Jeffrey Wells

My recent Telluride viewing of Andrew Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers reminded me that I really, really don’t want to be subjected to explicit gay-male sex scenes, especially if they involve older guys with beard stubble. And double-triple especially if they involve Joaquin Phoenix…pushing 50, paunchy, salt-and-pepper, etc.

I wouldn’t want to watch Phoenix having sex with a woman either. Please.

Todd Haynes has told Variety’s Elsa Keslassy that his next film will be a 1930s-era gay love story starring Phoenix and a not-yet–cast younger guy, and that it will feature “explicit” or otherwise “challenging” sex scenes, and that during their discussions Phoenix had been “pushing it further into more dangerous territory, sexually.”

What the hell would “dangerous territory” mean? I could speculate but let’s not.

Compromise: Back in the 1950s and ‘60s producers used to shoot two versions of sex scenes — tamer, less graphic ones for the U.S. market plus racier, more explicit versions for Europeans. What about Haynes and Phoenix shooting explicit sex scenes for those who are game plus straight-friendly versions in the vein of Call Me By Your Name or Brokeback Mountain for fraidy cats like myself?

Jordan Ruimy’s version of the story:

[9.8.23, 3 pm] Rewritten, amplified upon — I was depleted when I wrote last night’s first draft:

Earlier today (9.7) Rolling Stone’s Krystie Lee Yandoli posted an extensively-sourced torpedo piece about The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon. It describes the 48 year old host and comedian as something of a neurotic, erratic, hair–trigger type, and the show’s general atmosphere being on the stressed, unsettled, far–from–serene side.

Yandoli assembled the story from chats with 16 Tonight Show employees — two currently working there and 14 ex-staffers.

Secondly, we’re all familiar with this unfortunate syndrome, which for the time being we’ll call the Jimmy Fallon syndrome. Over the decades more than a few powerhouse comedic stars of hugely popular TV shows have, to varying degrees, tended to be difficult, turbulent bosses who have caused staffers to kvetch and suffer and briefly contemplate suicide. I’m sorry for the employees who’ve had to deal with the erratic whims and occasional outbursts that are par for the course when you work for intense, half-crazy, highly demanding types like Fallon, but the complaints in Yandoli’s article don’t represent a one-off — they represent a well-established pattern of abusive behavior that probably reaches back to the eras of George M. Cohan, P.T. Barnum, Edwin Booth and, quite possibly, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I’m presuming that similar discomfort was felt decades ago by staffers who worked under Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson (although not Steve Allen, reportedly a more mild-mannered type than the others).

Similar vibes have also emanated, of course, from staffers who’ve worked for Ellen DeGeneres, James Corden, David Letterman, et. al. I don’t know about Jimmy Kimmel workplace vibes.

It does seem to go with the territory, Not always but often.

HE comment posted during Ellen DeGeneres brouhaha:

As of yesterday, the general Venice Film Festival response to Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance had been largely positive. Not a half-hate, half-love thing, but something like an 85-15 or 80-20 split in favor of Allen’s infidelity thriller.

Despite this the N.Y. Times, seemingly aligned with and loyal to the hater camp, has posted a Kyle Buchanan piece that claims the Venice reception was “decidedly mixed.”

This is a fundamentally dishonest reading as any fair-minded assessment of the Coup de Chance response would necessarily dismiss anti-Woody protestors, as they’re basically a fringe hate group.

The response to any film at any major festival is always about what sophistos in the know — critics, fellow filmmakers, industry columnists — are saying. You can’t count what fringe nutters are howling about from the sidelines

Considering the likelihood that at least a few Venice Film Festival critics have tried like hell to respond as negatively as possible to Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance in order to satisfy the haters, it’s hugely exciting and satisfying to read how positive the overall response has been.

HE loves the idea of the #DeathtoWoody villains gnashing their teeth and muttering “drat! curses! foiled again! “We’ve managed to kill Allen’s domestic career, and now you’re telling us…what, that he’s back from the dead? Well, we won’t have it!! We’ve been terrorizing Hollywood and generally making everyone miserable for the last five or six years, goddamit, and we don’t want this to stop!”

Owen Gleiberman:

The big crescendo of the 50th Telluride Film Festival was Saturday night’s Werner Herzog theatre screening of Poor Things. The energy levels began to lessen the next morning (Sunday, 9.3) — the only screening I caught was The Pot–au–Feu.

Today (Monday, 9.4) is my last and final. Paso Dorji’s The Monk and the Gun at 2 pm, followed by Errol Morris’s The Pigeon Tunnel at 4:30. Then I’ll be driving down to Dolores for a nice cozy night at a creekside motel before driving the next day (Tuesday, 9.5) down to Albuquerque, and then a red-eye flight back to LaGuardia, arriving Wednesday at 6 am.

