Today is Saturday, May, 3, 2025. Boy, I’ve been away since Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Elliot and I got into our apartment yesterday just around now, which is close to 9:30. And today we commuted to Princeton to attend a 2nd-year birthday party for my closest friend’s granddaughter. Thank God we decided to take mass transit instead of driving to New Jersey. This was a better choice for us as we hadn’t even settled into our usual routine since we just arrived in Queens less than 24 hours earlier.

However, I would like to expound on my trip to Los Angeles last week to take in the TCM Film Festival from Thursday, April 24, through Sunday, April 27. I arrived a whole day earlier, on Wednesday, April 23, and had a little problem checking into my home away from home for five nights. The name of the “hotel” where I stayed was called the Fenix Hotel, but upon closer examination, it turned out to be an Airbnb instead of a traditional hotel. Of course, it behooved me to check it out before agreeing to stay there, but I really didn’t give it much thought – until I had trouble getting to my room around 8:30 or so. I was under the mistaken belief that I needed an access code for my room only, but I actually required two more codes: for the outside gate and an inner door. Since this was not your traditional hotel, management was not on the premises; I was left with only a telephone number with which to contact them. So with a great stroke of luck, I met a woman coming into the complex at the same time as I was trying to do, and she graciously gave me the two codes that I needed to gain access to the establishment and to my room. I took a picture of the original email they sent me with only my room code and added the two additional codes, which I referred to any time I found myself outside the “hotel.” Thus I had no issue with this place after my initial problem getting in. I even called the number left with me on the email and got speedy assistance when a staff person knocked on my door and told me what I was doing wrong with the coffee maker and gave me additional hangers.

Now to the film festival which didn’t get under way until Thursday, April 24, with the screening of George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the Star Wars series. This almost three-hour film provided us with a long, rambling interview with the creator of the franchise himself, George Lucas, conducted before the screening with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. This was a total delight, but I was not a fan of the franchise, so I had trouble staying up for the entire length of the film. This was the only film I saw that night since by the time it ended, it was close to 10, I believe. I went across the street to have a light bite at the restaurant attached to the festival’s venue, the Roosevelt Hotel.

The next day I made up for this anemic start to the festival by seeing five films. I also took a tumble on the slippery sidewalk after a brief spot of rain early in the morning. This was a rare event since it usually doesn’t rain for these festivals, but that day, it did. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt beyond my pride and, as expected, no one came to my aid at the time of my fall. I ditched seeing the first film at the Egyptian Theatre owing to my tumble since the theater was on Hollywood Boulevard which is where I slipped. Thus I went across to one of the Chinese Multiplex Theaters and saw my first movie: 1965’s Thunderball, James Bond’s third film in the series. As a treat, Luciana Paluzzi was interviewed by one of the hosts of the channel. She admitted to being 87 years young. She looked remarkably young considering her true age. Most of the film takes place under water, if you recall, and the action sequences were quite extraordinary, given that the third James Bond entry came out in 1965. Paluzzi played Bond villainess Fiona Volpe which is “fox” in Italian. During the interview, she mentioned she auditioned for the role of the good Bond girl, “Domino” Petacchi, but got the role of the “bad” girl instead.

Other films I saw included a lesser known film from 1934 called Servants’ Entrance starring Janet Gaynor and Lew Ayres who had a long-term film and television career. This was a pre-Code film but had no racy scenes that I could think of. It was a ditzy romantic comedy having Gaynor playing the pampered daughter of an automobile tycoon who falls on hard times and who devises an ingenious plot to disguise herself as a servant for another well-off family where she falls in love with the family’s chauffeur, here played by a very young Ayres. For this film, the inestimable Walt Disney inserted an animated sequence that, to me, was superfluous, given the action of the film.

Other films I saw on Friday were a tense drama from 1957 called Edge of the City which starred Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes. This film was totally dissimilar to the last one I saw at the Egyptian Theatre, as it was a powerful depiction of an interracial friendship on the docks of New York harbor where Cassavetes played a man who was running from his past and Poitier portrayed a family man just trying to make a buck while being in the crosshairs of a racist foreman, here played by Jack Warden. This was directed by Martin Ritt who was known for his gritty style of filmmaking.

