Of all the news coverage that The Car Plays has received in its various productions around southern California since 2006, I think this local PBS reporting from San Diego gives the clearest picture of the experience.

That said, the focus in this piece is on actors. I understand that: The actors are right there in the play. If they think it’s a challenge acting in a car (and it is; they’re right), that’s matched by the challenge of writing a 10-minute play that takes place in a car — and is still captivating, requires being staged in a car, has a beginning middle and end, has a motivation for the actors to get into the car, and includes a way to get them out of the car (what dramatists call a “button”). These are fun, tricky little plays to run, and the success of the series is a testament to the process Paul Stein established for figuring out what works in cars, to the producers and the reading team, and to all the playwrights involved.

Just a reminder: It’s been extended through next weekend.

I’m pleased to report that “The Cowboys” still works as it did 40 years ago, for boys at least.

I was thrilled beyond measure when, after John Wayne’s character Wil Andersen is shot five times by Bruce Dern’s evil cattle rustler,  my son Dietrich said, “He’s not dead.”

I hit pause on the DVR and asked him, “Why do you say that?”

“He can’t be. He’s just faking it so the boys don’t get hurt.”

This was exactly my reading of the movie 40 years ago when I was his age. Somehow, this restored my hope that somehow today’s kids are not utterly jaded. When it was over and I asked Dietrich what he thought of the movie, he told me how much he’d enjoyed it, and that his favorite part was when the boys all had their revenge on the bad guys who killed Mr. Andersen. Of course — as intended.

The movie is compelling filmmaking for 9-year-olds; for the rest of us, from the beginning scene showing what’s clearly a stunt double for a fat old John Wayne taming a breaking a wild horse, to the triumphant scene where 10 kids, mostly preteen, outwit and outshoot a gang of 11 grown men, it’s science fiction. I’m sure I never noticed any of that when I was a kid. Here’s something else that’s changed in my perception:  Now it’s a movie populated by people I’ve known, which makes it harder to focus on purely as a work of fiction. I hadn’t realized that Mark Rydell was the director and producer; some years ago, I co-taught a class with Mark Rydell (although we met in person only once). Now I wish I’d told him what an impact this movie made on me as a child. Lonny Chapman, whom I knew a bit through the Group Repertory Theatre (which is now named the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre), has a small role as the father of one of the boys. And now whenever I see Bruce Dern in something, where I used to think fondly of the early environmentalist science fiction movie “Silent Running,” now I think of speaking with him a couple of times in recent years, including at his wife’s art opening. (Along similar lines:  I was telling a friend last week that whenever I think of Scott Bakula, all I remember is being surprised seeing him in the audience at my tiny little theatre once when he was in the prime of his career. Whenever something like that happens, it’s like:  “Audience, audience, audience, major TV star, audience, audience….”)

The other thing that I now notice about “The Cowboys,” something that is so transparent to an adult, is that it’s a movie about fathers and sons. Both of Wil Andersen’s boys died before reaching their prime; now he has a chance to serve as a father figure in what will be a life-transforming experience for these boys. There’s a scene where two of them are tempted by prostitutes — my son had no idea what this was about, and I’m sure I didn’t either at his age — and in another scene, Roscoe Lee Browne’s character tells Wes that with these boys he has another chance at fatherhood. I can see why the film resonated then, and now, with boys of a certain age.

1. Watch “The Cowboys” with my 9-year-old son. I was that age when my father (and mother) took me to see it. In the movie, John Wayne plays a rancher who is forced to hire a bunch of kids who work for him as real cowboys. Near the end of the movie, John Wayne’s character is killed off and the boys have to complete the cattle drive without him. This was astonishing to me, and I kept waiting for the trick ending, showing that he was actually alive and had been secretly watching over the boys the entire time like a guardian angel. But nope, he was actually dead, and I couldn’t get over it. I’m curious to see what this generation will make of that. Prediction:  nothing. They’re inured to everything now.
2. Stay up really late (or, well, early) writing.
3. Interrupt extended bout of writing with blog posts.We’ll see.

I’ve got to admit, I’m a sucker for the Shat, whose one-man show comes to Los Angeles in one mere month. Will the show be tongue-in-cheek? Will it be straight-up? Campy? Vainglorious? Exhilarating and a complete bomb? All of the above and at the same time, of course, just like everything about him. I’m checking out tickets now.

I’ve seen I don’t know how many films now with my friend Richard. He hasn’t liked any of them. (Not even “Snakes on a Plane”!)

I think I have finally found something with unarguable artistic merit.

Here it is.

Or is it the two actors I’ve worked with who turn up in this video tribute?

Coincidentally, I just found out that the OFFICIAL video to this song (the Lionel Richie version) prominently features my friend Brendan Broms. (He’s the young guy in the scarf.) Brendan and I have been doing theatre together for 15 years now. (And we’re now trying to get a new play up — if I can just write the damn thing.) Here’s that version, with Brendan, but in the meantime, I’m wondering how many other friends are in other versions of “Hello.”

In my circle of friends (and with readers of this blog), my antipathy for “The Descendants” is well-known. So, of course, I got an email from a sympathizer aghast that “The Descendants” won a Golden Globe tonight for “Best Picture.”

Here’s what I think:

It’s good to bear in mind that “Citizen Kane” lost the Oscar to “How Green Was My Valley” (a film now more obscure than Charles Foster Kane’s sled).

And it’s also good to know that one year, the Nobel committee was tied between giving the prize for Literature to Beckett or Ionesco — until finally one guy just switched his vote to Beckett so they could go home.

