Lady Gaga, not thinking of the children. (Screengrab)

James Molinaro may know who Lady Gaga is but he probably isn't aware of her fandom, the "little monsters," and how they might react to an NY1 report that Mr. Molinaro referred to the pop star as a "slut" while launching an anti-drug campaign Monday night.

The performer's fans are fiercely loyal and may not take well to the Staten Island Borough President's characterization of their idol, whom Mr. Molinaro said was part of a celebrity culture that promotes drug use, among other things.

As reported by NY1, Mr. Molinaro said that to him, the artist formerly known as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is "not an actress, she is a slut in the pure--in the pure meaning of the word."

A photo published with NY1's brief account of Mr. Molinaro's remarks showed the Staten Island pol gesturing at a board with the legend, "STOP glorifying drug use in the media" and displaying what appeared to be photos of Lady Gaga toking up during a recent stage performance in Amsterdam. The performer can be seen destroying our nation's youth in the concert video below.

Kitsch, Lively and Johnson in Savages.

What I know about the internecine workings of Mexican drug cartels you could fill in an egg cup—and still have enough space left over for the egg. But this I know: It’s a subject and a subculture that has got to be more fascinating than anything in gonzo director Oliver Stone’s deadly, hateful, preposterous and cliché-riddled movie Savages. He even makes the violence look dull.

Based on one of those Don Winslow carnage epics that appeal to grown men who still read comic books, Savages boogies to the beat of an assault weapon, cutting back and forth between the cold-blooded drug lords in Tijuana and the stoner gringos of Southern California, fighting it out for billions in the Baja Peninsula. The convoluted plot, which would be difficult to decipher with the aid of a microscope, is as familiar as any one of a thousand cable network television series—and Mr. Stone’s dialogue is as wooden as a rocking chair, possibly because his script was co-written by the dubious Shane Salerno (Alien vs. Predator) and novelist Don Winslow, whose grasp of the way real people talk is as phony as reality TV. The American potheads, unconvincingly depicted as tattooed hunks with romantic notions of Butch and Sundance on reefer, are Chon (camera-ready Taylor Kitsch, who keeps stalling his PR-funneled elevator to pop stardom by pushing the down button) and Ben (Aaron Johnson, the British star of such monumental motion picture milestones as Kick-Ass). Best friends since high school, Chon is a combat veteran who worked as a Navy seal in Iraq, starting the business by smuggling cannabis seeds from Afghanistan, and Ben is a soulful Berkeley graduate who invests his share of lucrative profits from the weed trade in noble world causes. Together, in Laguna Beach, they share tattooed washboard abs and cuddle up in the same bed with a bottle blonde named O (Blake Lively). It’s a perfect soft-core porn arrangement (lots of nipples, but no real nudity) until their wacked out ménage a trois is rudely interrupted by greedy and villainous drug lords from  south of the border ruled by Goth queen Elena (Salma Hayek in a tossable wig of lacquered bangs, looking like a cross between Louise Brooks and Cleopatra) and her depraved henchman, the psychopath Lado (Benicio Del Toro, who has traveled down this homicidal highway before, in better films than this). The best smoke in the world, apparently, is not from Thailand, Jamaica or Saigon, but mass produced in Chon and Ben’s pot factory, a foundation with branches in Africa, Asia and West Hollywood. Elena and her ruthless gang want a piece of the boys’ 15 million satisfied customers by forcibly encouraging them to join the Mexican work force, but when they resist (opting to retire and—are you ready?—invest their illegal fortune in solar energy), she kidnaps O and threatens to cut off her fingers, one by one. In retaliation, the boys kidnap Elena’s beloved daughter and war erupts. Stirring the pozole is Dennis, a creep from the Drug Enforcement Agency who plays both sides against each other, rejoicing in the ensuing brutality and torture. Dennis is played with demented glee by John Travolta, who looks like a Pleistocene Era warthog.