One of the highlights of that day was seeing 1990’s Misery and hearing an interview of director Rob Reiner and star Kathy Bates conducted by Ben Mankiewicz. One of the memorable quotes she made during the interview was when Mankiewicz mentioned if Bates were ever in a psychotic relationship depicted on the screen in Stephen King’s adaptation of his work and she quipped, “No, but there’s time!”

My last film was a hoot: 1975’s The Rocky Horror Show which was scheduled to go on at 11:59 pm. but didn’t start until 12:20 or so. There one of the stars of the film, Barry Bostwick, was interviewed by Alicia Malone, another host of the channel. Thank God he was interviewed before the screening since it went past 2 a.m. I haven’t seen this film with an audience for many years, and I sensed that the TCM audience was a little restrained, given the looniness of the audience members who generally see this at theaters at 12 midnight. We were given a bag of props to wear and hoist around, but there was no throwing anything at the screen. There was also a shadow cast performing in front of the screen as the story unfolded before our eyes. The way this screening was much tamer than ones playing around the country was that I actually heard more of the dialogue this time. Usually, you can’t hear the dialogue over the screaming from those in the audience. That morning I didn’t get to bed until after 3.

Saturday I saw only four films, not five. In the morning, I saw two sci-fi classics: Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and Colossus: The Forbin Project, released in 1970, and way ahead of its time, as it portrays the pernicious effects of AI over 50 years ago. This film stars an unknown Eric Braeden who was cast as Dr. Charles Forbin, who develops a supercomputer named Colossus which was supposed to control U.S. weapons systems, but as it so happens, it has designs of its very own that include murder and the control of the world that it was initially designed to protect. Here Braeden provided the only political comment of the entire festival as he urged voters to choose their leaders wisely the next time.

My last film of the day was seeing Humphrey Bogart in a lighthearted comedy from 1955: We’re No Angels where he costarred with Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray. Here Bogart, Ustinov, and Ray play three Devil’s Island escapees who meddle in the affairs of a failing shopkeeper, Leo G. Carroll and his wife, played by Joan Bennett. They are experiencing financial difficulties at the hand of their malicious cousin, here played by Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, and this is when the “angels” set things right with their holy meddling. This film was shown in its initial VistaVision print and the jokes were fast and furious. When I’ve seen it by myself, I never laughed as heartedly as I did while seeing it with a huge audience.

It’s getting late here, so I’ll end with the highlight of the last day of the festival when the 30th-anniversary of 1995’s Heat was shown with an appearance by its director, Michael Mann, and its major star, Al Pacino, at the beginning of the film. What sets this film apart from others is that Robert De Niro and Pacino share screen time together for the first time. Although they previously costarred in Godfather Part II, they never appeared on screen together – until 1995. The film is memorably known for its extended shootout scene in downtown Los Angeles which seemed so damn real.

I haven’t even mentioned going to Arizona on Monday where I met Elliot in Phoenix and we stayed with our cousin “Joan” in Scottsdale. Tomorrow could be Part II then.

And so it went!

This is TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.

This is Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings introducing a rare film from 1933 called Moonlight and Pretzels on Sunday which was a knockoff of Forty-Second Street, which was more successful and had a better-known cast than this Broadway musical.

This is the late Natalie Wood’s daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, and her daughter, Clover, born in 2012. They were interviewed by Alicia Malone on the screening of Wood’s 1961 tearjerker Splendor in the Grass costarring heartthrob Warren Beatty. This film was shown in all of its restored glory in one of the Chinese Multiplex Theaters.

Here are Rob Reiner and Kathy Bates being interviewed by Dave Karger.

Here is “Brad,” Barry Bostwick, from The Rocky Horror Show.

Here is George Lucas being interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz.

Here are Michael Mann and the great Al Pacino being grilled by Ben Mankiewicz.