Ready for a Demissance?

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley star in “The Substance.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Who doesn’t like a good headline posed as a question?

Or as a lead sentence written in a newsletter, for that matter?

Sometimes the answer to the question is up for debate. On other occasions, such as my colleague Bill Addison’s review of Melrose Avenue’s cozy restaurant “Stir Crazy,” it’s pretty much open and shut. “Aren’t tiny restaurants the best restaurants?” Yes. Yes, they are. As Bill writes, “I’m not thinking of the buzzy dens that equate cramped and claustrophobic with exclusivity, but the tiny sanctuaries in which we can feel contained, secure. The rooms that shelter our bodies and minds from the big world for a couple of hours.”

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope’s Friday (and, on occasion, Monday) newsletter and the guy singing, “Hold me closer / tiny diner,” because who doesn’t need a sanctuary from time to time? Especially one with a good tomato salad.

Demi Moore returns in ‘The Substance’

My favorite Demi Moore performance is her reading her 2019 memoir, “Inside Out,” a candid recollection of her chaotic childhood and the choices, good and bad, she made in her career and personal life. I love her voice — literally, the expressive way she read the book over the course of 6½ hours — and the unguarded way she speaks about her life.

Moore has a new movie, “The Substance,” in theaters today, and it’s not going to be for everyone. A blood-soaked body-horror film that looks at the way Hollywood casts aside women once they reach a certain age, “The Substance” manages to be both primal and compassionate, bludgeoning and insightful.

Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a star on the wrong side of 50 who has been fired from her retro-style exercise show and is so desperate that she’s considering submitting to a back-alley rejuvenation regime. Soon, Elisabeth has a clone, Sue (Margaret Qualley), young and taut. For the science to work, Elisabeth and Sue must switch places every seven days. But there wouldn’t be a movie if that went off without a hitch, and as the situation begins to deteriorate, writer-director Coralie Fargeat amps up the gore and gruesomeness to epic levels. It’s truly ugly. And that’s the point.

Emily Zemler spoke with Moore, Qualley and Fargeat for The Times in an interview that turned into a “one-hour therapy session.”

“In a truly, earnestly positive way, finishing the movie did feel like there’s a reason why I signed up to do this — like there was an itch I needed to scratch,” Qualley said. “I feel a certain freedom having endured the experience.”

Moore echoed that. “That deep reminder of appreciating who you are, as you are, where you are, just resonated more as the process went along,” she said. “And not just the external. Really, all of those internal things of who we are that we often can overlook. And the journey of what it’s taken to get where you are.”

But as I mentioned, it’s not for everyone. Reviewing for The Times, Amy Nicholson writes: “I can’t think of another Cannes screenplay winner that seems as indifferent to its own script. A native French speaker, Fargeat’s stripped the dialogue down to what feels like 10 pages, and much of that gets recycled in flashbacks. At heart, Fargeat is a remix artist who’s constructed the movie like a medley of her own DVDs of ‘The Fly’ and ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and sleazy music videos from the early aughts. She flaunts her influences like a plastic surgery client who requests Angelina’s lips and Charlize’s nose.”

Let me know what you think if you see it this weekend.

Demi Moore stars in “The Substance.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Goodbye, J.D. Souther

After J.D. Souther died this week, my colleague Amy Kaufman wrote in one of the Times’ Slack channels: “Vada’s dad in ‘My Girl 2’ and yes I am the only person who recognizes him from this,” to which I could only reply: “He also almost broke up Hope and Michael on ‘thirtysomething’ and yes I am the only person who recognizes him from this.”

Of course, Souther is best known for his work as a songwriter and musician, co-writing several of the Eagles’ best and biggest songs (“New Kid in Town,” a beauty about the fleeting nature of fame and love, is a personal favorite) and his own lovely 1979 hit “You’re Only Lonely.”

My pal Mikael Wood wrote about Souther’s passing, noting that in January, Souther performed onstage with the Eagles at Inglewood’s Kia Forum, where Don Henley introduced him as part of the “tightknit community of songwriters and singers” that he and the Eagles’ Glenn Frey would turn to in the ’70s “when we would get stuck on a song or we’d try to start some new material.”

I was at that concert with Mikael. Have nine months already gone by this year? Fame and love aren’t the only things that are fleeting.

J.D. Souther, seen performing in Los Angeles in 2012, died this week at 78.

(Mark Davis / WireImage via Getty Images)