They are all savages, and when Mr. Stone runs out of ideas about what to do with them, he borrows every crime-thriller cliché, from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to Tony Scott’s Man on Fire, bathes the bloody decapitations and rapes in the glow of lush cinematography, then distracts the viewer with camera tricks, black-and-white conversions, cell-phone images, classical music and, finally, a maddening finale, narrated by O. Then the movie backs up like a VHS tape on rewind, and there’s an alternate cop-out ending, even more infuriating than the first.

Mr. Kitsch is pretty, despite the unnecessary battle scars on his face designed to illustrate character but signifying nothing more than the hours he spent in the makeup chair. Mr. Johnson’s changing moral compass, from pacifist to killing machine, is as contrived as Mr. Travolta’s epiphany from invulnerable monster to sympathetic family man. Ms. Hayek, as the Mother Goddam of the Mexican drug cartel, is the best thing in the movie. To be fair, the actors all work hard to keep the audience awake, but the sloppy direction and drugged-out script make Savages hard to rise above. Continuity and logic have never been Oliver Stone’s strengths, but this movie is barely credible. What makes drug lords hard to arrest is their unexceptional ordinariness. In real life, they all look like plumbers and accountants. The predators here are so beautiful and exotic and camera-ready that any law enforcement officer with half a brain would have no trouble spotting them a block away. Worse still, they’re boring. They blow off their victims’ kneecaps, and you don’t even notice. These are neither good people nor interesting savages, and they’re not worth caring about. Neither is the movie.

rreed@observer.com

SAVAGES

Running Time 130 minutes

Written by Shane Salerno, Don Winslow and Oliver Stone

Directed by Oliver Stone

Starring Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively

1/4

Fonda in Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.

Jane Fonda is always a welcome antidote to the hackneyed drivel of today’s movies, even when she’s relegated to sharing the screen with also-rans like Jennifer Lopez and Lindsay Lohan. In her career zenith, she could always be counted on to bring both complexity and nuance to the least deserving roles. At 74, she hasn’t forgotten a thing. With a wonderful, careful and admiring director, she gives even a routine picture unbridled energy, craft and an extra dash of class above and beyond the script. All reasons to embrace Bruce Beresford’s warm, polished, feel-good comedy Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding. 

Jane plays Grace, a beautiful remnant of Woodstock, an aging hippie in upstate New York who long ago surrendered the ties that bind free spirits to conventional social acceptance. She tends her kiln, barters for supplies with her art, grows chickens while holding war protests every Saturday. She’s a vigilant flower child who has given up nothing including her marijuana plants. She grows it in a specialty plant-lighted room perfect for weed. This is not autobiographical material. When the hippies were blowing in the wind, Jane was living in Paris, married to Roger Vadim. But she is a perfect Grace. Like I said before, she has forgotten nothing—including the ability to bring even a homespun character with obelisk jade earrings and macramé Feng Shui.

Culture shock looms when Grace’s successful, anal retentive Manhattan lawyer daughter Diane (Catherine Keener), in the middle of a nasty divorce, arrives in Woodstock to visit the estranged mother she hasn’t spoken to for 20 years, bringing along her two children, Jake (Nat Wolff) and Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen), who have never met their grandmother. The reunion packs an instant wallop. Diane is appalled to find her mother sleeps around at will and plays town matriarch to what’s left over from the Flower Power movement, as well as local fertility goddess and revered dope dealer. She welcomes frequent visits from naked men in the middle of the night and dances once a month around a bonfire, playing weird instruments and howling at the moon. Instead of Diane’s feared negative effect of her mother’s liberal personality on her kids, they adjust quickly and embrace their eccentric grandmother’s force of nature with relish. Diane resists her mother’s primitive lures, but the kids discover a liberating energy they didn’t know they had. In no time, vegetarian Zoe falls for a handsome butcher (Chace Crawford). Jake becomes attached to a young waitress and turns into a filmmaker. Even Diane meets a handsome, hopelessly corny, guitar-playing carpenter (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who sings, writes songs and rekindles her lost interest in romance. While Grace reminisces about Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and threesomes with Leonard Cohen, her grandkids become enchanted with a way of life before their time. In time, they want to be just like her. Everyone learns something, in follow-the-dots movie predictability, but you like the characters so much you want them to smile and find peace in new beginnings and fresh family bonds. They bring their own hang-ups and learn to change gracefully. They all read too much Walt Whitman, and I would have liked it more if it wasn’t manipulated by so many of those old songs from the 1960s that seem so naïve and simplistic now. Still, it’s pleasant watching this uniquely cool grandmother share her pot with her uptight grandkids and encourage them to lose their virginity, presenting them with the raw material they need to look into their own souls.

