endured in the Senate for his first midterm.

This is partially because the Senate, which is a six-year cycle, was anniversarying a really good year for the presidency-the first year that he came into office (and in the case of all but Bush, they came in with landslide victories).  This isn't true for 2026, which is perhaps the biggest nuance here-in 2020, the last time most of this year's senators was up for reelection, Trump lost, and it was a much better cycle for the Democrats.  But the idea that the public is tired of the president was very evident in all but one of these cases: like Trump, Obama & Bush were under-water in their approval ratings, and Reagan had also seen a huge decrease in his popularity.  Again, only Clinton (who had the best approval ratings of the quartet) was popular, and that was reflected in a Senate cycle where 3/5 of the closest Senate races ended up going blue (and the two that didn't involved a deeply unpopular, scandal-prone Senator who nearly won despite that, and a state that was in a transformation into one of the reddest in the nation...that still nearly stayed blue despite polling showing it a likely flip).

I will note that Republicans can feel comfortable to a degree here.  In 1986, eight of the nine Senate races that flipped (all but Maryland) were states that Reagan had won by double digits, but partisanship got in the way more in 2006 and 2014.  In 2006, only one race (Montana) was one Bush had won by double digits the previous cycle, and in 2014 there were none that Obama had won by that margin.  Admittedly, Tennessee in 2006 nearly flipped (and Bush won that by double digits), and in 2014 the problem may have been that there just weren't that many states to begin with that the Republicans might have flipped in this scenario because Obama had won so few of them by double-digits (only six states that went for Obama for double digits were held by Democratic senators in 2014, in part because 2008 had been such a blood bath for the GOP, something that was not the case to the same degree for Trump in 2020).

All of this is to say that we don't know what impact that this will have.  Historically, six-year midterms are rough for the incumbent party, and I think Republicans (or pundits who favor their chances) are taking a bit too much comfort in Trump's impressive turnout in 2024.  I'll close with this-in 2018, a year where Republicans inexplicably picked up two Senate seats, all but one of those seats (Florida, its own universe electorally) were in states that Trump won by 18+ points in 2016.  Do you know what Alaska, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, & Kansas all have in common?  They're all states with Senate elections this fall...that Donald Trump won by less than 18-points.  Food for thought.

My Thoughts on ChatGPT

I'm not entirely sure why we're doing a pair of technology-related articles, neither of which are particularly featuring a film or political angle, but after we talked about Twitter yesterday, I thought it would be fun to do another "get John's opinion" article about the other problematic tech app that everyone in the world seems to have a complicated relationship with: ChatGPT.

I have not been shy about my dislike of AI, and by proxy, ChatGPT (see here for a recent rant).  But, like virtually everyone right now, there is a societal (and occupational) pressure to understand how ChatGPT works, and what its benefits are.  So I, after occasionally tinkering with it, have started to (on occasion) use it.  And I wanted to share a few observations I had about it that feel both helpful, and really terrifying.

Editor's Note: This article is about ChatGPT.  For the record, no article on this blog has ever, or will ever, be written by ChatGPT or an AI-writing app.  If I ever get to the point where I want to do that, I'll give up writing first.  Wanted to state that straight away!

The Good

Here's the dirty secret-there are aspects of ChatGPT that I will own are genuinely useful.  I think the biggest one that I've run into is in helping me create a new workout plan, which has been the biggest thing I've used it for.  I have four separate goals I'm working on right now in terms of exercise: losing weight, running a sprint triathlon, climbing Pike's Peak, and (vainly) trying to protect gains in some of the "glamour" muscles because I'm a single gay man and that's something you keep as a calling card for dates.  I have a finite amount of time each week, and can only devote so much of it to exercise, and so I had struggled for weeks to figure out exactly what to do in terms of my workout.  So I asked ChatGPT to formulate a workout for these four combined, with at least one rest day, and one that worked largely around my work schedule.

