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Hollywood Elsewhere - Movie news and opinions by Jeffrey Wells

“There’s Hollywood Elsewhere and then there’s everything else. It’s your neighborhood dive where you get the ugly truth, a good laugh and a damn good scotch.”
–JJ Abrams
(Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8)

“Smart, reliable and way ahead of the curve … a must and invaluable read.”
–Peter Biskind
(Down and Dirty Pictures Easy Riders, Raging Bulls)

“He writes with an element that any good filmmaker employs and any moviegoer uses to fully appreciate the art of film – the heart.”
–Alejandro G. Inarritu
(The Revenant, Birdman, Amores Perros)

“Nothing comes close to HE for truthfulness, audacity, and one-eyed passion and insight.”
–Phillip Noyce
(Salt, Clear and Present Danger, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Dead Calm)

“A rarity and a gem … Hollywood Elsewhere is the first thing I go to every morning.”
–Ann Hornaday
Washington Post

“Jeffrey Wells isn’t kidding around. Well, he does kid around, but mostly he just loves movies.”
–Cameron Crowe
(Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky)

“In a world of insincere blurbs and fluff pieces, Jeff has a truly personal voice and tells it like it is. Exactly like it is, like it or not.”
–Guillermo del Toro
(Pan’s Labyrinth, Cronos, Hellboy)

“It’s clearly apparent he doesn’t give a shit what the Powers that Be think, and that’s a good thing.”
–Jonathan Hensleigh
Director (The Punisher), Writer (Armageddon, The Rock)

“So when I said I’d like to leave my cowboy hat there, I was obviously saying (in my head at least) that I’d be back to stay the following year … simple and quite clear all around.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE, January ’09

“If you’re in a movie that doesn’t work, game over and adios muchachos — no amount of star-charisma can save it.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE

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5 Comments
She "Doesn't Appreciate," etc.

Manhattan-based film curator Miriam Bale has called to complain about my having described a recent press release statement that the delayed Ishtar Bluray is “impending” as “apparent conjecture” on her part. I was told by 92Y’s Sarah Morton that the term “impending release” came from Bale, but Bale says it was Elaine May‘s “people” who submitted that term.

The press release about May’s 5.17 appearance at the 92nd Street Y in concert with the Ishtar Bluray release will be amended next week, she says.

I reported the other day that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment “will eventually, no doubt, release their Ishtar Bluray (i.e., the one that almost came out last January but then was pulled at the last minute) but to go by SPHE publicist Fritz Friedman nobody at that company has any specific idea when this long-delayed disc will finally appear. Sometime this summer, next fall, next year…we’ll get back to you.”

Here’s a screen capture of the offending sentence fragment in the original 4.25 press release:

April 29, 2011 11:19 amby Jeffrey Wells
33 Comments
Grauman's Chinese To Become Samaha's Studio 54?

LA movie fanatics need to savor the Old Hollywood aura of Grauman’s Chinese theatre as much as they can between now and May 20th because after that date the notoriously oily Elie Samaha and his partner Don Kushner, the film and video-game producer (Tron: Legacy), will be transforming the legendary Chinese into a kind of mixed-venue Studio 54.

This is what I’ve been told by a source I spoke to this morning who’s closely affiliated with the Chinese and has been observing walk-throughs by Samaha and Kushner and their associates and overhearing conversations, etc.

The currently-unfolding TCM Classic Film Festival may turn out to be the last serious film-buff event ever held at the Chinese, he suspects, in view of what Samaha and Kushner have in mind.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Daniel Miller reported last night that Samaha and Kushner are buying the theater and taking over the long-term lease of the adjacent Mann Chinese 6 megaplex from a joint venture of Warner Bros. and Viacom Inc. “for an undisclosed sum.”

Miller quoted real-estate broker John Tronson as saying that the “new owners are exploring ways to maximize ‘the real estate opportunity…they could do a lot of other things there that would drive people who come and visit and see it.”