Pop songs, beautiful bucolic scenery and the joy of watching Jane Fonda fizz in a fun role that looks like a no-brainer are elements that a skilled director like Australia’s polished Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) blends with perfection. Best of all, there is Jane Fonda, whose total investment of heart and soul lights up every corner of the screen. She is so much a part of Grace that you can only wonder if placing Ronald Reagan’s autobiography next to The Cannabis Grower’s Bible wasn’t her own idea. “Maybe he’ll learn something,” says Grace. Or is it Jane Fonda talking? No matter how you slice it, she still has a lot to give, and in  Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding, she gives it all she’s got.

rreed@observer.com

PEACE, LOVE, & MISUNDERSTANDING

Running Time 96 minutes

Written by Joseph Muszynski and Christina Mengert

Directed by Bruce Beresford

Starring Jane Fonda, Catherine Keener and Elizabeth Olsen

3/4

An unidentified person made the distress call via radio transmission— at the (coincidentally) stoner-loving time of 4:20pm. The caller claimed a boat named the Blind Date had exploded  and then sunk 17 nautical miles off the coast of central New Jersey. It was reported that all 21 passengers had made it onto life rafts but many were suffering injuries from the incident.

"We got to the reported location within the hour but by 6:30 we looked into the possibility of it being a hoax call," Captain Gregory P. Hitchen of the Coast Guard, said in a press conference at 10am this morning. "With the weather conditions last night, if there was an explosion like the one reported it would have been easy to spot debris, bright orange life rafts or an oil slick from one of our helicopters."

After determining the call was most likely a scam, the Coast Guard offered a $3,000 reward for anyone with information about the person responsible for the false reports. If prosecuted, this federal offense could cost the prankster fines up to $250,000 or 10 years in prison.

"There are many motives for one to do such a thing," Captain Hitchens explained. "For a variety of reasons, people like the attention they get from watching the boats and helicopters go out and search. It's very strange."

June 14 2011, almost exactly a year ago, an unidentified caller reported a sinking 33-foot sailboat with four passengers taking on water in the same Sandy Hook bay. Like yesterday's effort, the search was extensive but fruitless and later ruled as a hoax. The Coast Guard is currently looking into the possibility of a connection between the two incidents. While last years call was at 3:20 and not 4:20, the internet is still abuzz with the possible non-coincidence of yesterdays prankster making his report at a universally adopted "burn time" for marijuana users.

Isn't the general mainstream consensus that stoners are relaxed and unmotivated? Whatever happened to listening to The Dark Side of The Moon while tripping off of the technicolor visuals of The Wizard of Oz and wolfing down Taco Bell in your parents basement?

If you’re caught with a small amount of pot—25 grams or less—in your backpack, the penalty is a $100 fine (for the first offense). But if a police officer asks you to empty your pockets and you pull out a small bag of weed, you are subject to arrest on a misdemeanor. Why? Because by taking the pot out of your pocket, you exposed it to “public view.”

It just doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider the police officers routinely order people to empty their pockets during stop-and-frisk operations. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal will correct this inequity by decriminalizing possession of 25 grams or less in public view. Legislators should pass this measure quickly.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal has been portrayed as an intervention in New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policing strategy, which civil libertarians, editorial boards and others have sharply criticized in recent weeks. Perhaps the measure will have some effect on stop-and-frisk, but the real merit of the proposal is the effect it will have on the lives of young people, most of them black and Latino, who have been arrested on the “public view” possession charge.

Police in New York City arrested more than 50,000 people last year for possession of small amounts of pot. Over the last decade, 400,000 people have been busted on small-time possession charges. Few, if any, major cities in the nation police marijuana possession as energetically as New York.