And it did!  The plan it came back with was genuinely impressive.  It had room for my triathlon, was able to incorporate in extra leg days to start building on Pike's Peak, kept me focused on extra cardio for losing weight, and kept at least a couple of days for glamour muscles.  It also amends really easily-you can tell it to, say, give you at least one day for yoga or have it track your weight-lifting progress (or share feedback like "my gym doesn't have that equipment-can you give me a comparable exercise that doesn't require that equipment?") and it does.  There are a lot of ethical issues with this, and from a privacy/safety concern I'm not putting in extra information (i.e. it does not know my age or weight, which on my end I need to be able to keep track of since that greatly impacts a workout routine's ability to help), but what it is doing is, I must admit, a quality workout routine.  In general, the thing I have most used it for is a brainstorming partner-not someone doing the work (though it is doing a lot of it), but someone that can bounce ideas off of and put it into something legible.

The Bad

There are a lot of bad things about ChatGPT.  There are the obvious (the ethical questions about its impact on the environment, a primary reason why I have limited it to only the exercise project and to learning how to use it given that its expectation in my industry to have a cursory knowledge of it) as well as the subtle (I think it's dangerous to rely upon AI for things like writing and reading comprehension skills, because those need to be continually practiced to stay sharp), but the most noticeable thing about it is the accuracy.  

ChatGPT says in its description that it can be wrong (it's right there when you're typing: "ChatGPT can make mistakes"), but I think there's a really scary reality that most people accept whatever ChatGPT shares with them as fact, when it's decidedly not true.  I had used the tool as a test to a question I don't know the answer to: who was the fourth woman to join the DGA?  It's generally accepted that the first three women in the DGA were Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, & Elaine May.  As far as I'm aware, these are the first three women to direct feature films for major studios, and so they'd be the first three members, but I could not find any evidence of who was fourth on Google or through searching library databases, so I decided to ask ChatGPT.

ChatGPT initially said May was fourth, which I allowed could be true, but it couldn't give me anyone that might have been third without prodding.  It eventually provided the name Shirley Clarke as fact for the third member, but given that Clarke was an independent filmmaker in the 1970's who never made a studio-driven picture (i.e. she didn't need to join the DGA in order to make the movies she made), I pushed back, asking for evidence that Clarke was the third...which it couldn't provide.  It just had made an intelligent guess.  It eventually came up with a few names that plausibly could've been the fourth woman: Lynne Littman, Nell Cox, & Dolores Ferraro are all names ChatGPT provided that make sense as the fourth woman, as they all made Hollywood-studio driven film & television, and if it is one of these women, it's probably Cox who directed an episode of The Waltons a couple of years before the others had such projects, and as a CBS-broadcast show she would've been required to join the union.  But ultimately it could not find the answer-ChatGPT was not able to prove that there was a woman to join the DGA before Elaine May other than Arzner or Lupino, and could not definitively prove who the fourth member was.

And that would be okay...had it just said that to begin with-it's possible this is an answer the internet doesn't have the answer to, and the only way to find out would be to write the guild directly.  I certainly couldn't find it, and I've tried to find this answer for a while.  But ChatGPT initially, definitively, stated that May was fourth and Clarke was third, and it took me pushing back to make it think otherwise.  That's a problem because you have to have a pretty extensive knowledge of a subject to be able to get at that level of detail-most people would've taken ChatGPT as fact in this situation, and thus provided the wrong information.  And as more people publish research they have from ChatGPT as if it's fact in articles that will be data-scraped...it will be harder & harder to correct.

The Ugly

There's a lot of ugliness with ChatGPT.  The biggest one is obviously occupational.  Going back to my exercise example, there's a clear answer who could've helped me on this previously, and in fact had helped me in the past: a gym trainer.  I have seen gym trainers and nutritionists through the years, and they are more than capable of doing this.  Admittedly, I wouldn't have hired a trainer or nutritionist in this regard because I cannot presently afford one, and so in some ways this is not replacing a job more so than it is saving me time...but let's be clear, that's not how everyone is going to use this, and it is scary that we are lifting the human element out of a job like this, particularly given that it requires humans schooling and knowledge to do set jobs (and the humans, even with as well as ChatGPT did, are better at it because they see you as a person and not just something statistical to add together...and I suspect those same humans, through social media posts & videos, are probably the ones crafting what ChatGPT gave me to a large degree).