I once won an award for a play that I wasn’t sure was the best in the festival; the following year, in the same festival, I lost, when I know I had the best play.

Awards:  meaningless.

Except as marketing.

And “The Descendants” still stinks.

What did the Los Angeles Film Critics Association name the Best Picture of the year? You guessed right:  “The Descendants.” (Had there been no other movies released this year, I still wouldn’t have voted for it.)

By the way, the association also placed a lot of praise on  “Tree of Life.” Those friends I trust didn’t like that one either.

I just checked — and three of the association’s member critics are friends, and two more are former students of mine.

The other night, I saw one of the most widely acclaimed movies of the year, “The Descendants.” It’s got a 90% “fresh” rating from Top Critics on rottentomatoes.com. It’s been hailed by most of the major critics, and The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern calls it “the movie of the year.” And I hated every minute of it.

I am not alone in my opinion — two friends, whose informed opinions I trust, agree with me — but we are vastly outnumbered by the people on the bandwagon. I’ve been on the smaller side of critical opinion plenty of times, but I honestly can’t understand the praise for this film, not for the writing, the direction, the acting — none of it. Here are a few key points I feel compelled to make:

1. Theoretically, George Clooney’s character has drifted from his wife and family because he’s been so wrapped up in his business. I see no evidence of this in the movie. There is exactly one scene of him at his office. Here’s what we see:  He’s eating his lunch out of a Tupperware container at this desk. Yes, there are papers on his desk — but the phone doesn’t ring, no one is on hold, there are no clients waiting, and there’s no general clamor of industry. How does a dramatist signal “busy”? By showing such things. Instead, he’s just eating, and reading. The rest of the movie he seems similarly unrushed. If he’s been so busy, and we don’t see anyone else but an assistant at his legal practice, what’s going on with all those cases while he takes days at a time off to handle whatever business seems to — slowly — unfold in this movie? I don’t believe anything about George Clooney’s character, because I don’t see any evidence of reality behind it.
2. The young actor Nick Krause has gotten praise for his portrayal of a character named Sid, a guy who is some sort of surfer dude who tags along with the Clooney character’s daughter. Sid is not a character; he is an agglomeration of cute bits. At first he seems a clueless stoner — laughing at the old lady with Alzheimer’s — but in the middle of the night, when Clooney conveniently needs someone to talk to, we find that Sid is a sensitive young man whose father just died. The character flits between being Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and the too-earnest high schoolers in “The Breakfast Club,” mixed in with what passes for wisdom by supporting characters in feature films.
3. Here’s a dead giveaway about how clumsily the film is made. The first third of the film is heavy-handedly narrated by George Clooney, as he mopingly reads some excruciatingly on-the-nose voiceover that tells you more than you’d ever want to know. Mentally, I kept crossing all this out and recasting those early scenes with a new, invented friend for Clooney — someone he can, y’know, discuss things with. I guess the director and his screenwriters finally latched upon the same idea, because as other characters enter the film, the voiceover ends. Abruptly. Like the door on a steel cage slamming shut. So:  first third of the movie is narrated; last two-thirds have no narration. That’s clumsy, bad storytelling. Either we’re being told the story, or we aren’t. Instead, we’re in two movies:  one narrated (badly), and the other depicted (uninterestingly).
4. The trailer has been edited to make you believe this is a comedy. It isn’t a comedy. Or, if it is a comedy, it’s a comedy with no humor. Here’s how you know a comedy:  people in the theatre laughing. When I saw it, there was none of that.
5. The film is lacking in urgency, in story, and in high stakes. Part of the action deals with a large family land trust that must be dissolved; what will Clooney’s character and his family do with all that land, and that potential wealth? I don’t know, because the situation is remarkably lacking in facts. Instead, we get an endless long shot of the cay that will soon house condos and a golf course. That’s no substitution for people pressing their agendas.

I could go on about this — and have, in person, with other people (and, at times, with myself, narrating in my head Clooneyesque, but with a stronger sense of urgency) — but why would I do that? It’s because I’m still trying to figure two things out:  1) why all the acclaim; and 2) what has happened to Alexander Payne? “Sideways” and “Election” were terrific small-life movies, completely the opposite of this film. It’s difficult to reconcile those two satisfyingly funny and wrenching movies with this dud. Yes, everyone has an off day, but judging from “The Descendants” it’s difficult to believe that this writer-director once had an on day.

I do have one more thing to say:  Not every novel should be a movie. I haven’t read the novel, but I know that Payne did, and that he tries to be as faithful in his adaptations to the source novel as possible. In this case, I’m betting that that’s the key mistake. If the narration was lifted from that novel, it shouldn’t have been, and if Clooney’s character has no friends in that section of the novel — to show how isolated he is — then either we needed a different way to show that, or he needed to gain a friend for the movie.

If you see “The Descendants” and are with the critical mainstream on this, please comment. I’m curious to see your reply. If you haven’t seen it… you’ve been warned.

Hendrik Hertzberg on the political biopic we unfortunately didn’t get:  Alexander Hamilton, as shown by Francis Ford Coppola. I’d really like to see that.

The only portrayal of Hamilton I recall seeing in a film was of Rufus Sewell, in the HBO miniseries “John Adams.” Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Hamilton was unputdownable, largely because, as Hertzberg notes in the piece above, Hamilton’s life was filled with incident — discrimination; war; a sex scandal; a duel — and his legacy is large. (Including essentially founding American free enterprise.) But somehow Adams gets a miniseries and all Hamilton rates is one scene in that miniseries. Go figure.