Jeffrey Wells

Fatso Judson Gets Judo-ed

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There’s a story behind this fight scene from a YouTube guy named Craig H. I don’t know if it’s true but it sounds good: “Spencer Tracy‘s use of judo was actually suggested by Ernest Borgnine. The latter was talking to director John Sturges about how a one-armed man was going to defeat a strapping two-armed fighter. ‘What about judo?’ Borgnine asked, having learned the martial art in the Navy. So Sturges had Borgnine work out the scene with the stunt men and his double.

“During rehearsals the screen door was left open with Borgnine falling onto mattresses, but during the shooting Sturges locked it. Borgnine plowed into the door and fell to the ground. He was literally dizzy when his character got up and attempted to throw his last punch, which Tracy turned into a one-arm judo flip.” HE quibble: I don’t believe the “literally dizzy” part.

Bilge Ebiri has called Bad Day at Black Rock “one of the greatest films ever made.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s definitely a solid stab at a ’50s-styled slow-burn melodrama. Stranger arrives, town sizes him up, hostility simmers, shit hits fan.

Posted on 2.8.17: “What the hell are the residents of Black Rock, California — the tiny hole-in-the-wall ghost town in John Sturges‘ Bad Day at Black Rock — doing there in the first place? No soil, no industry, no oil, no trees, no gold mine, not much groundwater except for the well that the late Kimoko discovered, no lake, no tourists — nothing but rocks and heat and nothing to do except sit around, play cards and scowl.

“What are Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Anne Francis, Walter Brennan and the rest doing there? Are they all…what, living on government relief checks? Why is there a hotel in Black Rock? Who the hell would ever visit?

“Another issue: Are you telling me that in the middle of this parched desert moonscape that Francis’s Liz, the 20something sister of John Ericson‘s Pete, isn’t married or (ahem) ‘seeing’ anyone in town? In a town this dead you know that someone would have stepped up and wooed his way in, and yet Liz could have been played by Thelma Ritter or Mildred Dunnock for all the action she’s getting.

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Small Potatoes

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So a few months before they collaborated on the script of Paths of Glory, Stanley Kubrick and Calder Willingham wrote a screenplay adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s “The Burning Secret“, a 1913 novella involving a mother, her adolescent son and a romantic suitor. The script was submitted to the MGM script department on 10.24.56, but MGM execs didn’t like it and the project fell through. Soon after Kubrick and Willingham co-wrote Paths of Glory and the rest is history.

Now Bangor University film professor Nathan Abrams has found a copy of the Burning Secret script…big deal.

In 1987 or thereabouts Andrew Birkin, who had worked with Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Napoleon, wrote and directed his own film of Burning Secret, also based on the Zweig novella and costarring Klaus Maria Brandauer, Faye Dunaway and David Eberts. It came out in ’88 but didn’t cause much of a stir. And what?

As long as we’re talking about dormant Kubrick projects, whatever happened to the idea of HBO producing a version of Kubrick’s Napoleon, which Cary Fukunaga was going to direct with Steven Spielberg producing? It was announced a little more than two years ago.

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“Even Plastic Surgery For Dogs…”

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You may or may not believe that a healthy percentage of wealthy ostentatious showoffs in this country suffer from a kind of soul cancer, but I sure as hell do. Just look at their drained expressions, re-sculpted faces and horribly misjudged clothing choices…these people are not in a good place. If I had their dough I would casually stroll around with a lot more grace and understatement, for sure.

So I really didn’t know what to do with Lauren Greenfield‘s Generation Wealth (Amazon, 7.20), which is basically a documentary version of her same-titled photography book that came out a year ago. I was saying to myself “I get it, I get it…these people are wretched gargoyles with a lot of inner sadness.” It’s partly a cavalcade of grotesque Kardashian or Trump wannabes making you want to throw up, and partly Greenfield taking a stab at self-examination as she considers her values, upbringing, workaholic lifestyle, family issues.

I respect Greenfield for the ambition behind her doc, but at the same I was shuddering with revulsion. I was also wondering why the wise and wonderful Anthony Bourdain hung himself in a bathroom when it’s obvious that Greenfield’s subjects are the ones who should be having the necktie parties. They’re straight out of Trump Satyricon, and these conspicuous-consumption Americans, Greenfield is telling us, are hastening the fall of Rome. All I can say is that I really wanted to take a shower after it ended.