But for me, the biggest concern with ChatGPT, and the eeriest thing about it is that it was so freaking nice.  People have mocked in TikTok's and other social media how ChatGPT is encouraging to the point of laughable-it will literally say any question you ask or any idea you have is a good idea (South Park had fun with this in a recent episode).  But I will be honest-it felt kind of nice to have someone (or, more correctly, some thing) care about this project that most people in my life don't care about.  Most people I know do not care who the fourth woman in the DGA is, and wouldn't have wanted to talk about it.  Most people in my life would not have the time to help me pick a workout routine that specific.  That ChatGPT does this, and is so gracious & encouraging, is a weird sort of Twilight Zone-thing.  You can easily see people using this not just to replace people, but to replace human relationships.  ChatGPT (for a price) always has time for your thoughts & expressions, and is nicer than an increasingly cruel world.  I put a photo of Joaquin Phoenix in Her next to this section, because it's bizarre how closely it resembles his experience-AI is not mechanical, but it's warm and inviting like Scarlett Johansson's Samantha.  That it's still a machine, and something that is designed to want to pull you in & use it as much as possible, makes it easy to see people forming parasocial relationships (that feel suspiciously like real relationships) with it, a terrifying thought particularly for a tool that (if I'm being honest) does have genuine usefulness.

The Slow (Personal) Fall of Twitter

I was not an early adopter to Twitter.  In terms of social media, honestly, the only platform that I really got into early was Facebook, and that's because I was the right age (I was in college) when it started to roll out, and was only available to college students.  According to my profile on Twitter, I have been a member since 2015, which would put me WELL behind the curve of when it took off as a pop culture phenomenon for myself & fellow Millennials, and more in-line with when your grandma would've joined Facebook.

I joined Twitter because of this blog, quite frankly.  At the time I was thinking still about monetizing it, and how to expand my readership in a meaningful way, and I figured the best way was to have my social media presence be identified with it.  I chose actively when I first came to this blog to not put my personal information on it (i.e. I'm "John T" not my real full name here), because I wanted to write about politics without it getting back to my day job, but with that it meant that I needed to forego having social media connected to my name, like I had (at the time-I've since deleted) on Facebook.

And while I created other social media connected with this (at one point, if you can believe it, this blog had a Tumblr associated with it, and my Letterboxd, which is still active & will remain so as it's the rare truly healthy social media, is 100% related to this blog), Twitter became my dominant social media pretty much instantly.  I made genuine friends through it, I went on dates through it.  I had people talk to me that I would've NEVER imagined would know my name or acknowledge me.  I still have screenshots of people like Octavia Spencer and Martha Plimpton and John Green acknowledging me on the app.  The algorithm quickly caught on for me, with a sea of political insights, cute boys, awards chatter, cooking videos, and more cute boys.  As someone who hadn't been to a gay bar since I was 25 (I was in my thirties when I joined), I learned about gay culture in a way I never would have otherwise (a great juxtaposition about me is that I am both VERY chatty with people I like and almost chronically introverted otherwise).  It was also a respite for me as I navigated the tricky lens of moving into my thirties as a single person, when most of my college friends were getting married and having children (and largely not having a place for me in their new lives).

Which has made the destruction of the site since 2022 all the more wrenching.  Twitter was never a perfect thing, with misogyny and defamatory speech always a constant threat in your comments (I definitely have been called a name or two as an openly gay person on there through the years), but it was a reliable place.  With the blue checkmark system, you could KNOW that the person tweeting was Valerie Bertinelli or Patty Murray-you could confidently get the thoughts of a crew of people, and the algorithm valued you staying on, so it showed you what you wanted to see, which for me resulted in essentially a newspaper designed specifically for my interests.  It was a worthwhile place with flaws.