The HE source is a regular reader and serious Movie Catholic who regards the coming Samaha-Kushner transformation of the Chinese as a vulgarization of a beloved venue that, despite its diminished business and faded glory, is still more or less considered to be the Notre Dame of LA movie theatres. The Chinese is a landmark that is deeply woven into Hollywood’s history and lore, and is a kind of spiritual institution that should be protected by the city and/or the state or some kind of high-minded, non-slimy consortium and managed by priests and choirboys, or certainly not by the likes of Samaha and Kushner, who are basically satanic figures in this context.


(l.) Elie Samaha; (r.) Don Kushner.

The Chinese has been a sagging or failing enterprise for a few years now, largely due to the competition from the Arclight, and the law of the jungle says that all weak animals will be eaten sooner or later by predators. But there’s something profoundly icky about Samaha and Kushner transforming the Chinese into a mixed-venue attraction — occasional screenings, special-event rentals, attracting sports fans, glitzy night-life empties and nocturnal pussy-hounds (i.e., the Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian crowd).

The HE source believes, but couldn’t provide proof, that Samaha was instrumental in arranging for basketball star Kobe Bryant to be honored with a hand-and-footprint ceremony at the Chinese.

The Chinese staff is off salary as of 5.20, the source informs, and that’s when the heartache begins.

Samaha, the former dry-cleaning entrepeneur who became a kind of funny-money movie producer starting in the late ’90s, has been running (via a sub-lease deal) the Vogue nightclub at Hollywood and Cahuenga as well as the Playhouse, a club that used to be the Fox Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, co-operated by Samaha (who also reportedly ran Roxbury, Sunset Room and White Lotus) and Rob Vinokur.

“Samaha has been doing walk-throughs at the Chinese for some time,” the source says, “and it is clear from conversations with his people that he wants to turn the Chinese into a mixed venue that can show films, hold concerts, be rented out with removable seats to accomodate dance floor or standing-room-only crowds, etc, along with adding a bar and kitchen.

“Samaha can sugarcoat this ‘mixed venue’ concept all he wants, but clearly his intentions are not for the preservation of a grand movie palace, but rather for a grand club,” the source contends.

Samaha “also intends to convert the Chinese 6 plex upstairs into a tri-level night club that would serve as after-party location for premieres and events that might be held at the Graumans, so the studios would be more or less forced to book a package with him if they want a film to premiere at Grauman’s Chinese.”

April 29, 2011 8:59 amby Jeffrey Wells
37 Comments
Branagh "Steals" My Week With Marilyn

An HE reader attended a research screening last night at Manhattan’s AMC Lincoln Square for Simon Curtis‘s My Week With Marilyn. The British-made drama, highlighted by a knockout performance by Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, is based on two books by the late Colin Clark about Clark’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) during the making of The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956.


Kenneth Branagh in some period film and not as Laurence Oliver in Simon Curtis’s My Week With Marilyn…although he’ll probably look vaguely similar to this in Curtis’s film, minus the moustache.

It sounds at first glance like an opportunity for a tour de force performance by Williams, but in the view of our correspondent it’s Branagh who stops the show .

“Branagh is the surprise of the film. He’s wonderful as Laurence Olivier — just brilliant. Like Williams, he doesn’t look much like his real-life character but unlike her, he’s aided by superior writing. He also perfectly mimics Olivier’s facial mannerisms and voice and hamminess to the extent that you forget you’re looking at Branagh. He steals every scene he’s in and is the reason to see this movie.”

Otherwise, she says that My Week With Marilyn “reminded me a little of Richard Linklater‘s Me and Orson Welles — same type of yesteryear feeling except that film was semi-fictionalized while My Week with Marilyn is more or less true. The problem, for me, is that last night’s film seemed to be missing the punchline. For me there was no ‘dramatic’ thread.

“Colin (Eddie Redmayne) gets his first job working on a movie, courtesy of family friend Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond), otherwise known as Lady Olivier, costarring her husband and Marilyn Monroe. Aside from briefly romancing the wardrobe girl, Colin is soon befriended by Monroe. There are a few scenes of him showing Monroe various tourist attractions and then watching her skinny dip in some river somewhere but other than that, the story falls flat.


