Letting Go of "Looking" Has Not Been Easy

This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with minor adjustments. 

The first Sunday night without HBO's "Looking" came and went. Of course there would have been no "Looking" this past Sunday night even had the show been renewed, since the second much improved season had just wrapped. One of the funniest things I heard after the cancellation was this:

The good news is Looking thinkpieces are also cancelled."

Well, yes. Those are almost at an end, too.

The autopsy reports have to run their course and so does the mourning process. And if HBO makes good on its promise of a wrap-up movie (believe it when you see it), the cycle starts all over again in miniature even if the end point is still goodbye. Given all this finality, it's strangely apt that the second season's finest episode "Looking for a Plot" took places at a funeral (Doris's father) and sent Dom, Doris and Patrick spinning emotionally, even if they didn't quite realize it at first. But the mourning is real. At least for those of us who loved the show for what it actually was. More...

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Richard Glatzer, Co-Director of Still Alice (1952-2015)

Wash Westmoreland & Richard Glatzer. I believe this photo is from around the time of The Fluffer (2001)

Just two minutes after the last post, coincidentally about Still Alice but meant to be a random amusement, I read that Richard Glatzer the co-writer and co-director had died. He had been struggling with ALS for the past few years. If you'll excuse me getting a little sentimental, I'd like to tell you my personal story about him as a way of working through my sadness today.

I can't recall the exact circumstances of our meeting but just after I had moved to New York City in 1999, we began to talk over e-mail. He was quite literally my first online friend who was actually working in movies and television around the time I was trying to launch The Film Experience. If I remember correctly our online friendship was prompted by an interview I had done with Jackie Beat, my all time favorite drag queen, for my print zine (before the website). She had worked with Richard on his first film, the underseen gay indie dramedy Grief (1993). More...

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I Really Really Really Really Really Really Link You

Vanity Fair documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens) has died at 88
MNPP Have you ever noticed that a skull flashes in Gaston's eyes when he falls to his death? Jason on Beauty & The Beast (1991)
Theater Mania Helen Mirren returns to Broadway in her Oscar winning role... albeit for a different property, a play called "The Audience"
Comics Alliance AMC is offering a $65 Marvel movie marathon to celebrate the opening of The Avengers: Age of Ultron. It's  29 hours of movie in one sitting from Iron Man (2008) through Ultron (2015). This sounds exhausting. Thing of all the floating objects in skies you'll see exploding every couple of hours as climax

Interview talks to Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) on his new project American Crime
Jared Leto cut his hair, shaved his eyebrows, and dyed the rest platinum blonde -- it's very return to Fight Club all told
Coming Soon looks back at the actresses originally considered for the new Cinderella from Emma Watson to Alicia Vikander and everywhere in between. (Lily James from Downton Abbey eventually landed the role)
Variety - see! TFE isn't the only place still handing out awards for the 2014 film year. The Location Managers Guild of America just gave Wild & The Grand Budapest Hotel prizes 
The Cut the milliner who gave us Indiana Jones's fedora and other movie hats is going bankrupt 
Kenneth in the (212) an update on that petition to pardon 49,000 men who were victimized by the same laws as The Imitation Game's Alan Turing
MNPP [NSFW] the marketing department went to the expense of computer generating underwear for naked Dave Franco for the Unfinished Business trailer.
Boy Culture centerfold turned director Dirk Shafer (Man of the Year, Circuit) found dead at 52 

Today's Must Watch
Tom Hanks lip synchs for his life with Carly Rae Jepsen's "I Really Like You". Adorable.