But Elon Musk altered that.  He made it a cesspool of lies and deception.  Blue checkmarks ended, as did most attempts to patrol the comments.  The algorithm still existed (I can like one video about the stars of Heated Rivalry and then see 100 videos afterward), but it became pointless, and frequently nauseating & insipid.  Whereas before I wouldn't see a post from a Republican unless they were an elected official (i.e. someone I might research for this blog), now I'll see MAGA accounts ad nauseum.  It's less important that I am interested in a post, and more important that EVERYONE is getting this type of ragebait propaganda.  Any semblance of discourse disappeared from it-look at the comments section of ANY public figure, particularly a politician, and you will see just heinous lies and cruelty to the most innocuous of initial posts.  Twitter is, well, the bad place, and an increasingly useless one.

But...I still couldn't quit it.  There were practical concerns for this.  In a different era, I might've just broken down, bought a subscription to the Washington Post or the The New York Times and called it a day.  But those newspapers ALSO are right-wing rags at this point, and really there's no place left on God's Green Internet to get quality American journalism in a name brand way like I did on Twitter in its heyday.  Whereas I once had 50 reporters who I would follow from various quality news sources, now it's hard to tell the real from the slop.  Twitter, even in its hollowed shell, was easier to tell truth from fiction than much of the mainstream news that had been ruined by conservative billionaires.

It was also a place that I could advertise my blog.  I no longer have any aspirations of monetizing it-that disappeared a couple of years after I joined Twitter, but I do care if people read this.  I write things that I think are interesting, and I think other people might enjoy them.  I also care about putting quality analysis (of film, politics, and in-between) out into the world, into a world where that's increasingly hard-to-find.  I also enjoy the connections I make on the blog-I read every comment, and try to write on most of them, and I know that people find my articles through Twitter.

But I'll be honest-if those were the only things that caused me to be on Twitter, I would have largely set it aside.  The people who follow the blog regularly know how to check it without my updates, and with me moving onto private mode about a year ago, the readership links from the site aren't what they used to be (not to mention that Twitter's search functionality is basically garbage at this point, an underrated way that Musk ruined the site as it was once better than any other social media site).  And I could find news other ways if I really wanted to do so.  But Twitter filled up my time.  In a post-pandemic world, where we are increasingly spending less time with other people or are feeling more isolated, Twitter was a way to feel like I was in a crowd, like I was hearing a chattering class that actually cared about my opinions.  To some degree that was true (people DO like and share my opinions and conversations there), but in most ways it was a mirage...it FELT like something meaningful when Musk's stripping of the site for parts had largely created something plastic, cheap, nowhere near authentic.

And so I am increasingly stepping away from it.  I have such a history on it (and the site is so addictive), that I am curious if I can (or want) to actually quit it for good, or whether this is just another of one of many attempts to leave the site.  I have tried to do that cold turkey before (most recently in the wake of the 2024 presidential election), and I don't think that's a good formula for me.  But also, I'm uncomfortable with how much time I waste there, and am at the point where I think the doomscrolling is, perhaps, feeding an anxiety issue that has been festering since the pandemic and I am keeping alive by indulging in behaviors I don't really approve of in myself.  People talk about how addictive social media is and how much they wish they'd just quit it & how jealous they are of people not on social media...but they don't quit it, and they can't seem to move on.  Part of me wonders if all of the talk about us being addicted to our phones is less hyperbole and more reality, and like smoking in the 1950's, decades from now people will be stunned that we were willing to actively do such a thing.  For me, it doesn't seem healthy, and as one of my major New Year's resolutions was to reduce my screen time (the average person spends over 5 hours a day on their phone...last week I finally got mine below 3 hours, with the ultimate goal being 2 hours or less but we're taking this in steps), I plan on starting with Twitter, removing the app from my phone, and just relying upon it on my laptop...possibly ending it for good (or more likely, having it become something that's fazed out where it once was a default the second I opened my phone).  It's weird doing this, an app I once loved becoming an app that I feel is bad for me, and one that (like many people) I am reluctant to quit because of a strange combination of impulse, nostalgia, addictiveness, and genuine usefulness.  But that is the journey I'm trying to take in 2026.

