Jeffrey Wells

She likes strong, dominant men and you’re too smooth and mushy to qualify. She’s sexier and better looking than you — it would be one thing if you were gym-toned with big broad shoulders to match her large breasts, but you’re not. Plus she’s much more powerful than you (economically, fame-wise) and she’ll soon be punishing you for these shortcomings — trust me. Plus she’ll eventually humiliate you when a more suitable lover comes along. And you’ll never really recover from this. You’ve fucked yourself. If only you’d stayed with Debbie Reynolds…

It’s completely silly to dismiss years ending in 3 as, historically speaking or artistic accomplishment-wise, somehow underwhelming or vaguely forgettable.

But I’ll say it anyway. I’ve always felt a certain dismay about or distance from such annums.

3 is an odd number — I’ve always preferred the evens. I didn’t like being 3 or 13 —the first tolerable year in this stream was when I turned 23, and even that was mildly sucky.

What happened in 1903, 1913 and 1923? Not that much. The only good things about 1933 were the inauguration of FDR and the opening of King Kong. ‘43 was a WWII in-between year. Several films that opened in ‘53 were pretty good (War of the Worlds, Stalag 17, Julius Caesar, Roman Holiday, The Big Heat) but history-wise it was fairly drab. JFK was murdered in ‘63. 1973 was a great Watergate year, but movie-wise it couldn’t hold a candle to ‘71. One of the few good things about ‘83, movie-wise, was the release of Betrayal. ‘93 was a passable movie year (The Firm, Schindler’s List, True Romance, Philadelphia) but let’s not get too cranked up. ‘03 was the farcical invasion of Iraq. I loved many 2013 movies (The Wolf of Wall Street in particular) and my life was going pretty well so ‘13 gets a pass, but I’m not feeling all that great about ‘23.

Born in 1929, legendary TV journalist and probing celebrity interviewer Barbara Walters (aka “Baba Wawa”) has passed at age 93. She bagged so many big-deal, on-camera interviews during her half-century-plus career (many U.S. Presidents, Fidel Castro, Barack Obama, Katharine Hepburn, Monica Lewinsky, Warren Beatty, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin) that there’s no room to list them all. Not to mention the satirical stamp of Gilda Radner. Not to mention Walters launching of The View in ‘97. Respect for a major influencer & feminist pathfinder.

THR’s Scott Feinberg has abandoned Everything Everywhere All At Once as his #1 pick for the Best Picture Oscar winner, and has shifted Top Gun: Maverick into the top slot. Variety’s Clayton Davis also got behind Maverick a few days ago with EEAAO relegated to fourth place.

Thank fortune that Feinberg and Davis have faced reality and “seen the light”, so to speak.

Ke Huy Quan (i.e., “Short Round”) might win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar but EEAAO is all but finished as far as betting on the Big Prize is concerned.

And this is how it should be. Standards of cinematic decency are prevailing. Let everyone understand that HE is the epicenter of the worldwide EEAAO takedown campaign…a cause near and dear to the hearts of all serious cinema lovers.

And I mean this from the bottom of my heart…thank you, thank you, thank you.

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If there’s one thing that today’s director-writers don’t seem to want to do and generally avoid doing for the most part, it’s letting the audience put two and two together. (The seventh screenwriting rule according to Billy Wilder or more precisely Ernst Lubitsch). Most filmmakers don’t like the idea of Joe and Jane figuring stuff out — they’d rather just spell it out in so many words.

I’m driving back to Connecticut this afternoon, having spent almost a full week at Jett and Cait’s home in West Orange, hanging with the dogs and trying to keep warm. A balmy 45 degrees now…unseasonably mild temps for the next few days.

I have a few posts in mind (more on A Man Called Otto, a riff on the origins of Weimar era anti-Semitism, Billy Wilder’s screenwriting wisdom) but not until I’m back in Wilton, I guess.

Meanwhile I’m suffering from a slightly acidic stomach and popping Pepto Bismol chewables every hour or so. I don’t like this — my health has been perfect my whole life.

https://vimeo.com/784653902

Friendo to HE: “I lasted through 80 minutes of Everything Everywhere All At Once.”

HE to friendo: “Funny.”

Friendo to HE: “That was all I could handle. Couldn’t take any more.”

HE to friendo: “It took me about three hours to get through it. I needed to take breaks.”

Friendo to HE: “My 80 minutes included breaks as well.”

HE to friendo: “Step outside, breathe some air, eat an apple.”

Friendo to HE: “How any sane person thinks this thing can win [the] Best Picture Oscar…no way that can happen.”