Laurence Oliver, Marilyn Monroe during filming of The Prince and the Showgirl.

“Colin doesn’t sleep with her. He really doesn’t form any type of real friendship with her other than a superficial camaraderie that takes place over the course of a few days. This is the plot of a movie?

“Williams is an excellent actress but she’s miscast as Marilyn. Although lovely and luminous, she doesn’t have the right bombshell charisma, the traffic-stopping star wattage that made Monroe a celluloid icon. Not only that, the writing for Marilyn is trite and weak — she never comes across as anything but a cipher.”

My Week With Marilyn shot from 10.4.10 to late November at Pinewood Studios and in various London locales. It will probably be released later this year.

April 29, 2011 7:40 amby Jeffrey Wells

34 Comments
"I Take Thee, Baldie…"

I thought and thought and thought about it, and decided it was better, no disrespect, to get the sleep rather than wake up at 2:30 or 3 am Pacific to catch Prince William and Kate Middleton’s marriage ceremony. Congratulations and best wishes to the happy couple.

On their own terms and in the minds and hearts of the principals, all weddings are joyous and hopeful events that everyone feels very good about, myself included. I was married in Paris at a small Catholic church called St. Julien le Pauvre in October 1987, and it was quite perfect all around. But this one, from a public standpoint, is of course a matter of some tabloid conjecture and fantasy.

From my 4.19 assessment: “The wedding will be a celebration of an exceptionally lame fantasy that tens of millions of under-educated, Sex and the City-worshipping, Star magazine-reading women the world over hold extremely dear, which is that they might one day luck into marrying an exceptionally rich guy from a rich and powerful family and live a life of fabulous, mostly thoughtless leisure for the rest of their lives. And have kids who will enjoy the same luxuries and get to to do the same thing as adults-with-their-own-kids when they come of age.”

April 29, 2011 7:04 amby Jeffrey Wells
60 Comments
The Gayness

“At one point during the preordained throwdown between the two colossi who stride through Fast Five, Dwayne Johnson rips off his bulletproof vest with the practiced economy of a 17th-century courtesan flinging off her corset,” writes N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. “His character, a professional tough guy bluntly named Hobbs, has just found his fugitive bad twin, Dom, the gnomic guru of the Fast and Furious franchise, played by Vin Diesel.

“They are the fast and, yes, the furious. Yet as these giants grasp each other’s bulging muscles, their bald heads rearing in the frame with tumescent vigor, it’s easy to imagine that they’d like some alone time. They don’t get it, largely because the earth might spin off its axis if they did, though also because the director Justin Lin, having come of cinematic age in the maximalist era of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, cleaves to the principle of more.

“About the only silence you hear in this movie, amid the crunch of metal and the hard rain of shattering glass, is the one between Dom’s ears.”

April 28, 2011 5:52 pmby Jeffrey Wells
15 Comments
Drug Dealer Hits Girl

Deborah Chow‘s The High Cost of Living (“a dark love story about two people who meet after a car accident”) played at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and I didn’t hear a thing about it from anyone. Now it’s available on demand via Tribeca Film. You’d think that Zach Braff‘s name would attract more attention.

April 28, 2011 5:39 pmby Jeffrey Wells

29 Comments
Bargain Bin

The cost of “Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made,” a serious film buff coffee-table book that started out costing many hundreds of dollars, is now down to $40.47 on Amazon. I think this might be the poor man’s abridged version and not the first-edition, velvet-bound 35-pound version. Still, the markdown indicates that it didn’t sell like Taschen was hoping it would.

April 28, 2011 5:15 pmby Jeffrey Wells
3 Comments
Color Dabs

Legendary fast-food haunt at 7475 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood — Tuesday, 4.26, 9:55 pm.

Outdoor promenade adjacent to western wing of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 20 minutes prior to watching Robert Bresson‘s Diary of a Country Priest at LACMA’s Bing theatre — Friday, 4.22, 7:10 pm.