Thousands of lives have been altered, none for the better, as a result of this misguided crackdown. Young people arrested on “public view” possession charges have had to suffer through the booking process, find money to hire a lawyer, and, if they were convicted, forever possess a rap sheet simply because they emptied their pockets as ordered by police.

New York’s spectacular success against violent offenders over the last 15 years has captured the imagination of other police agencies around the world and literally has saved the lives of thousands of New Yorkers, many of them in poor neighborhoods. But the huge number of marijuana arrests no doubt has soured what should be a strong relationship between a successful police department and communities that are now stronger and more vibrant as a result of the city’s campaign against violent offenders.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would go a long way toward easing tensions between the city’s minority communities and the NYPD. That, no doubt, is why Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly supports the Cuomo proposal.

The NYPD shows no signs of scaling back its stop-and-frisk operation. But if the Legislature approves Mr. Cuomo’s plan, otherwise innocent young people will no longer be subject to arrest if they pull out a small bag of pot when they empty their pockets. That would be a triumph of common sense.

A company operator told The Smoking Gun no one by that name works at the company.

Because the Feds did not attempt to smoke out "Karen Wright" with a controlled delivery, the excitement is pretty much over for the moment, except on Twitter, where someone with the handle @KarenWright_SMP has been asking if anyone has seen the day's mail and soliciting tips for coming up with $70,000 fast. Hypothetically speaking.

Twitter accounts for Penguin and FSG declared St. Martin's the winner when they pulled out a double pun classic that works as is: Leaves of Grass.

Later, Leaves of Grass author Walt Whitman tweeted, "In my day, a publisher would reject a manuscript that came with anything less than 20 lbs of fine persian hash."

If you thought the Linsanity merchandising gravy chain had slowed down, think again.

Former correctional officer, narrative genius, luxury car hobbyist, and "Stay Schemin" poet Rick Ross—who, as it happens, is performing in New York this Tuesday night—Tweeted an Instagram'd picture a few moments ago, detailing the recent shopping excursion he took a colleague on:

The fruits borne by this trip? They are, technically, herbs:

Yes, Jeremy Lin now has a marijuana strain named after him, one that appears to be sold in an undisclosed (but fairly reputable-looking, judging by the handiwork on the label) marijuana dispensary. Wonder if he's going to file for trademark infringement?

Either way, the Jeremy Lin/Linsanity gravy train continues to ride strong, if not, now, slightly hungrier for something to eat, possibly covered in actual gravy. Or some movie popcorn. Either/or.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Among other revelations, we learn that Mr. Pollack can take 20 hits off of a vaporizer then "happily" prepare dinner for his children. He sees this as a sign that he has developed a tolerance, but maybe his kids feel otherwise?

[The Fix]

This person's paranoia regarding breath mints may be alarmingly pathetic, but if she's Columbia student she can live without fear. The New York City Police Department announced today that it had broken up and arrested the brains and muscle behind Columbia Univeristy's frat scene drug ring, which provided Greeks and non-Greeks alike with cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy, Adderall and, to that commenter's presumable horror, LSD placed on Altoids and SweetTarts. 

The case -- and probably the inevitable made-for-cable movie as well -- is called "Operation Ivy League."

The City Room post makes it clear that it took more than your average Starsky and Hutch to lock up these big men on campus.

“The undercover officer in the case was so intimidating to Mr. Sarzynski that he asked the undercover to help him kidnap and torture rival cocaine sellers,” Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told the Times, referring to the students' supplyer Miron Sarzynski. “If a ransom wasn’t paid, Sarzynski wanted the rivals killed.”

Who knew Columbia was swarming with such big-time dealers. Wash Heights, do or die?

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

On the case is Trish Regan, the CNBC reporter whose book, Joint Ventures: Inside America's Almost Legal Marijuana Industry will be out soon. "Marijuana USA" is an apparent follow-up to "Marijuana Inc." -- a documentary about California's "Emerald Triangle," the marijuana capital of America, another Trish Regan production.

Why is CNBC so obsessed with pot? We'll be tuning in to "investigate."

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor