Jeffrey Wells

Old news but worth repeating: The only times I’ve changed or modified my opinion is when I’ve been overly kind or fawning to a big audience-friendly film, and realized when I went back for seconds that there was less there than initially met the eye. My reaction to Peter Jackson‘s King Kong (’05) was one such example. I didn’t change my opinion about the first 70 minutes, which I flat-out hated. But today, 13 years later, I’m troubld by my enthusiasm for the second and third acts. That Central Park ice-pond sequence in particular. Snowballs, time out, Naomi Watts in a sheer white gown in 28-degree weather…what was I thinking?

DELETED EXCERPT from King Kong‘s third act — page 137 — written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson:

Late evening. A crowd has formed at the southern edge of Central Park (59th Street near Seventh Avenue). A uniformed platoon of New York’s finest have blocked off access to the park with wooden barriers. A distraught middle-aged woman calls out to SERGEANT PADDY MULDOON.

WOMAN: Sergeant Muldoon! I saw him! I saw the ape!

MULDOON: (addressing beat cops) Keep them back, fellas. Nobody gets in.

WOMAN: He went into the park!

MULDOON: All right now, settle down.

WOMAN: Carrying that blonde woman in the white dress. Aren’t you going to do something? You have to save her. She might be dying!

MULDOON: I happen to know he’s not hurting her at all.

WOMAN: But Sergeant…!!

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Yesterday I posted a list of 130-plus scripts (“What Does This List Tell You?“) that have some kind of heat or momentum in the theatrical realm. Some have attracted positive attention but haven’t been produced yet, others have gone before cameras but have yet to open, some are buzzy but still waiting for a green light. The list contains a small sliver of titles that represent original stories; the rest are sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots.

The comment thread was appropriately despairing. At one point (and you knew this was coming) HE commenter Patrick Murtha reminded that “there’s this episodic art form that I think is superior…you may have heard of it…it’s called television.” While movies bang out sequels, remakes and rehashings, television “is superior for telling multi-part stories.” Except, of course, when these multi-part stories devolve into narcotizing, soul-draining puzzleboxing a la Westworld.

To which I replied: “Agreed — high-grade entertainment or profound absorption within a smart, above-average cable/streaming longform is in many ways superior and preferable to what movies are doing now for the most part. Hell, with the presumed-sequel mentality so fully embedded in the theatrical realm, movies themselves have almost become longform in a sense.

“But for those films that still play by the classic rules (a one-off delivering a strong, efficiently constructed story with a satisfying third-act payoff and a haunting thematic undertow within 100 to 160 minutes and sometimes only 85 or 90), a higher bar applies. It’s much harder to deliver the whole bull’s-eye package in a single sitting, but when that happens there’s really nothing better, and in this sense movies will sometimes leave longform cable/streaming in the dust. Every year between 5% and 10% of theatrical movies accomplish this.”

In the same sense it’s a harder and finer thing to write a truly effective 5,000-word short story than a long, elephantine novel running 1200 pages. Which is the more satisfying East of Eden narrative — the long, sprawling, Biblically-infused tale of the Trask and Hamilton families in John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, or Elia Kazan‘s pared-down screen version that concentrated on the Trasks (the focus of the novel’s second half) and primarily on Cal or Caleb (James Dean‘s character)?

I was allowed to dislike Debra Granik‘s Leave No Trace when I saw it last January in Park City. The first 65 minutes’ worth, I mean, which were all I could take. Everyone else seemed favorably disposed or deeply touched, but I couldn’t handle Ben Foster‘s Will character — a quietly seething, stressed-out-dad with a nearly bald head and all kinds of creepy stares and glares. I’ve always felt unnerved by Foster. He might be a steady cat off the set, but he’s always struck me as a weirdo beardo.

Will and his 13 year-old daughter Tom (Thomasin KcKenzie) have been surviving in the Oregon forest, completely cut off from society and eating off the land or close to it. And I just couldn’t tolerate what Will was doing to Tom, keeping her away from society and boys and everything else. He’s a kind of twitchy, neurotic naturalist because of his Middle East combat experience with the U.S military, but who is this ass telling his daughter that she’s going to know nothing of the world except for the the smell of streams, damp leaves, fir trees and pine cones for the rest of her life? Seriously, what a dick.

I’m also allowed to explain why Leave No Trace has aggregate ratings of 100% and 88% from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively. It’s because Granik is a skilled, straight-shooting director — everyone loved Down To The Bone (’04) and Winter’s Bone (’10) — and highly respected by critics. She’s female and indie-brand with her own ethos and way of shooting, and nobody wants to give her a hard time. Except for Debruge and one or two others they’re all “in the tank” for Granik, and that means if a fairly decent film like Leave No Trace comes along, they’re going to praise it all they can. They’ll never admit it, but it’s how the game works with certain filmmakers. Kelly Reichardt is another indie helmer who always gets a pass.

