“But maybe they aren’t politicians any longer. They have become instead pantomine villains whose real job is to make us angry. And when we are angry, we click more. And clicks feed the ever-growing power and wealth of the corporations that run social media. We think we are expressing ourselves, but really we are just components in their system. At the moment, that system absorbs all opposition, Which is why nothing ever changes.” — from Adam Curtis‘s Hypernormalization, a 2016 BBC documentary that popped on 10.16.16 16 on the BBC iPlayer. Curtis’s basic thesis (per Wiki page) is that “since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex ‘real world’ and built a simple ‘fake world’ that is run by corporations and kept stable by politicians.”
In other words, we’re living in a much more Orwellian big-brother realm than most of us realize.
Sidenote #1: Besides being excellent as the big NASA honcho in Hidden Figures, Costner is tall. He was wearing cowboy boots but he has me by a good inch, and I’m just under 6′ 1″. Sidenote #2: Before driving back to his Carpinteria home, Costner mentioned his band, Modern West, and their 2012 album, “Famous For Killing Each Other: Music From and Inspired by Hatfields & McCoys.”
Hidden Figures costars Octavia Spencer, Kevin Costner following last night’s UTA screening.
When I read this morning that the Producers Guild of America voters had nominated Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight for their Daryl F. Zanuck award (i.e., the equivalent of a Best Picture prize)…well, I nearly fell over in my chair. It’s a good thing I have a few percocets left because I needed something to calm myself down. I was literally vibrating.
Seriously, no one is very interested. You have to report on the various guild noms because you have to, but that doesn’t mean they’re of any special interest.
The only PGA-nominated film worth mentioning is a film not worth mentioning — i.e, the reprehensible Deadpool, which I called “a glib, porno-violent Daffy Duck cartoon” while I reviewed it a little more than eleven months ago. I don’t want to think about why this thing was nominated, not just by the PGA but also the WGA guys.
If the ghost of Daryl F. Zanuck was capable of processing the PGA’s bizarre admiration for this wretched joke of a film, his shrieks would be heard among the clouds. He would curse and punch a refrigerator door and then return to earth in order to confront the membership at the next meeting. “You’re nominating a piece of shit like Deadpool? I know it can’t win but this award has my name on it, dammit!”
Do some people-watching inside any cafe or restaurant or semi-exclusive party and you’ll notice that healthy couples (i.e., unions that aren’t based on the guy being rich and the woman being a gold-digger) always seem to be similarly attractive. If a woman is a 7.5 or an 8 she’ll tend to be with a guy who’s a 7.5 or an 8. Birds of a feather, etc. And so I always react negatively when this rule of thumb is ignored by hip filmmakers because of…you tell me, p.c. guidelines or whatever. Because this is not how it is out there.
Case in point: John Ridley‘s Guerilla, a six-part Showtime miniseries set in ’70s London. Because leading costar Freida Pinto is totally choice — anyone’s idea of an 8.5 if not a 9 — there’s no way I’m buying Babou Ceesay as her boyfriend. Too chubby, not good-looking enough, nope. Pinto and Ceesay are roughly equivalent to Grace Kelly and George Gobel being paired off in a 1954 romance of some kind. Or Faye Dunaway and Allen Garfield in a ’70s flick.
This 42 year-old Mike Douglas Show clip is worn and tattered, but it’s the shit. Really. Because it allows you to meditate upon the great Muhammad Ali and his refusal to embrace liberal inclusiveness as it was known in 1974, and his obstinate, unyielding insistence that the only thing he cared about was the living conditions of black people and that other tribes need to fend for themselves. (What would the young Ali be saying now about Donald Trump?) Sly Stone was obviously stoned or drunk. Congressman Wayne Hays, who would resign two years later over the Elizabeth Ray sex scandal, offered many of the positive sentiments that mainstream neoliberals were saying back then. Theodore Bikel was his usual moderate, sensible self. Here’s the whole kit and kaboodle.
In nominating Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Donald Trump was saying “this is another expression, people, of where I’m coming from and what my election was all about — the resurgence of whiteness and white cultural dominance, and a modest but effective suppression of the multiculturals. We’ll try to put a happy face on it, but these folks are not going run the show as much, trust me. The Obama years are over, and we’re not gonna take any shit.”
Do I, Jeffrey Wells, have the courage and conviction to rant during a confirmation hearing and get myself tossed out and maybe arrested? If past behaviors are any indication (and they are), the answer is “uhhm…well, not really.” I’ve always run alongside the action, staying close but mainly as a cautious observer, like Robert Redford would have behaved in a ’70s movie about street protests. I’ve never been thrown out of anything, never been punched or billy-clubbed by a cop. I take potshots from the side.
