Jeffrey Wells

And now it’s time to face the consequences of too much sugar, generally not-great food choices, way too little exercise as all my free time goes into the column, and — I know this is borderline suicidal — occasionally chugging energy drinks because I’ve always loved the bolt and the buzz and the sheer fuck-off-edness…the old Don Logan thing.

All my life I’ve had an exceptionally strong and resilient constitution. I don’t smoke or drink and have kept my weight more or less in check, and so I’ve lived my life like a relatively unencumbered 37 year-old for the most part. Because I’m a lucky inheritor of strong genes. I’ve felt like an exception to the rule for decades. I don’t get sick or certainly not for extended periods — that happens to others and not me.

But over the last four days I’ve been grappling with news that I have…uhm, a heart issue…screeech! All of a damn sudden I have to hit the brakes on my 37-year-old lifestyle and divorce myself from a general presumption about being more or less bulletproof. I suddenly need to radically healthify the diet and perhaps even have a procedure or two — a plaque-arresting stent and a balloon angioplasty.

All I know is that I feel as healthy as always (okay, not like a 37-year-old but generally like an anything-but-frail, go-for-the-gusto type) but a recent diagnosis begs to differ. I’m not certain that my Medicare + United Health insurance package will cover the stent and the angioplasty but here’s hoping. My dad submitted to the latter in his late 60s; ditto a pair of boomer film journo friendos in the recent past.

…despite how good, bad or mezzo-mezzo the film or play may have been, great poster images have an attitude and energy field all to themselves.

I don’t even remember Beth Henley’s Nobody’s Fool (‘86), although Ivdud see Robert Benton’s Nobody’s Fool eight years later (‘94). But that Eric-and-Rosanna pic is perfect.

I’m getting ready for my 7 pm Superman screening. My mind and my heart are open to whatever.

It’s located among the Fleur du Lac estates on 4000 West Lake Blvd. in Homewood, California, a couple of miles south of Tahoe City. Actually a greedy developer destroyed the main home years ago and put up condos. But the boat house is still there. I’ve visited a couple of Godfather filming sites in Sicily; I’d really like to set foot on Corleone turf stateside, if not in Tahoe then Vito Corleone’s walled-off estate on Staten Island.

Posted on 3.31.20:

A couple of days ago I stood up like Davy Crockett against Larry Karaszewski and his motley band of Nashville worshippers on Facebook. I held my ground, swinging Ol’ Betsy as General Santa Anna’s troops stormed and besieged.

It’s so bizarre that accomplished people who know what they’re talking about have remained Nashville fans. My initial “Okay, The Nashville Jig Is Up” piece ran on 12.14.13. Why didn’t Steven Gaydos jump into this when musketballs were flying and gunpowder was short?

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Seriously and as far as it goes, I’m down with bears. I have a Werner Herzog-like appreciation of their ability or willingness to go homicidal at the drop of a hat. But as long as I’m able to keep a safe distance, it’s all cool.

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Francis, Fax and James.

I’m Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, and a friend of the late George Hickenlooper. I saw the 4K Hearts of Darkness earlier today at the Film Forum, and it looked absolutely wonderful. I know this restoration required a lot of hard work. Congrats to each of you, and especially to Eleanor Coppola in absentia.

But the “directed by” credit should be shared between Fax and poor George, rest his soul. 

Here’s what people are reading on the HOD credit block on the HOD one-sheet and during HOD’s closing credits:

George said more than once to me, in fact, that he did the lion’s share of the editing work on HOD. And yet the credit block has always read “written & directed by Fax Bahr with George Hickenlooper.”

“With”? Was George Fax’s helper or assistant? Did he go out for coffee, make copies, run errands?

This is a very strange credit block assertion.

I’m only going by what George told me repeatedly, of course, but I don’t believe he lied or that he was delusional or anything in that realm.

Given the current credit block assertion that Fax was the senior creative force in the directing and writing (and also, one presumes, the editing and shaping) of HOD, is this what I should believe? Should I discount George’s personal testimony? Was George some kind of eccentric with an over-sized ego? I’m asking.

How should I report this?? I’m honestly perplexed. This really doesn’t seem right. — cheers, Jeffrey Wells, HE

“Fair Play For George Hickenlooper”, posted on 7.3.25:

With a dynamically enhanced, 4K-scanned and generally restored Hearts of Darkness opening at the Film Forum tomorrow, it’s an opportune time to remind the HE readership that while this 1991 doc about the making of Apocalypse Now uses the late Eleanor Coppola‘s footage and narration, the heavy lifting in the post-principal photography sense of the term was done by the late George Hickenlooper, whom I regarded as a friend, and Fax Bahr.

Here’s what Hickenlooper told me on 8.26.10:

“I think the more appropriate way to look at it is that Hearts of Darkness is Eleanor Coppola‘s story, but it’s not her film. Hardly. It’s her story. But that’s because I decided to make it her story.