OVP: Captain Blood (1935)

Film: Captain Blood (1935)

Stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, Ross Alexander

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Picture, Sound Recording)...at least in terms of official nominations.  In reality, because of write-in awards, Captain Blood is usually regarded as having been nominated for Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Score (and nearly won the first two) because Warner's block voting allowed people to write in names that weren't actually nominated, so when we finally reach the 1935 OVP I'll have to make a judgment call on what to include...but only Best Picture & Sound are recognized by the Academy as official 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 Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

With some of the stars we've profiled in the past seven seasons, I've had a bit more time to really reflect on their careers and in some cases their careers were traditional enough that it was mostly just talking about that week's movie.  That...will not be the case with Errol Flynn, whose gigantic personal life is worthy of multiple biographies, and you can't really get to all of it in four articles.  So we'll break it up into four sections: his early career (and partnership with Olivia de Havilland), his peak stardom (and the juxtaposition between his big screen & real life personas), the sex scandal that dramatically changed his career (and changed in many ways the way that we talk about Hollywood scandal), and the bizarrely long list of things that were discovered about Flynn after his death, most of which is allegation since Flynn himself wasn't able to commentate on it.

(Spoilers Ahead) If you're going to talk about Errol Flynn's early stardom, you can't really do it without talking about Captain Blood, the 1935 film from Warner Brothers that turned him into a household name.  The film, seeing it for the first time (one of an increasingly small list of Best Picture nominees I've never caught before), is glorious.  It's a story about a young doctor named Peter Blood (Flynn), sold into slavery but bought by a clearly smitten woman named Arabella (de Havilland), and how he slowly works his way up in the ranks, specifically by treating the governor's gout.  In a bid to escape his bondage, he turns into a pirate (but an ethical one!), and storms the Caribbean, eventually finding Arabella captive (and buying her, thus paying his debt), before eventually, thanks to some honorable help to the English army, becoming governor himself, and wedded to Arabella.

The movie is silly, and it's a bit too dry in parts (when it wants to make sure you know that Peter is a fan of social justice, as this is a Warner Brothers movie), but you won't care for two reasons.  One, the production is scrumptious-gorgeous ships filled with detail, and special effects you kind of can't believe.  It's hard not to watch this and think of not just the Pirates of the Caribbean move, but also the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, as it uses many of the same motifs, particularly the battle scene.  If you're a Disney adult, this needs to be added to your list as you won't regret it.

The other is that Flynn and de Havilland are divine together.  At the time they were not famous.  De Havilland was only 19, and Flynn (despite some bit work in film & theater) had not struck it big yet.  But their chemistry is palpable, and they're both so freaking gorgeous.  That's the thing with Flynn-save for maybe Buster Crabbe, he was (by modern beauty conventions) possibly the sexiest man in movies, and he looks it, even with a ridiculously hideous haircut.  You see Olivia de Havilland swoon over him, and you swoon over him too.

And that was what audiences in the 1930's did-they demanded more of Errol & Olivia.  Both actors have been pretty forthright that there was a romantic attraction to each other, but that they did not consummate the relationship.  At the time, Flynn was married to Lila Damita (who, proving how incestuous Old Hollywood was, had just finished an affair with Captain Blood director Michael Curtiz), and de Havilland (whose later Hollywood conquests would include Jimmy Stewart and a tortured affair with John Huston) was about to become one of the many flames of Howard Hughes.  But their professional relationship would create one of the most important duos of the Classical Hollywood era, starring together in eight films between 1935 and 1941, after which Flynn would encounter unfathomable scandal and de Havilland would become a pioneer against the studio system.  But when they were on, they were undeniable.  And in the best-regarded of their movies, The Adventures of Robin Hood, they created one of the most enchanting films ever made.