It seemed as if Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn, sitting at their Hacksaw Ridge table during last night’s Golden Globes telecast, were not enthralled by Meryl Streep‘s anti-Trump speech, which basically castigated the President-elect for his “instinct to humiliate,” coarse manners and generally bullying manner. Even if you didn’t know Gibson and Vaughn are righties, their expressions said it all. At least two news orgs have noticed — Media-ite and London’s Daily Mail
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival has added a rather shady-sounding documentary about Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign, TRUMPED: Inside The Greatest Political Upset of All Time, which will screen at the tail end of the festival on Friday, 1.27 and Saturday, 1.28. There will apparently be an earlier press screening somewhere in Park City on Monday, 1,23.
Why the shade? Partly because TRUMPED has been executive produced by Mark Halperin, John Heileman and Mark McKinnon, the trio behind Showtime’s The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, which tends to emphasize the nitty-gritty horse race aspects of political battles without focusing much on the ethical or historical underpinnings, which indicates that the basic attitude of TRUMPED may be something along the lines of “wow, what an amazing tactical victory this New York billionaire managed to pull off…gotta give him credit, right?”
Halperin‘s participation troubles me in particular. His reputation, after all, is not just that of a savvy political commentator and author but also, at least in terms of the ’15 and ’16 campaigns, as a Trump shill and lapdog.
Halperin’s Wiki page mentions that last October Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called Halperin’s analysis in the Presidential race “soulless” and “amoral.” A headline for an 8.9.16 Media Matters story by Jared Holt called Halperin a “bonafide Trump apologist.” A headline for a 10.26.16 Media-ite story by Justin Baragona complained that Halperin is “Trump’s Biggest Cheerleader.” An 11.18 Crooks and Liars story by Karoli Kuns noted that “for the past year, Mark Halperin has served as nothing more than a shameless Donald Trump apologist.”
Santa Clarita Diet (Netfix series, debuting 2.3) is a zombie comedy from creator-producer-showrunner Victor Fresco (Better Off Ted) and costarring Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant. (They presented an award on last night’s Golden Globe telecast.) The single-camera series, debuting on 2.3, will consist of 13 episodes. The basic deal is that Drew and Timothy are Santa Clarita real-estate agents, except Drew has just died and been reborn as a zombie. I’m sorry but how is that even a little bit funny? Question #1 (and it’s a big one): Why allude to a diet of any kind when you’re talking about eating human flesh? Tom Hanks: “There’s no crying in baseball!” Jeffrey Wells: “You can’t lose weight eating meat, organs and eyeballs!” Why not just call the show Santa Clarita Zombies?
A couple of days ago Heat Street‘s Tom Teodorczuk asked me to tap out a piece about a now-dormant issue that might have caused trouble for Casey Affleck, but didn’t. Here it is — the freelance gig I alluded to yesterday afternoon.
Last night’s post-Golden Globe Amazon party, held inside the Starlight penthouse on the eighth floor of the Beverly Hilton, was one of the best Hollywood parties I’ve ever been to in my life. Really! I mean, it was wonderful to just stroll around and say to yourself, “I’m here, this is it, right now, as good as it gets”…”look at these women, ain’t nothin’ like ’em nowhere“…and then to stand on the east-facing balcony and feel the cool night air and look out at the sprawling, humming city in all its moistness and faint fog. Take a moment, be happy, savor the wonder.
Awesome vibe, great air conditioning, creme de la creme attendees (the Manchester By The Sea gang plus Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Amazon super-honcho Jeff Bezos, a nattily-dressed Scott Foundas), great sounds from The Roots along with a superb DJ-ing by Questlove, the prettiest women (most in their 30s and 40s, some 20s)… every element was on a level 9 or 10.
There was a horrible, mile-long line in the Hilton lobby just to get into the Amazon-bound elevators [see video clip after the jump] but Hollywood Elsewhere and the loyal and resourceful Svetlana Cvetko are not line-waiters. We knew what to do! Picked up our wristbands, found a staircase, took a deep breath and walked up the eight flights (i.e., 16 staircases divided by a landing). Ingenuity, lung power, determination, aching calf and thigh muscles.
You can’t just go up to Casey Affleck or Matt Damon without an opening line, and the only one I could think of last night (even though I’ve spoken to them both two or three times) was “hey, guys, Jeffrey Wells…longtime worshipper of Manchester By The Sea going back to Sundance and more particularly a guy who’s been filing left and right (as well as quoted by the Guardian Rory Carroll) about how everyone…uhm, well, I just love the film.”
Svetlana and I spoke to Goliath‘s Billy Bob Thornton for the requisite two or three minutes. (As soon as you start talking to a celebrity at a party like this, a little 120-second kitchen timer is wound up and released….tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…90 seconds left!…tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.) BBT told us that he’s looking to shoot a comedy- western later this year about “the first psychiatrist to set up shop in the Old West.” Great idea!