Several weeks ago a dismissive Cannes review of Aki Kaurismaki ‘s Fallen Leaves lowered my want-to-see. But at the urging of SBIFF kingpin Roger Durling I caught it yesterday afternoon, and was glad that I did. It’s a simple but pleasing romantic fable — bare bones, wholly believable, well acted and genuinely touching.

Nobody’s urging me to see Rustin, which screens at the Palm at 4:15. The reviews have been tepid. Trusted critic friend: “It does exactly what you expect it to do,” I’ll be attending but I won’t use one of my early-entry passes. It’s not worth it. If I don’t get in, fine. Pretty Things is at 7:30 pm.

Serious respect for the late Jimmy Buffet, who lived large and luxuriously off an enduring music career that stretches back to the ‘70s. Laid-back beach vibes, Caribbean atmospheres + rum and crushed ice in the blender, shots of tequila and “that frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

I never related all that strongly to the Buffet legend or sensibility or whatever, which was basically about cynicism and resignation. But he did come to represent a “fuck it”, sandal-wearing, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing attitude toward the tensions and stresses of modern life, and you can’t say it didn’t resonate.

Posted in response to HE’s Saltburn review:

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is an absolute home run — a TRULY GREAT ‘70s film, as well as a triple grade-A 2023 drama…bull’s eye!

Brilliant, I mean. A bliss-out. Warm and compassionate and at times even staggering. Wise, bittersweet, sad, fully recognizable, funny as shit, humane…layer by layer, it’s wonderfully written.

A Best Picture shoo-in; ditto Payne for Best Director and David Hemingson for Best Screenplay. A Best Actor lock for Paul Giamatti; ditto Da’Vine Joy Randolph for Best Supporting Actress.

I knew The Holdovers would be aces within the first five minutes. The attention to period detail and hair styles (it’s mostly set in December 1970) and the overall particularity…I just knew. I was in heaven soon after, and the film never stumbled or slumped or went off the road.

The Holdovers broke 25 or 30 minutes ago. The next film, Fingernails, starts in five minutes. All I know is that I’m incredibly happy as I write this.

Payne and Giamatti triumphed 19 years ago with Sideways; now they’re back in the winner’s circle and then some.

By the way: IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich is up to his old tricks…I know utter derangement when I see it.

As I was watching Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, I was telling myself that it’s basically about the inability (or unwillingness) of costars Tom Hardy and especially Austin Butler, playing surly-ass, black leather biker types, to perform a scene without constantly inhaling gray-blue cigarette smoke.

Lit cigarettes are a sign of weakness, the ultimate crutch used by actors who don’t have anything really figured out and who need to hide on some level.

No honest assessment of The Bikeriders will fail to acknowledge that it’s basically a posturing, surly attitude genre flick about skanky vroom-vroom machismo…about sullen Midwest motorcycle lowlifes in the general mold of Marlon Brando’s “Johnny” in The Wild One, mixed with the nihilist biker hooligan aesthetic of the AIP ‘60s motorcycle flicks (The Wild Angels, The Born Losers).

Story-wise it’s about a battle for the soul of Butler’s Benny, a moody, cool-cat rebel straight out of the Shangrilas’ ”The Leader of the Pack.”

On one side is Jodie Comer’s Kathy, who quickly becomes Benny’s girlfriend and then wife in a possibly sexless marriage (nobody fucks in this film). Kathy wants Benny to be his own man and not submit to certain aimless bullshit rituals that come with membership in a motorcycle gang.

Pulling in an opposite direction is Hardy’s Johnny, who wants Benny to succeed him as the leader of the Vandals, a mythical local gang that gradually becomes huge with several chapters around the Midwest.

The Vandals are ostensibly a black leather outlaw motorcycle club in the vein of actual old-style OMCs like Hells Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos and the Pagans. The difference is that the Vandals aren’t criminals. They’re just ornery guys who occasionally beat the shit out of other ornery guys. Really — that’s all that happens. Scuzzy, nihilistic, no-direction-home guys snorting brewskis, sucking down cigarettes like they’re in a cancer contest while taking offense at this or that and kicking or pounding the crap out of each other.

The Bikeriders is basically about actors playing with machismo, nihilism, nothingness and swaggering around… about Hardy, Butler and costars Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook and Norman Reedus attempting to resuscitate (like I just said) the old AIP biker movie aesthetic except not in California but somewhere in Illinois…that surly, unshaven, leather-jacket-wearin’ thang, man…rumblin’ those noisy choppers, man..surly attitudes, beard stubble, greasy hair, tough-asshole posturing, leather jackets with “colors” and insignias, stinky T-shirts and no change of underwear for days on end.

Please see The Bikeriders!! Some of you out there, unburdened by taste, will have a raunchy good old time with it.

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.