The Other Side of Cannes

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When the world premiere of Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind didn’t happen in Cannes two months ago, the likelihood of a big splashy debut at either the Venice or Telluride film festivals (or perhaps at both) became a fait accompli. I’m now hearing a rumor that TOSOTW will open the Venice Film Festival…fine. If this doesn’t happen it’ll almost certainly be screened there, and then at Telluride a few days later with Toronto to follow. How could these festivals not be on the first-viewing list?

“Seamless Wind Assessed,” posted on 1.19.18: “The first-ever screening of a full-boat version of Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind happened last Tuesday night (1.16) at Santa Monica’s Ocean Ave. screening room. The reconstituted, inside-the-industry, early ’70s montage-hodgepodge will presumably be further refined before debuting at a forthcoming 2018 film festival.

HE to friend who attended Tuesday’s screening: “Is it…what, a fascinating but surreal early ’70s timepiece? Is it a slipshod, free-associative whatsit without a narrative spine, or does it sorta kinda have something going on? Orson was a near-genius at times, and he obviously did his very best and worked his fingers to the bone, but be honest — is it some kind of visual dazzler, an interesting piece-of-shit or a major discovery or what? Can you give me a hint or two about how it plays?”


Cruddy, bleachy image of scene from The Other Side of the Wind with costars Peter Bogdanovich, John Huston.

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All Hail The Collapse of “Skyscraper”

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Dwayne Johnson and Rawson Marshall Thurber‘s Skyscraper (Universal 7.13) has been assessed as a serious box-office shortfaller, if not a calamity. Yesterday it made a lousy $9,268.000 on 3782 screens for an average of $2451, and will end up with an estimated $24 to $28 million by Sunday night — a third-place finish behind Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation and Disney-Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp.

“Skyscraper Falls,” a Variety headline announced; “Skyscraper Up In Flames,” proclaimed Deadline.

Could it be that audiences are finally waking up to Hollywood Elsewhere’s longstanding assessment of Johnson, which is that he’s fundamentally opposed to making good films and that his default instinct is to topline high-concept action flicks that are relentlessly stupid and implausible? Did audiences steer clear because critics are saying that Skyscraper is so bone-dumb it’ll turn your brain into a volley ball? Are they finally starting to realize that Johnson has repeatedly shown contempt for audiences by making nothing but crap?

Not so much, says Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro. “There [are] a few reasons why Skyscraper is in shambles,” he wrote this morning, “but chiefly Johnson’s family crowd here is being swallowed up whole by both Hotel Transylvania 3 and the second weekend of Ant-Man and the Wasp.”

AD also said something about Johnson’s brand being over-exposed with the recent release of Jumanji and Rampage, i..e, “where’s the fresh face?” He quotes a RelishMix observation about Skyscraper “literally [looking] like a Die Hard update, but with a hero challenged by a prosthetic.” But shouldn’t the fact that Skyscraper is a shitty film…shouldn’t that at least be factored in? Quality counts for a little something…no?

It’s ironic that on a day that everyone is talking about Johnson’s first significant box-office stumble, The Guardian‘s Steve Rose has posted a “yay, Dwayne!” piece called “Let’s Rock! Why Dwayne Johnson is the new Schwarzenegger.”

Posted on 12.8.16: “With the exception of Michael Bay‘s Pain and Gain, Johnson has demonstrated time and again that he’s fundamentally opposed to appearing in films that are (a) good and (b) at least semi-believable. He makes big, dopey, adolescent cartoons.”

Americans Don’t Get It

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I noticed three culturally significant things during my second visit to London in early December ’80. I was there to interview Peter O’Toole for GQ magazine, but it was also quite the jarring moment when I awoke one morning to learn that John Lennon has been killed hours earlier in New York City.

One, I noticed how almost everyone using the up escalator in the London Underground always stands to the right to allow others to pass. The only ones who didn’t seem to understand this system, to go by a 40ish business-suited guy who was standing in front of me one day, were American tourists. Americans (pudgy couples in particular) love to stand and block escalators or travelators. Especially in airports and on New York subways. I’m into walking and stair-climbing, so every time I travel I’m constantly saying “sorry…excuse me”, over and over. Standing to the right is totally a British thing, or so it seemed at the time.

Two, for the first time in my life I heard my last name pronounced correctly, or at least in a richer, more tonally satisfying way than I myself had ever pronounced it. It’s an English name, of course, so no surprise that I experienced my “woke” moment when a British Airways attendant said “Mr. Wells?” He said it with a zesty, just-right emphasis on the “ell” sound. The best way I can describe his pronunciation is that he said it vigorously where I tend to use an “euhll” sound, and with an air of near-resignation. The British Airways guy made me feel proud of my heritage.

