Jeffrey Wells

It all turned out well in the end.

After landing in Albuquerque at 4:50 pm (mountain time) I shuttled over to the car rental community, about a mile from the airport, and lo and behold the National attendant was still there! I’d found a better Priceline deal a few hours earlier , and wound up with a new white Toyota Corolla.

I drove out of town just before 6 pm, and headed north on 25 and then 550. A magnificent day with breathtaking topographical splendor and a vast, bright blue sky and sunlight piercing through the windshield, and a great sound system to boot.

New Mexico driving lifts you up and activates your soul, bruh.

I’d been struggling with airports (LaGuardia and Dallas/Ft. Worth) and a cancelled flight and all the rest of that exhaustion, and suddenly I was free and delighted and flying along at 80 mph.

I made it as far as the Mesa Verde motel in Mancos, Colorado — roughly 100 minutes south of Telluride, call it two hours with pit stops and photo ops.

First the Killers of the Flower Moon marketing team decided against booking Martin Scorsese’s murder-and-racism drama into one or two of the early fall festivals. Last May’s Cannes debut was enough, they seemed to be saying.

Now they’ve decided against a limited theatrical opening on 10.6 in favor of a big sweeping int’l debut on 10.20.

What the Apple / Paramount guys seem to be suggesting is that they don’t trust the word of mouth that may result from a limited opening, hence a preference for audiences flocking to the film wham-bam style, driven more by the name value of Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro than anything else.

They’ve also released a one-sheet that strangely attempts to sell a non-existent relationship dynamic between Leo’s Ernest Burkhart (a real-life, none-too-bright bad guy) and his wife, Mollie Burkhart, also real and played by the less-than-fully-emotive Lily Gladstone.

Ernest pretends to love and care for Mollie, but he’s half-playing her the whole time and then he does even worse in Act Three. Ernest is not her protector, and Lily can actually smell the duplicity early on, or at least from the mid-point. So the poster image is bullshit.

3:15 Dallas time: If everything had gone according to plan, I’d be in Albuquerque right now…actually I’d probably be drivin’ north to Telluride…drivin’ on the wide-open highway with the scent of damp desert filling my nostrils and yellin’ “yee-haw!”

Instead the second stage of HE’s New York-to-Telluride travel plan is pretty much fucked and in tatters, thanks to American Airlines. Technical issues cancelled the Dallas-to-Albuquerque flight, which should have left around 1:15 pm Central.

They’re either going to find a new plane that might leave this afternoon or put me on a flight leaving at 8:30 pm.

So I’m sitting inside the air-conditioned Terminal D within the Dallas-Fort Worth airport complex, and basically feeling used, abused, subdued and tattoo’ed.

4:11 pm update: I’m sitting in seat 30C on a new flight that’s supposed to be leaving now. The Albuquerque Avis guys go home home at 4 pm…thanks!

Friendo: “Have a great time at Telluride. Keep it real.”

HE: “I try to respond plain and straight every day, and double especially whenever the Crazy Town nutters go on the attack, which is every other day.”

Friendo: “I don’t trust many opinions that come out of that festival except yours and maybe two or three others. Most of the Telluride critics are dishonest whores. Anyway, I’m hoping a few winners pop up.”

HE: “I’m going to dislike Rustin — I can feel it in my bones. I know I’m going to love The Holdovers, and I can’t wait to re-experience The Pot au Feu, or the unfortunately re-titled The Taste of Things.”

Friendo: “Keep your eye out for Saltburn, The Holdovers, All of Us Strangers and Poor Things. Oh, and all the humorless NYFF elitists fell head over heels for Annie Baker’s Janet Planet.”

HE: “Strangers might work. A gay guy conversing with his deceased parents…interesting idea. What doesn’t work for me is watching the problematic Paul Mescal in any context. I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe if Mescal were to pop one too many tabs of mescaline and suffer an overdose.

“Isn’t Poor Things supposed to be a problem film? I read that somewhere.”

Friendo: “Oh yeah? Who said that? I’m surprised since Venice, Telluride and NYFF all selected it.”

HE: “It’s in the wind.”

I once ordered a narrow double shot of Aquavit, a kind of Scandinavian liqueur. I didn’t much care for the taste (i.e., black licorice) so that was all she wrote.

But the reason I ordered it was because Sterling Hayden’s Roger Wade kept a chilled bottle of the stuff in The Long Goodbye (‘74), and during a chat at his Malibu beach house offered a glass of it to Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe.

“Okay, that’s it,” I muttered in my 13th row seat at the Aero. “I’m ordering Acqavit the next time I’m in a bar.

Marlowe wasn’t an aquavit drinker himself — he merely told Wade he would “have whatever you’re havin’” out of politeness. Wade almost hugged Marlowe for that. Wade: “Well, God love ya…so many snooties say when I ask what they want, they say ‘I’ll have some of this and a little bit of that and a twist of lemon.”

In Marlowe’s own Hollywood habitat, the shadowy, down-at-the-heels bar where they take messages for him, he orders Canadian Club and ginger ale on the rocks. Plus he chain-smokes unfiltered cigarettes (Camels or Lucky Strikes or Pall Malls) — Marlowe would never touch any kind of filtered smoke…Parliament, Kent, Benson & Hedges, L & M…God forbid!

Anyway on the occasion of this, Gould’s 85th birthday, I felt obliged to point out the particulars to Kim Morgan, a Long Goodbye fan from way back.

I know it well. Unhappy, disappointed, despairing. It means trouble…hours or days of discomfort

Carey Mulligan’s Felicia Bernstein: “Yes, we love and care for each other and our kids, of course, but sexually the boys come first in the case of Lenny. That’s just how it is.”

Photo appropriated from Vanity Fair.

Preface: The insanity out there is such that anyone sharing sensible, scientific views about transgender issues has become, in the eyes of some wokesters, extra-heinous due to the recent horrific murder of Laura Ann Carleton, 66, in Cedar Glen (just east of Lake Arrowhead) by Travis Ikeguchi, a 27-year-old wackjob who was killed by police in a shootout. In other words, if you hold sensible, moderate opinions about trans choices and lifestyles you’re an accessory to murder. This is why the term “Crazy Town” has caught on these days; because some on the extreme left have completely lost their minds. [End of preface]

Every sane person feels an alignment with Carlos, of course, but liberal-minded types are afraid to say otherwise for fear of wokester retribution.

Maestroleon concept poster is, at the very least, an excellent start. Visual designer: “I couldn’t find a good high-rez Leonard Bernstein so I just enlarged Joaquin’s nose and gave him glasses.”

Posted on 8.15.23:

I know this expression. I’ve worn it myself a few times. It says “I’ve been practicing this hard-ass glare in my Bedminster bathroom since this morning.”

Borrowed from the N.Y. Post…thanks.

Merch for sale!

From 8.25 comment thread [8:05 am]:

He clearly rehearsed and refined the glare and achieved a certain “don’t tread on me” theatricality.

He’s an animal but you have to give the devil his due — he’s been performing in front of cameras for decades and knows what works and what doesn’t in terms of conveying that tough mafia boss persona.

What wasn’t intended but came through anyway: the man looks cornered, like a defiant rat. James Cagney’s Cody Jarrett on top of that huge oil refinery tank — “Come and get me!”

A possibly wiser way to go would have been to flash that big, beaming, pasted-on smile that he uses when posing with fans and allies. That would have said “they can book me but they can’t deter me or quash my spirit.”

He’s well past “playing it smart”, of course. His basic psychology took over a long time ago.