Remember when we used to be able to quote lines from movies? The way those lines used to worm their way into pop culture to become shared references? 

A snippet of dialogue popped into my head the other day for no particular reason: “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.” It’s from the final scene in the 1973 romance “The Way We Were,” starring Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, so I pulled up that scene on YouTube. Then I watched a few more clips and realized I had forgotten how funny the film is. I haven’t seen it for years, so I forked over $3.99 to rent it on Amazon. What a movie.

I was in the bag for Streisand’s firebrand Katie Morosky within the first five minutes. It’s the tail end of WWII and she’s working as a producer for a radio drama. Her boss takes her to a swanky club called El Morocco, where she witnesses the maître d' speaking rudely to a service member who has a reservation but is left standing on the wrong side of the velvet rope. Katie is incensed:

“I’d like to know your name,” she says to the tuxedoed jerk. “And I’d also like to know why you’re not in uniform. These boys have been in combat, and you, you fascist rope-holder!”

And then she spots him. Hubbell Gardiner. Wearing his Navy dress whites. Her reaction is instant. He’s fallen asleep sitting at the bar and she uses that opportunity to reach over and sweep the hair off his forehead, a gesture that’s become iconic because of Streisand’s nails™ but also because it’s one she’ll repeat throughout the movie.

Then the story flashes back to 1937, when they knew each other in college. She’s an activist on the quad, speaking out against the brutality of Franco’s regime in Spain. He’s a golden boy who glides through life, with seemingly one brain cell bouncing around inside that pretty head of his. “Write president Roosevelt. Do something about it!” she urges her classmates, handing out pamphlets as Hubbell jogs by. “Hey Katie, what are you selling?” he teases. “The ROTC, you can have it cheap.” He just laughs and she mutters “fascist” to his retreating figure.

She’s a waitress at a diner because she needs to work while she’s in school, and Hubbell’s friends are obnoxious to her when they come in. “You’re all decadent and disgusting,” Katie tells him.

Hubbell: C’mon, we weren’t making fun of you.

Katie: Yes, you were, you make fun of everything. You think politics is a joke.

Hubbell: Well, you make fun of politicians — what else can you do with them?

Katie: You think Franco is so funny?

Hubbell, looking around the joint facetiously: Franco? Is he here?

Katie: Yeah, Franco. He’s a politician, you think he’s funny? Well, so is Hitler. He even has a funny mustache. Why don’t you have a Nazi prom?

Hubbell pauses. Then: Well, we thought of that. But the uniforms itch.

He squints, urging her to see the humor and then flashes her a smile. She’s immune to his charms. But not for long. 

In their creative writing class, the professor reads from Hubbell’s plainly autobiographical story, “The All-American Smile”:

In a way, he was like the country he lived in. Everything came too easily to him. But at least he knew it. About once a month, he worried he was a fraud.

They have little in common, she’s a self-described “loudmouth Jewish girl from New York,” he’s WASPy reserve incarnate (a “gorgeous goyishe guy,” also her description) but they are quietly drawn to one another and eventually act upon it after that chance meeting years later at El Morocco.

The thing about Hubbell is that it’s a nothing of a role. But Redford imbues him with the suggestion that there’s a man of substance buried beneath the wit and gloss, and therefore you believe Katie’s belief that it can somehow be unearthed.

Hubbell’s career as novelist may be nascent, but it has opened doors in Hollywood, and so he and Katie move from New York to Malibu, get married and are about to have a baby when it all falls apart. That’s because Katie remains true to her principles throughout it all. She could stand to lighten up sometimes, but her moral compass is always intact, as is her disdain for the way Hubbell’s old pals from college laugh off any kind of serious thought or outrage. She looks and them and thinks (and sometimes says): Stop being so unbothered! Is everything a joke to you people? Take a stand for once in your empty life!

“You look different,” one of the women tells her. Gone are the tight curls, replaced by a loser, more glamorous style. “It’s my hair, I have it ironed,” Katie replies. “You have it what?” “In Harlem,” Katie tells her. “I actually have friends in Harlem.” “I’m sure you do,” comes the answer. “Would you like me to disapprove?”

Hubbell, on the other hand, accepts her for who she is. Mostly. It’s what he likes about her, even if he’s content to remain on the sidelines when it comes to substantive issues.

When Katie’s focus turns to the Hollywood blacklist, it creates all kinds of inconvenient situations for his career in the movies. “Do you know what’s going over at your house?” a producer asks. “I don’t know, overthrowing the government, I suppose. Let’s see, Sunday’s volleyball, today’s Monday — yeah, they like to overthrown the government on Monday.” He’s casual about it until he’s informed that Katie and others plan to go to Washington to challenge the House Committee on Un-American Activities “on the basis of the First Amendment.” Now Hubbell looks alarmed. “Well, well. Think anyone knows what it says?” Katie does, comes the reply. What do you want from me, Hubbell asks, annoyed. Tell Katie to stay out of it.

Hubbell: You tell her.

Producer: All right, I will.

Hubbell, genuinely amused: I’ll buy tickets to that.

Ultimately his amusement falls away and he cuts bait from the relationship. Because he’s weak. He’s not willing to embrace risk or put anything on the line. He’s a weanie, and he leaves the marriage and his unborn child because of it.

A few years later, when they spot each other in New York, it’s a bittersweet reunion. He’s with someone more traditional now. Blonder. Blander. Expected. Attractive in the “right way,” as Katie would say. (Hence, her observation that “Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.”) She’s still at it, organizing a “Ban the Bomb” protest action. You never give up, Hubbell tells her admiringly. Only when I have to, she replies. She really thought he had more in him than he did. He reverts to form, but at least he has the self-awareness to know he’s a coward in the end. 