Link Long and Prosper

In the blog explosion that is Oscar night (both build up to and come down from) we end up missing LOTS of stories. Like saying goodbye to Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) better known as Mr Spock. So let's kick off today's collection of news, casting notices, and randomness with the Vulcan 

RIP
NY Times on Leonard Nimoy's career which extended well beyond Spock. 
Space astronauts say goodbye from space 
R Michelson Galleries several collections of Nimoy's photography, he favored black and white nudes, are featured here 

News & Miscellania
Guardian thinks the blockbuster genre is in trouble in 3...2...1...
Blackbook Oscar Isaac breaks out some dance moves in Ex Machina -- which makes me so sad that he has no interest whatsoever in musicals
TFE ...which he told me in our interview here. 
Vanity Fair Bobby Finger synopsis future installments of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. This franchise will live forever!
Playbill Bruce Willis and Elizabeth Marvel taking the James Caan and Kathy Bates roles for Misery on the Broadway stage. Good luck with that
In Contention Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden
EW Diablo Cody to pen a live action Barbie movie. I could see that working as a comedy. But did Toy Story 3 say all there was to say?
Coming Soon Ridley Scott's company developing a franchise for Flashman based on a novel about a Victorian soldier. Scott is 77 and his list of upcoming projects is insane - how long is he planning to live exactly?
Deadline shares a list of the top "actors" on social media. This is why we can't have nice things
i09 will Battle Cat in the He-Man movie look like this?  I forgot there was a He-Man movie coming. Can "Dom" from Looking star in it? He was modelling those looks already.

More Miscellania
Film Otaku now that two of the self-proclaimed 'Three Amigos!' have won Best Director will the third, Guillermo del Toro, be next?
Awards Daily will we see Sir Ian McKellen get a best actor shot with Mr. Holmes? 
Queerty oops. Russell Tovey (Being Human, Looking) is putting his foot in his mouth about "masculinity" 
HuffPost Gay Voices Noah Michelson writes a passionate personal response. A Must Read.
The Buckley Bulletin goes deep on A Place in the Sun. This is an old essay but if you love that movie it's a must-read. I had a really fun conversation about that George Stevens classic yesterday on Twitter 

Ahhhh ♥
Hugh Jackman from Instagram this morning. Which begs the question of how often he gets one. 

Like that's going to happen!

A photo posted by Hugh Jackman (@thehughjackman) on Mar 5, 2015 at 3:46am PST

Luise Rainer (1910-2014)

Luise Rainer, Oscar's first back-to-back Acting winner for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937) was, for the past handful of years, perhaps better known for outliving everyone than for her brief movie stardom. She was just two weeks shy of her 105th birthday when she passed away early this morning of pneumonia. She is survived by her daughter and two granddaughters.

She was recently name-checked not so flatteringly in the Hollywood bio Hitchcock (2012) but the actress, still very much alive at the time, could surely roll with it. The outspoken import lived through tumultuous times, beginning her acting career on the German stage and screen before fleeing as Hitler consolidated power (she was Jewish) and then being sold to the American public as "The Viennesse Teardrop" because German wouldn't do back then. She quickly becoming a star while briefly marrying (unhappily) the playwright Cliff Odets who had several tumultuous affairs with famous actresses (as portrayed in Frances, 1982).

The outspoken diva was very vocal about what she thought of Hollywood, her unsatisfying career, and "The Oscar Curse" which she doesn't believe in though she admits that the back-to-back Oscars weren't at all helpful. The adulation prompted Hollywood to just throw her into anything, with no worries of miscasting or her own creative satisfaction.

Her career ended as swiftly as it began as she fought with the powers that be for more choice in her films. Soon she left Hollywood for New York and then London where she settled for good. 

I had a seven-year contract that I broke and went away. I was a machine, practically, a tool in a big, big factory, and I could not do anything. I wanted to film Madame Curie, but Mayer forbade me. I wanted to do For Whom the Bell Tolls, but Selznick took Ingrid Bergman and brought her to Hemingway and I didn't know Hemingway. And so I left. I just went away. I fled; yes, I fled."

She flew away to, by all reports, a happier life outside the spotlight. Her remarkable longevity and semi-regular all smiles appearances over the years suggests that she enjoyed it.