Colin Allred's Shockingly Bad Bet

Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX)

It takes a lot in the year of 2026 for politics to surprise me...but today it did.  If you haven't been following, in the state of Texas, former Rep. Colin Allred (who is running a return bid for a seat in the US House) released a video on social media where he essentially called State Rep. James Talarico (who is running for the US Senate nomination against Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is aligned with Allred) a racist, and accused Talarico of calling him a "mediocre black man."  This was based off of a random TikTok account talking about a private conversation that the TikToker (Morgan Thompson) claimed to have with Talarico.  Talarico has since announced that he did not say this, and that the characterization of Allred was about his Senate campaign being mediocre, and not about him as a person.

First off-wow.  Second off, this is an insane to be happening just a few weeks before a Senate primary that has attracted national attention.  Coming off of a surprisingly robust Senate flip this weekend, the Texas Democratic Party felt like it was in a truly good position to make some gains later this year.  Talarico has been a fundraising powerhouse, out-raising Crockett, and increasingly looking like he will win the primary against her despite many people online (including me) initially assuming that she was a slam-dunk because of her devoted base.  This decision by Allred to take the word of a random TikToker, and elevate it to national news by accusing Talarico of being racist, with little founding, is really jaw-dropping, because it essentially throws a grenade into the primary, and makes it harder for either Democrat to win, and given that Allred is not dumb, I struggle to understand his actions here without thinking the worst: that he and Crockett organized this as part of a deal between the two to get her the nomination, one that pretty much everyone involved assumes she can't take to an actual win in November.

There's a couple of ways to dissect this, and I think let's start with what I believe, because part of this has to be opinion as I don't think everyone is speaking in good faith.  I do not believe that James Talarico characterized Colin Allred as a mediocre Black man.  I don't think Talarico, who is only 36 and therefore grew up his entire adult life realizing that the internet is forever, is that dumb.  I believe that the TikToker mischaracterized the conversation, and her open support of Jasmine Crockett implies she did this because she thought this would hurt Talarico's chances (which it might).  Whether or not Talarico actually believes this is between he and his conscience, but I don't think he's foolish enough to tell someone he barely knows and that he knows has a public forum like a TikTok account something that would end his career.  So let's start there: I don't think he did this, and I suspect on some level Colin Allred & Jasmine Crockett also don't believe it.

I do think, because he said he did, that Talarico characterized Allred's Senate campaign was mediocre.  But, let's be honest-it wasn't a particularly impressive campaign, though I don't know that I'd personally call it mediocre.  Allred lost to Ted Cruz by 8.5 points in 2024, while Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in Texas by 13.7 points, or a 5.2-point margin in Allred's favor compared to the top-of-the-ticket.  Candidates like Jon Tester, Ruben Gallego, & Sherrod Brown all did better than him.  Joe Biden & Beto O'Rourke both got better margins as Democrats when they ran in Texas.  Allred's campaign was clearly hurt by Kamala Harris doing so poorly, but had he run alongside Biden in 2020 with these kinds of numbers, even if he could've beaten Biden by 5.2-points (a big ask given Biden already did better than him to begin with, so more traditional coattails than those in reverse seems more likely)...he still would've lost.  Allred, let's be honest-was basically just an average Democrat, one who only looks good when you compare him to Kamala Harris (which is true of most Democrats running in 2024).  I personally wouldn't call his campaign mediocre, for the record...but it wasn't impressive, and it certainly wasn't the kind of campaign you should emulate if you want to flip a Senate seat in Texas.

But I think it's more important to focus on the "why" Allred is doing this.  It could be he's so thin-skinned he couldn't let a viral video like this go without needing to prove himself, but I would assume he has people in his camp that would have told him what a horrible idea this was even if is that self-conscious.  I suspect it's because he wants to try and destroy Talarico, making him apologize for a comment he didn't make (that Allred is mischaracterizing on purpose), in order to help Jasmine Crockett, but you have to wonder-to what end?  Crockett's not going to win, and this certainly didn't help her in the general election.  You have just made a poison-the-well comment that anyone that was on-the-fence about Democrats but liked Talarico is going to take as a sign that they aren't welcome with the Crockett campaign.  This would be campaign that would be challenging to get past in Maine or Minnesota, much less a state as ruby red as Texas.  Crockett knows she has a losing coalition headed into November, and what's worse is she arguably sees that Talarico could win.

And this is where things get a little bit unpleasant, because the logical answer here (for me) is Crockett & Allred are doing this to ensure no Democrat wins the Texas Senate race in November.  Looking at this practically, if Crockett wasn't running for this seat because she wanted to win it, but instead because she wanted to use the national exposure of a major Senate campaign, along with her media savvy (and a very valuable Senate email list that comes with such a race), there's one thing worse than her losing the primary: it's a Democrat proving that they can win the general election.  If Crockett & Talarico both lose, she can claim that she would've won had they nominated her, and if she is the nominee, Talarico becomes an asterisk regardless.  But if she loses the primary and he wins the general, she becomes, well, a loser.  And if her goal is a career in media, especially liberal media, going into that as a "loser" is not going to demand the kind of paydays she's after.  This is more speculation than I'd usually like to put into an article, but she has Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and the NRSC ecstatic right now...and she doesn't seem to want to stop that glee.  It's hard not to wonder if she cares more about Talarico losing than someone like Ken Paxton or John Cornyn losing.

But that's Crockett-it's harder to see what Colin Allred gets out of this.  Allred was initially running for the Senate, and is now in a tougher position than Crockett.  He already has a loss under his belt, he does not have the media following she does, and he had lost a lot of the sheen that he once had as a dragonslayer who defeated a GOP incumbent to win his House seat.  He's also only 42-years-old, and a second major loss would destroy his career.  I personally thought Allred might have a decent shot at his bid to get back into Congress in the 33rd district.  Rep. Julie Johnson ran to succeed Allred when he went against Cruz, but she's new in Congress, and this is a minority-majority district, most of which are historically represented by people of color (Johnson is a white woman).  But with this, he has made his own political future much more complicated.  It's possible that he is betting that Crockett will win his district, and he'll ride her coattails...but he would've done that anyway.  In all likelihood, this backfires on him, making him look petty (negative campaigning is very risky in Democratic primaries, particularly when people start out liking both candidates, which is the case for even the Talarico skeptical Democrats), and while Crockett might end up with a TV career...he ends up with nothing.  This is what's so baffling here-Allred chose to do this with little to gain personally, and intense amount to lose.  Why he chose to do it anyway is a question for which I don't have an answer.

Box Office Debate: Is Melania a Success?

It is not often that the two passions of this blog (politics & movies) overlap in a very real way, so I don't want to let this past weekend's premiere of the movie Melania pass without mention.  For the curious, on principal I have refused to see the movie, as I don't want to give the Trump family more of my money than I have to (I'm already inevitably doing that with these lawsuits the president is granting himself through the Department of Justice with our tax dollars).  But I am curious about the rather odd debate over the film itself, and its success.  While I always assumed that the Trump family would claim the movie was a big hit (as is their wont), the mainstream media (or what's left of it) hasn't been able to settle on a question of whether it exceeded expectations or counts as a box office hit, and as that is a pet hobby of mine, I thought we'd tackle it here.

First off, a couple of things to note.  Primarily, this is not the first time that an incumbent First Lady has dabbled in the mainstream world of entertainment.  While the First Lady has become a pop culture mainstay through her sheer existence (following the First Lady's fashion and details about her life are extremely common, and have been for well over a century), pop culture has been a big part of their planned lives as well.  Frances Cleveland was so popular advertisers used to put her face on everything from soap to tobacco to liver pills, and Jackie Kennedy's Tour of the White House won her an Emmy Award.  Nancy Reagan & Michelle Obama made guest appearances on television programs while they were in office, and Hillary Clinton won a Grammy Award.  In fact, by most measures Melania Trump has largely avoided (or been unable to break through) with her being the only First Lady since Bess Truman not to be photographed by Vogue magazine in some capacity (some, like Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, & Hillary Clinton, were on the cover something Melania only was before her husband entered politics), and she's also the only First Lady since Sesame Street began to not have publicly met a Muppet (one of my favorite bits of political trivia).  This documentary in many ways feels overdue, not in terms of me wanting it, but in terms of my surprise it hadn't happened yet.