The recently opened Civilianaire on West Third Street, prior to a breakfast with the Relativity gang (Adam Keen, Kristin Cotich, Emmy Chang) at Toast Bakery & Cafe.
April 28, 2011 4:59 pmby Jeffrey Wells
17 Comments
Rome McDonalds

I lived in a Soho tenement apartment on Sullivan Street from the summer of ’78 through late ’79. One day in late October near Prince and Greene streets I came upon an original Jean-Michel Basquiat SAMO graffiti that read, “Which of the following institutions has the most political power? (a) The CIA, (b) the Catholic church, (c) McDonalds or (d) SAMO?”


Taken during an early morning walk through Rome in late May, 2007

Later that year (or was it early ’79?) I ran into Basquiat in a post office as I was sending a couple of postcards to some friends. Basquiat noticed that I had written one of his SAMO slogans (“Do I have to spell it out? SAMO!”) and said to me, “Hey, man….that’s my stuff! That’s my thing. I do all the SAMO graffiti.” I was a little surprised that he pronounced it SAME-O when I’d been saying SAMMO to all my friends, but I was nonetheless stunned and awestruck. I told Basquiat how cool the SAMO thing is/was. I apologized for quoting him on the postcards without using his name but I didn’t know who Jean-Michel Basquiat was until he introduced himself.

April 28, 2011 4:31 pmby Jeffrey Wells

28 Comments
Ape Hands

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan has described in some detail what happened during that horrific sexual assault she suffered on Friday, 2.11 in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. She’s given an interview on the subject to N.Y. Times reporter Brian Stelter, and will also speak about it on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

The word “rape” surfaced in some news reports about the attack, and to most of us that word means what it means. Logan tells Stelter that for 40 minutes 200 or 300 men “raped me with their hands” and that her clothes were “torn to pieces.” Good God.

Rape is rarely about sex but about the rapist asserting power over a victim and venting rage about some social or emotional issue. In their heads, the animals in Tahrir Square were showing a connected, well-heeled western woman with blonde hair that they deeply resent her elite-media position compared to their scraping-to-get-by lives and that they have the power to subjugate her and thereby make the statement that they’re just as good and not her social lessers.

That plus the fact that Middle-Eastern men are not exactly paragons of enlightened thought when it comes to women. As I wrote last February, “Most of us are under the impression, I think, that the patriarchal and sometimes brutish attitudes of many Middle Eastern men toward women make typical Mediterranean males — once the leading standard-bearers of sexist behavior — look like radical lesbians.”

April 28, 2011 3:44 pmby Jeffrey Wells
78 Comments
Cut It A Break?

I must admit that last December’s teaser trailer for Michael Bay’s Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (Paramount, 7.1) put the hook in, and coming from moi, a hater of the original who refused to even see Revenge of the Fallen, that meant something. Today the first major full-boat trailer arrived. It seems potentially less offensive that other CG actioners in the wings.

The paycheck standout is Frances McDormand in the Joan Allen-in-the last-two-Bourne-movies role. Costar John Turturro also pocketed a nice big fat one.

April 28, 2011 2:58 pmby Jeffrey Wells
16 Comments
A Bit Of Tinkering

The 1979 six-part series that was John Irvin‘s Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy ran 290 minutes, or roughly 48 minutes per episode. Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In) has directed a much shorter feature film version. An undated draft of Peter Morgan‘s script, which was rewritten by Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, runs 111 pages. That’s a lot of cutting.

Alfredson’s feature, which finished shooting last December, will be distributed by Universal Pictures sometime in the fourth quarter. I’ll bet the execs who pushed along Fast Five and The Immortals are looking at this film with their heads cocked sideways and going “what the…?”

Everyone knows that Gary Oldman plays George Smiley in Alfredson’s film, and that he won’t be as good as Alec Guiness no matter what he does. Colin Firth is playing Bill Haydon. I’m not spilling anything, but Haydon meets an entirely different fate in the film that he did in the series and in John LeCarre‘s original 1974 book.

After a delay of several eons, Acorn Media finally released a DVD box set of Irvin’s six-part series in June 2004.

April 28, 2011 2:18 pmby Jeffrey Wells

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