Leave No Trace is a pretty good film if you can handle Foster’s behavior. It’s a eye-level thing about people and their curious personalities and the rules they have to enforce or adhere to. It’s thoughtful, earnest, and refreshingly free of cliches. But it’s not that good. It’s acceptable as far as it goes. Some have actually called Granik’s film “extremely boring”, which it is if you want to be hard-nosed about it. In his Sundance review the occasionally surprising Variety critic Peter Debruge actually said “there’s a listless, almost meandering nature to the story…no sense of where the script is headed, and no urgency to its resolution.”

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Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp is looking at an $82 million haul by Sunday night. My first thought was “that’s all?…a piddly $82 million over three days including the Thursday-night haul?” Then I stepped back and said, “Well, maybe that’s not so bad. It’s making $25 million more than the $57.2 million earned by the original Ant-Man three years ago.” If a sequel’s first-weekend haul is 44% higher than what the original managed, that’s cause for celebration.

Why, then, did that $82 million make me feel slightly let down? I guess I was thinking of Solo‘s first-weekend haul of $84 million. Solo was regarded by pretty much everyone as a major bust, right? Almost everyone hated it or felt bored or burned, nobody could stand Alden Ehrenreich trying to be Harrison Ford, etc.? And yet Solo, a piece of shit by any fair-minded yardstick, made almost $2 million more than Ant-Man and the Wasp, which is a much more entertaining film…c’mon.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “Any fanboy cynic attempting to make an argument that Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s weekend is less than Solo‘s $84.4M 3-day, or under the $93.8M domestic debut of DC’s Justice League, is missing the point. Ant-Man and the Wasp wasn’t an off-the-rails production like those movies which were hindered by their $300M-plus shooting costs. Sources tell us that Disney kept the shooting cost for Ant-Man and the Wasp around $162M net. That’s lower than other Marvel sequels like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($200M net), Thor: Dark World ($170M) and Thor: Ragnarok‘s ($180M) with a global P&A spend around $154M.

“The first Ant-Man profited close to $104M off a $519.3M worldwide gross and $130M net production cost. Wasp was hatched to do the same and should be in the black at around $600M or $650M worldwide.”

Nonetheless Solo‘s advance word was dreadful while the pre-opening buzz for Ant-Man and the Wasp couldn’t have been better…go figure.

Here’s a list of not-yet-released, not-yet-produced, possibly top-drawer scripts that a friend is looking to get his mitts on. Remakes, reboots, sequels, prequels with a light sprinkling of original storylines. I’ve put asterisks next to my favorites, but tell me which ones stir some level of intrigue or at least mild interest. I’ve typed an X next to those I’m reluctant to even glance at, much less read or even skim. Please send PDFs of all asterisk scripts to gruver1@gmail.com.

If Irving Thalberg returned to the earth in the body of a young script reader working for Warner Bros., he would take one look at this list and hang himself:

6 Underground by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese X
24-7 by Sarah Rothschild
355 by Theresa Rebeck
Aladdin by John August
Alita: Battle Angel by Laeta Kalogridis and James Cameron X
The American by Michael Mitnick * (“authentically GREAT,” a filmmaker friend says)
Aquaman by Will Beall, James Wan
Archer & Armstrong by Terry Rossio
The Art of Fielding Mellish by Tripper Clancy

Baby Nurse by Austin Winberg
Bad Times at the El Royale by Drew Goddard
Battle of Britain by Matthew Orton X
The Beauty inside by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
Between the Earth and Sky by Veena Sud
The Book of Luke by Craig A. Williams X (awful title)
The Bride of Frankenstein (Dark Universe Remake) by David Koepp *
Bumblebee by Christina Hodson

Cannonball Run by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant *
Charlie’s Angels (remake) by David Auburn
Charlie Johnson in the Flames by Justin Haythe
Champion by Gary Scott Thompson, rewrite by Brad Ingelsby
Cointelpro by Leon Hendrix and Ajani Jackson
Coming to America 2 X
Commando (remake) by David Ayer X
Cowboy Ninja Viking Samurai Street Fighter Fucknose Bare-Knuckled Stud by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch
Creature from the Black Lagoon (Dark Universe Remake) by Will Beall, Jeff Pinkner (Son of Shape of Water?)
Creed 2 by Sylvester Stallone X
Cumulus by Matt Silverman

Detective Pikachu by Nicole Perlman and Alex Hirsch X
The Devil Has A Name by Rob McEveety
Devil’s Night by Leo Benvenuti
Die Hard (prequel) by the Hayes Brothers (young John McLane, rookie detective…get outta here!) X
Domino by Petter Skavlan
Dumbo by Ehren Krueger X (blend of CG and live-action, right?)