Three, I got into Bow Wow Wow. Their music was blasting at every party I attended. I bought a cassette that had a different, much better mix of “Louis Quatorze” than the one commonly played. And then I lost it.

“The Alarm Went Off But…”

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The premiere of Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Who Is America? pops tomorrow night on Showtime. Seven satirical half-hours about pranking conservative lunatics and one or two liberals, including Bernie Sanders. SBC’s return to series television for the first time in more than a decade. (I’m not finding any reviews.) Should four-year-olds carry firearms to pre-school and perhaps undergo anti-terrorist training on weekends? No, but what happened to former tea-bagger Joe Walsh is amusing. Satisfying, I mean.

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The Passion of Anna

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On this, the 100th anniversary of Ingmar Bergman‘s birth (7.14.18), I am holding to my conviction that the darkest, hottest and most despairing Bergman film of all time is The Silence (’63). And therefore my favorite, in part because it’s so crystalline and unified — a perfect distillation of a sensual gloomhead mentality.

A ten year-old boy (Jorgen Lindstrom, who’s now 67) travelling with his ailing mother Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and her younger sister Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) through a grim Central European landscape, and then renting a couple of rooms at an old-world hotel. The boy watches as Anna settles into a kind of scowling sensual abandon. As always, Sven Nykvist‘s black-and-white cinematography is exquisite, and his capturings of of the sultry, vaguely self-disgusted Anna in various states of undress in that hotel room and bathroom are the stuff that lifelong dreams are made of. For me anyway.

I’m mentioning The Silence because you can’t buy a stand-alone Bluray version, not from Criterion or anyone else. You can watch it on Filmstruck and The Criterion Channel but I’m not yet a subscriber. (For whatever reason my initial reaction to Filmstruck was “a bridge too far” — lame, I realize.) It’s included in Criterion’s $239 Ingmar Bergman Bluray box set, and you can buy a DVD version in a 2003 Bergman trilogy package that includes Through A Glass Darkly and Winter Light. So right now it’s FilmStruck or nothing. Bummer.

In a 5.27.13 Criterion-posted essay, David Blakeslee wrote that “as significant as The Silence was in Bergman’s development as a filmmaker and person, there’s no doubt that it marked an even bigger advance in terms of expressive freedom in dealing with human sexuality, especially as it involved both nudity and the portrayal of women in pursuit of their own erotic fulfillment rather than as passive sex objects.

“With the Palme d’or winner Blue is the Warmest Color and Lars Von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac, we can trace a tangent that didn’t necessarily begin with Bergman’s 1963 masterpiece but is clearly continuous in using on-screen sex to drum up interest. And it works! Through its lasting influence and continuing beguilement as to what it’s all about, The Silence still makes a lot of noise.

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Sticking to December

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A new trailer for Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War appeared a few hours ago. It was also announced earlier today by The Playlist‘s Charles Barfield that Amazon will release the Polish-produced film on Friday, 8.31 rather than the previously announced date of Friday, 12.21. That’s incorrect. The IMDB actually says that Cold War will be released in England on 8.31, and not in the U.S. The IMDB is still saying that Cold War is being released stateside on 12.21.18.

Even before the mistake was revealed it seemed a little head-scratchy that Amazon would decide to release a leading contender for the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar just as the 2018 Telluride Film Festival (where I’d expected Cold War to a leading attraction) is getting underway.

Cold War is the latest Pawel Pawlikowski masterpiece, destined to win the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar and HE’s favorite Cannes film by a country mile. Jewel-perfect, exquisitely photographed, tight as a drum.

5.19 HE blurb: “Cold War is so perfectly composed, a masterwork on every level. Pawlikowski’s story-telling instincts couldn’t be more eloquent or understated. Every plot point is always conveyed in the most discreet and understated terms, but you’ll never miss a trick. And the economy! A story that spans 15 year sis handled within 84 minutes, and you never sense that you’re being rushed along.”

On 6.2.18 I posted my latest best-of-2018 piece — i.e., “Ten Serious Winners.” I was restricting myself to films that have commercially opened. If I were to include the Cannes entries, my list would read as follows: Cold War, First Reformed, Hereditary, A Quiet Place, The King, You Were Never Really Here, Filmworker, Happy as Lazzaro.

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