Without getting into whys and wherefores I’m temporarily upset and stressed about things, so I’m posting these photos in order to self-anesthetize or otherwise calm myself down. Nothing to it beyond that.

Shot in Manarola in Cinque Terre, on 6.5.17.

Went hiking in the West Hollywood hills yesterday afternoon. From late ’87 to the early fall of ’89 I lived at 8682 Franklin with my then-wife Maggie. The upstairs portion, I mean. Two bedrooms, killer view, tall ceilings, $1400 per month. Our landlord was Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

You can never trust a trailer about anything, but Elizabeth Vogler‘s Paris Is Us looks pretty good. Why isn’t it playing in the World Cinema section of Sundance ’19? The original French title, Paris es une fete, translates as Paris Is A Feast, which sounds slightly better. Exceptional cinematography, editing. Noemie Schmidt, Gregoire Isvarine, Marie Mottet, Lou Castel. Arriving on Netflix on 2.22.19.

I’ve read over Kris Tapley‘s predictions for the 91st Academy Awards, which are more or less the same that everyone else is mentioning. I don’t have any significant disputes — I just want to see my favorites (Roma, Green Book, Cold War, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Vice) do well. If A Star Is Born collects 10 nominations, great — it still won’t win Best Picture.

I’ll have to pack sometime later today or this evening, and then arise at 4:45 am. I’ll have an hour or so (5:45 am to 7 am) to bang out a reaction piece before leaving for Burbank Airport.

Big Sick auteur and Silicon Valley costar Kumail Nanjiani and Black-ish costar Tracee Ellis Ross will announce the nominees. An inner voice is telling me that Ross will pronounce the names of foreign-born nominees better than Tiffany Haddish did last year.

Dear Sundance Press Office (Emily, Chrissy, Jason, Janine & Spencer),

As I prepare to leave for Park City, I’m asking again that you reconsider your decision to deny me press credentials for the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Hollywood Elsewhere is one of the best-known daily columns in the film industry. I’ve been tapping out an online movie column since October 1998 — 20 years plus. Before then I wrote for the L.A. Times Syndicate (’94 to ’99), People, Entertainment Weekly, L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, N.Y, Daily News, etc.

I’ve been a steady Sundance press person for 25 years, going back to ’94. Over the last quarter-century I’ve done a great deal to bring praise and heated attention to dozens upon dozens of Sundance premieres. I would be honored to be able to continue to do that. Everyone else has press-credentialed me for many, many years — Telluride, Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, New York, Santa Barbara, etc.

I’ve tried apologizing for whatever it is that you’ve apparently disapproved of in my recent (the last couple of years) of coverage. I’ve tried asking you and yours to please let bygones be bygones and turn the other cheek. And I’ve written to John Cooper and, more recently, to Robert Redford about this issue.

Whatever your response I’ll be humping it around town and attending whatever I can by the good graces of publicist and filmmaker friends.

But a press pass would make things so much less complicated. Please reconsider your decision.

Regards,

Jeffrey Wells, HE

My Southwest flight to Salt Lake City and the Sundance Film Festival leaves tomorrow morning around 9 am, but due to a longish Las Vegas layover I won’t arrive at the Park Regency condo until 5 pm or so. Like last year, Hollywood Elsewhere is bunking at the Park Regency with World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy and seasoned film journo and festival guy Robert Koehler.

My first Sundance in 25…now 26 years without a press pass! I have a sacred duty to fulfill, of course. A duty to myself, the general “never say die” esprit de journalism and the intrepid tradition of Hollywood Elsewhere to fly my ass up there, put on the overcoat and the black cowboy hat, tromp through the snow (Park City is currently at 27 degrees and besieged by winter storm “Indra”) and see everything I can.

I’ve been asking filmmaker and publicist friends to please help with public-screening tickets, and I know I’ll be getting into a fair number of films. Maybe 15 or so. Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets. The Steven Soderbergh basketball flick at Slamdance, for sure. (Not to mention other Slamdance films, which I’m credentialed to see.) Dan Gilroy‘s Velvet Buzzsaw. The Harvey Weinstein, Mike Wallace, David Crosby and Roy Cohn docs, certainly. Not to mention the accusatory four-hour Michael Jackson doc and the origins of Ridley Scott‘s Alien doc, MEMORY. Whatever I can see.