Empty High-Velocity Popcorn Jizz-Whizz Jasper Johns Paint Splatter by Clyde Barrow and Glenn Bunkowski *

Fast and Furious 9 by Chris Morgan X
The Favourite by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
The Force by David Mamet *
Fire Me by Jacob Meszaros and Zach Taylor *
Five Feet Apart by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis

The Girl in the Spider’s Web by Steven Knight X
Glass by M. Night Shayamalan
Grant by David James Kelly
Godzilla: King of the Monsters by Michael Dougherty & Zach Shields
Godzilla vs Kong X
Goosebumps 2

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It’s 3:20 pm, and I’m facing the most surreal iPhone episode I’ve ever been stuck in. It’s like quicksand. I feel like Sterling Hayden in The Asphalt Jungle as he’s driving back to Kentucky with Jean Hagen.

As mentioned, my iPhone 6 Plus was stolen yesterday. Last night I bought an iPhone 8 Plus, but now I can’t use the damn thing because of a two-step verification process that’s part of the 8 Plus software. Owners are required to input their Apple ID and password (no prob), and then a six-digit passcode that Apple would normally text me. However, the thief who stole my iPhone has also hacked into it, and given it a new phone # or SIM card, and he’s the one who’s receiving the six-digit code from Apple, not me. Somehow this d-bag has convinced Apple that he’s me. Apple believes that his phone # is one of my trusted devices.

Notification emails from Apple tell me that the last two digits of the thief’s phone # are “14” plus that his initials are “S S.” No use of periods tells you he’s not well educated. If he called himself “SS” it could be interpreted as a perverse Nazi thing, but no.

Believe it or not four Apple senior-level techies have tried to crack this problem, but the last guy told me I’m out of luck. Me: “What do you mean I’m ‘out of luck‘? Are you telling me to return the phone and become an Android person?”

As I mentioned the only suggested Apple solution is to dump my Apple ID and password, but that would be horrible in terms of being unable to synch all my photos, music, notes and whatnot. This is starting to feel catastrophic. I’ve spent the last two and a half hours writing iPhone hackers (shady guys who will only accept Bitcoin payment) and talking to a couple of private investigators who might know how to sidestep this two-step verification, six-digit-input process.

HE to thief (a.k.a. “S S“): “I know you’re going to keep my iPhone 6 Plus and that I’ll most likely never hear from you, but I just need that six-digit code. Email or text it to me — hell, post it on the comment thread — and I’ll be out of this awful situation. You’re several hundred bucks richer with your new stolen iPhone, right? Do me this small favor and I’ll forget about trying to hunt you down. Seriously.”

If you’re speaking to senior-level Apple tech support person (as I am right now about an iPhone problem), you’re probably wasting your time if the technician says “I’m very sorry that you’re having this problem.” I’ve been dealing with these guys for over a decade now, and no one who’s sagely and confidently solved a problem has ever apologized for anything. Problem solvers assess and fix, period. But there’s always a first time, right? Open your heart and wait for divine providence. Then comes the second death-knell chant: “I’m just trying to help you, sir…I’m just trying to work with you.” Those are guillotine words. If you hear them you need to gently thank the tech for his/her assistance, wish him/her a good day, and start all over again.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that yesterday I misplaced my iPhone 6 Plus while visiting the Beverly Center. I reported the loss to the security and guest services guys …nothing. I went home and used the “Find My iPhone” app on my Macbook Pro…no signal. By all indications someone put it in their pocket, went home and tried to hack it. I know because I was forced to buy a new phone (8 Plus with 256K memory), and while retrieving my apps, photos and contact info from the cloud (no problems on that end) the 8 Plus software subjected me to a two-factor authentication process, which means providing not just my Apple password but a six-digit code that Apple has sent to “your other iPhone.” Huh? The bottom line is that the Apple network now believes that my current phone number ends in “14,” which it never has. The phone number ending in “14,” I suspect, was submitted by the thief in the process of hacking the iPhone 6 Plus and installing a new SIM card. The long and the short is that I’m currently unable to double-authenticate my identity, at least as far as the iPhone 8 Plus’s software is concerned.

One of the senior-level Apple support reps told me that the only way she could make the problem go away was for me to erase my longstanding Apple ID and password and create new ones. “But I’ve had that Apple ID for years and years,” I said. “I’ve bought all kinds of songs and albums with them, and if I switch out all kinds of problems will result. Why should I abandon my Apple ID because a thief has tried to hack my phone and give it a new number?” She said she had to recommend this because she couldn’t fully authenticate my identity over the phone. “But there’s a ton of information I could supply…historical background stuff, bank account #s, purchasing history,” I said. “Why can’t you verify by asking these questions?” She said her protocol didn’t allow for this. I said thanks anyway, etc. A second senior-level tech support guy pretty much said the same thing.

My next move will be to consult with a nearby Apple store “genius bar” person.

A message from your President @realDonaldTrump on Independence Day pic.twitter.com/O2PwZqO0cs

— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) July 4, 2018

Now this — this! — is truly great television. A performance that felt like something else. Nine years and change. I was living in New York at the time, and I don’t think I was even watching as it happened. Letterman to Phoenix: “Joaquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight. We’ll certainly keep you in our rolodex.” Phoenix looks like his 2009 self in Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene, which got caught in the Weinstein collapse and may or may not open in this country.

18 months later (9.22.10):