The movie was directed by Sydney Pollack (with that incredible title song from Marvin Hamlisch, sung by Streisand) and was something of mess behind-the-scenes. Critics thought the story was filled with holes; even those who liked it thought it only worked somewhat.

But it made its budget back ten times over at the box office and was the fifth highest grossing film of 1973. It’s hard to picture a similar movie getting made today, let alone one that’s a legit moneymaker in theaters. According to Wikipedia:

In 1937, while an undergraduate at Cornell, Arthur Laurents was introduced to political activism by a student who became the model for Katie Morosky.

Because of his own background, Laurents felt it was important for his heroine to be Jewish and share his outrage at injustice. He also thought it was time a mainstream Hollywood film had a Jewish heroine, and because Barbra Streisand was the industry's most notable Jewish star, he wrote the role of Katie Morosky for her.

Who would even play the role today when the young actresses typically cast as Jewish (like “Shiva Baby’s” Rachel Sennott) are not even Jewish?

But rewatching the movie, I was struck by my affinity for Katie’s point of view contrasted with Hubbell’s glib, surface-level approach to the world’s ills, because it mirrors how I feel about our circumstances at the moment.

After her trip to Washington, he’s pissed at what he sees as the pointlessness of her activism. She’s not buying any of it:

You’re telling me to close my eyes and to watch people being destroyed so that you can go on working — working in a town that doesn’t have spine enough to stand up for anything but making a blessed buck.

People, he counters, are more important than causes and principles.

Hubbell, people are their principles.

Back in our own reality in 2026, all hell is breaking loose in Minneapolis as federal agents conduct brutal and chaotic immigration raids, but Hollywood actors are chugging along on the awards circuit as if nothing were amiss. I’m not sure what I want from these actors, exactly. I’m not saying everything we interact with should be dire. We need to be able to lose ourselves in entertainment and the frothy pleasures of awards season shouldn’t be off limits, for us either as viewers or for people who work in Hollywood.

But something about the party atmosphere feels off and disconnected from our reality. The Oscars are in mid-March this year; I don’t know that I can stomach two more months of this, because I am basically Katie thinking, “You’re all decadent and disgusting,” and Hollywood might as well be Hubbell, blithely unbothered.

So when I see someone on social media noting that schools in St. Paul are closing to prepare for virtual learning options because it’s not safe for some students to leave their homes, I think about the disconnect that exists between the people who entertain us and everyone else. Or as someone put it:

The Posting Divide on here is really stark right now. There’s maybe a quarter of the people I follow doing normal discourse stuff and then the other 3/4ths are posting “IF YOU SEE THE GREEN GAS START RUNNING

Moreover, ICE must be destroyed

(The green gas deployed by federal agents may be harmless, or as others have speculated, it may be a chemical weapon, the highly toxic zinc chloride.)

In non-awards but celebrity-driven news, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck — who you could argue have attempted to build a pseudo-lefty reputation for themselves — have been making the rounds promoting their new Netflix movie “The Rip,” wherein they play cops who find $24 million in a derelict stash house.

The two stars appeared on Howard Stern recently and this is how they talk about their characters:

Stern: You really captured that angst — like, I’m an honest cop but, damn, everyone’s looking at me like I’m dishonest.

Affleck: One of the things I remember talking to Matt about with this was, these are people who, as you say, they don’t make a lot of money. It’s about going out and doing an honest day’s work, and the integrity and meaning of that. Underappreciated, under suspicion often …

Damon: … underfunded 

No matter how you slice it, all cop shows and cop movies end up being copaganda. What does that mean with the added context that so many police departments, local and state, are functionally enabling ICE and DHS?

At the movie’s premiere this week, co-star Mark Ruffalo and Damon both wore a “Be Good” pin, which references the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. That’s a small but positive sign — of stars at least acknowledging what’s happening in this moment, right? Sure. Until Damon spoke to a reporter on the red carpet.

“That incident (the killing of Good) is alarming and I think a lot of people are on edge and worried about this,“ he said. OK so far. “The lack of training that we’re reading about and hearing about,” he continued, “what I’ve heard from a lot of friends in law enforcement [is] that is not the way they would have handled that situation.”

I let out a long, exhausted sigh because opposition to what’s happening isn’t about a lack of training. Our neighbors are being terrorized and snatched off the street. People aren’t taking it lying down and “normies” in Minneapolis seemingly have more guts than all of the TV and movie industry put together.

Where are the Katie Moroskys of Hollywood? Why is everyone such a Hubbell instead?

Fashiontainment

The Gap is no longer just a clothing retailer. This little tidbit crossed my desk, courtesy of Deadline:

Former Paramount international chief markets boss Pam Kaufman has joined clothing brand Gap as part of a push into ‘fashiontainment.’

Kaufman will serve as Executive Vice President, Chief Entertainment Officer, a new role reporting to Gap Inc. President and CEO Richard Dickson. She begins on February 2.

At the same time, Gap will open an office on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. this spring, which will act as a central hub for Gap’s entertainment ambitions.

Kaufman’s hire is part of a plan to design Gap’s business in entertainment, content and licensing platform across music, television, film, sports, gaming, consumer products and cultural collaborations.

I don’t know what any of this means, but it sounds deeply, unquestionably boring. Now the concept of IP apparently extends to clothing brands, whoopdeedoo.

But props to Kaufman, who left Paramount after the Skydance deal and has apparently found a new role — ridiculous as it is — that doesn’t require her to work under that dubious new corporate regime.