Some of the alleged hotties: Shia LaBeouf‘s Honey Boy, Nisha Ganatra‘s Late Night, Scott Z. Burns‘ The Report, JD Dillard‘s Sweetheart (if there’s a way to see it without actually attending a midnight screening), Rashid Johnson‘s Native Son, Tomorrow Man (recently sold to Sony Pictures Classics) costarring John Lithgow and Blythe Danner.

Word around the campfire is that Rhys Ernst‘s Adam, Chewitel Ejiofor‘s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and Pippa Bianco‘s Share are a tad underwhelming, at least according to one Boy Scout. Joe Berlinger‘s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Zac Efron-as-Ted Bundy pic, is said to be strikingly performed but “dramatically flat.”

Sonya — The White Swan, a Sonja Henie biopic, has been screened in Los Angeles but I’ve heard nothing. Ditto Bart Freundlich‘s After The Wedding, which is opening the festival on Thursday night.

Will audiences be treated to another Manchester By The Sea, a Call me By Your Name, a Big Sick? I would deeply love to experience this kind of thing but I’m not hearing about films of this calibre in the wings. Is anyone?

A typical Sundance-credentialed journo sees 20 to 25 films over this ten-day gathering. But outside the documentaries Sundance ’19 is looking (and it breaks my heart to say this) like it might be just as meh-level “woke” as last year — alternate lifestyles, afflictions, LGBTQ and POC agenda sagas, women in transition, this or that personal issue, healings, buried pain, social maladies, etc.

We all know what Aaron Sorkin meant three days ago when he said (a) he really likes “the new crop of young people who were just elected to Congress”, but (b) “they now need to stop acting like young people, okay? It’s time to do that.” We know what he meant.

Sorkin meant that Democrats have to start conveying to Middle American bumblefucks that they’re not entirely about advancing the agendas of POCs, LGBTQs and Twitter lefties, and that they don’t necessarily believe that “white person” is an epithet, and that whiteys are not necessarily evil on a genetic basis.

We’re living in such an insane, loop-dee-loop world right now that the previous half-sentence (beginning with “they” and ending with “basis”) will, in the minds of some, be taken as proof that I’m a bad person. In fact I just don’t believe in necessarily demonizing Anglo Saxons as Satan’s emissaries on earth, which is pretty much what the SJW twitter wing of the Democratic party has come to accept as a given.

“I think there’s a great opportunity here, now more than ever, for Dems to be the non-stupid party, to point out the difference,” Sorkin said. “”We [have to convey that we] haven’t forgotten the economic anxiety of the middle class, but we’re going to be smart about this. We’re not going to be mean about it.”

From “Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture,” an October 2018 Atlantic article by the Harvard-affiliated Yascha Mounk: “On social media, the country seems to divide into two neat camps: Call them the woke and the resentful.

“Team Resentment is manned — pun very much intended — by people who are predominantly older and almost exclusively white. Team Woke is young, likely to be female, and predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white ‘allies’ do their dutiful part). These teams are roughly equal in number, and they disagree most vehemently, as well as most routinely, about the catchall known as political correctness.

“Reality is nothing like this. As scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres and Tim Dixon argue in a report published Wednesday, ‘Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,’ most Americans don’t fit into either of these camps. They also share more common ground than the daily fights on social media might suggest — including a general aversion to PC culture.”

Kamala Harris‘s presidential candidacy was announced today. I have admired her for a long, long time, principally for her confirmation hearing grillings, which have been second only to former Sen. Al Franken‘s. Harris is a tough, principled Bay Area liberal who doesn’t take any shit, and I would vote for her in a second. She’s going to make the most of her 2020 Presidential run (certainly in the primaries) and generally kick ass, and all power to her.

Harris is heavily favored by women of color, and “it’s hard to find a more important primary group than [these],” says CNN’s Harry Enten. “They are by far the most Democratic-aligned major demographic group. Women of color powered Hillary Clinton‘s sweep of the Southeast in the 2016 primary. Just last year, they were the base for Democrat Doug Jones‘s shocking victory in the Alabama special Senate election.”

But we all know the odds are against Harris. Not in the primaries, but in the general election. The bottom-line opposition portrayal will be “too flinty, too strident, too prosecutorial, too lefty California.” This impression alone will scare the living shit out of white Middle American pudgebods. Most Americans despise President Trump, but they’ll probably feel better about handing the White House over to a warmer, less p.c., more alpha-vibey candidate (Uncle Joe, Beto O’Rourke).

Harris is a clear and profound expression of where Democrats are at right now — mixed ethnic, female, humanist progressive. But she doesn’t have the organic “feelies” that O’Rourke has.