But in terms of its success, I think we need to think of it by two definitions: did it beat expectations, and did it make a profit, because for a film like Melania, these are two very different answers.  Over the opening weekend the film made a worldwide total of $7.1 million.  By way of a documentary, that's really good.  Not counting things like concert films (where figures like Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and One Direction have had indisputable success at the box office), this is the biggest opening-weekend box office for a documentary since 2012, when DisneyNature's Chimpanzee came out (only because I'll never get this chance again to plug this on this blog, I have seen every single one of the DisneyNature films, and Chimpanzee is one of the better ones-my ranking is here).  That's impressive, I have to admit.  I don't know that I doubted it'd hit that number (more on that in a second), but it's on-its-surface a laudable achievement, particularly in an era where documentaries can't even get theatrical runs.  Also, given its universally bad reviews, it's hard not to be impressed that word-of-mouth didn't kill it.

It's also worth noting that this opens up a conversation about an untapped movie theater market: conservative filmgoers.  The biopic Reagan made $30 million last year (starring Dennis Quaid, it also hit those numbers while being crucified by critics), the Matt Walsh documentary Am I Racist? made $12 million (and turned a decent profit), and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza's Obama's America cleared $33 million (and made a large profit).  And then there's Sound of Freedom, a narrative film that had connections to the QAnon conspiracy theory that made a fortune at the box office, over $250 million, which honestly has allowed for production company Angel Studios to have created a cottage industry of MAGA-friendly dramas.  All of this is happening in markets like West Palm Beach, Dallas, and Miami that don't usually clock as some of the most profitable in the country for mainstream features (that favor places like Los Angeles, Boston, & New York).  If I was a studio executive, there would be lessons here I'd be taking in terms of finding a new crowd in an industry desperate to find levers to increase theater attendance.

But while you could argue straight-faced that it exceeded expectations, it is decidedly not a "hit" movie.  The film appears to have cost $40 million, and reportedly Ms. Trump herself will pocket $28 million of that in appearance fees from Amazon.  The rule of thumb for a movie is that it needs to make double the cost in order to make a profit (to account for marketing expenses), which would mean that for Amazon to see a return on its investment, the film would need to gross $80 million.  Not counting concert films and documentaries largely made to attract large format iMax audiences (i.e. the kinds of films that run in museums for decades), only four documentaries have made that much money: three animal-themed documentaries (March of the Penguins and two DisneyNature films-Oceans and Earth), and the political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 from Michael Moore, which stands apart as a sort of elusive, untouchable film in terms of box office in the way Gone with the Wind does (i.e. no one is ever beating that).  Melania will not come close to those movies in terms of their gross...

...and I suspect everyone involved knew that.  Brett Ratner appears to have signed on to direct the film solely because Trump then called Paramount to pressure them, despite Ratner's sexual assault charges, to greenlight Rush Hour 4, the follow-up to the massively successful film franchise (and probably the only way Ratner was ever going to get a movie of that type of budget, and with that kind of back-end potential, again).  Jeff Bezos funded the entire operation, including signing that $28 million check to Melania Trump...and then got a $581 million contract with the Air Force just a few days before the film's release.  It's hard not to see all of this as a pretty obvious money-laundering front for Trump to take private equity cash that both parties know will not end up making anyone a profit, and in turn giving out tax payer dollars without any personal harm (i.e. a multi-million dollar bribe) and giving the First Lady the sort of glamorous vanity project that mainstream media organizations like Vogue or broadcast television have pointedly refuse to provide.  Melania is, therefore, a film that, taken on its surface, is impressive in terms of its audience (and savvy movie executives might be able to see this and, with a slimmer budget, try and recreate the same formula to make a real profit-you could easily see, say, an Erika Kirk documentary about her life after Charlie Kirk's death doing similar numbers), but it's also not a successful film by any measure of it actually making money in the traditional sense...and is so obviously a con job that it's hard to take any conversation of it super seriously as the president openly trades in tax payer dollars to fill his (and his wife's) wallet.