“When I got involved with this project 20 years ago, Showtime was going to make it a one-hour TV special called Apocalypse Now Revisited. It was going to be basically an hour-long special about how they did the war pyrotechnics. It was going to be dull and stupid.

“At the time I told Steve Hewitt and my partner Fax Bahr. ‘Nobody cares about a making-of movie, especially one that is 14 years old.’ (Most of AN was shot in ‘76.) I argued that the film had to have an emotional component. At the time, no one was familiar with Eleanor’s diary ‘Notes.’ My father had purchased it for me on my 16th birthday [in 1979]. I devoured it up.

“When I got involved with Hearts of Darkness, I advocated using her diary as the narrative thread. I got incredible resistance from Showtime, and I fielded initial resistance from Eleanor. Not much, but some.

“Once I was able to convince everyone that the film would best be told through her narrative voice, it was then and only then it became HER STORY.

“Eleanor did shoot the footage in the Philippines back in 1976, of course, but she only stepped twice into our cutting room on the back lot of Universal. Twice. For a total of eight hours.

“I was there for a year, 15-18 hours a day. So it’s not a film by Eleanor, but I guess it’s sexier from a marketing angle to make it look that way.”

Hickenlooper elaborated upon the Hearts of Darkness history in a 2007 interview with laist correspondent Josh Tate.

In an 8.27.10 HE followup Hickenlooper stated that “the reality is that Fax Bahr hardly had anything to do with HOD. He was writing for the show In Living Color at the time. He spent a total of about three weeks out of the entire year in the editing room. Eleanor spent two days. It was me and the two editors (Michael Greer, Jay Miracle) for an entire year.”

James Mockowski, Film Archivist and Restoration Supervisor at American Zoetrope: “For the past 30 years, Eleanor’s 16mm behind-the-scenes footage has been three to four generations removed from the original elements. For this new release and restoration of the documentary, Francis decided to scan the original sources in 4K. The extensive excerpts from the feature are now presented in their original 2.39:1 aspect ratio, rather than being letterboxed into a 4×3 frame.”

Hickenlooper (Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas, Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (short), Dogtown, The Man from Elysian Fields, The Mayor of Sunset Strip, Factory Girl, Casino Jack) died in his sleep on October 29, 2010, at age 47.

Again, the link to the 2007 laist piece.

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I have to see if the allegedly restored 4K Hearts of Darkness is all it’s cracked up to be. So I’m on the downtown IRT on this agreeably hot day, etc.

Posted three days ago:

Posted on the eve of the release of the Hearts of Darkness DVD in 2008:

Bosley Crowther’s reaction to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in his 6.16.60 N.Y. Times review is mostly one of distaste for the grisly stuff, which he regards as low-rent. He then masks his snooty prejudice by feigning boredom.

At age 54 the veteran critic was entering his harumphy, fuddy-duddy phase, I suppose, but how could this sophisticated movie maven…how could he have just sat in his seat like a heap of mashed potatoes during the startling, jittery editing of the shower-murder scene, compounded by Bernard Herrmann’s screechy violin score, neither of which he even mentions? Was he on painkillers?

And yet in the wake of Psycho’s striking popularity and financial success, Crowther’s opinion evolved. On 12.25.60 or six months later, he announced that Psycho was among his ten best of the year.

Andrew Sarris’s highly adniring Village Voice review didn’t appear until the August 11th issue — almost two full months after the Crowther verdict. Why would it have taken this long for the Voice to register an opinion? The downtown paper couldn’t even publish a review sometime in July?

Portions of Sarris’s 8.11.60 review:

Crowther reconsiders:

On Friday afternoon I asked Mark Kane, a friend since ‘80 and a devoted fan of Bruce Springsteen from way back, to write about the approach of Scott Cooper’s Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century, 10.24), a film about the making of Nebraska:

Kane: “Obviously, I love Bruce Springsteen.  I feel connected to him on many levels, and it’s been that way since 1975.  I buy all of his music and listen to it over and over.    

“That said, I’ve become a little uncomfortable with his increasing deification.   It reminds me a little, although the analogy is far from perfect, of what Noah Cross said in Chinatown: ‘Of course, I’m respectable…I’m old.’

“I guess there’s no getting around the fact that Bruce is old too. I don’t think we have many heroes these days, but Bruce seems to fit the bill. And yet rock and roll, as I understand it, wasn’t about being respectable.  It was about something much different, perhaps even the opposite of being respectable. 

“I also felt Bruce was a good guy, perhaps better than just good, but he wasn’t perfect.  He was a guy trying to figure it out, just like we all were, and that was one of the things I loved about him.  The evolution of his music showed him trying to figure it out. I could relate.

 “Which brings me to Nebraska, which came out in 1982 after The River.  At that point, it was another example of Bruce doing his thing.  Sure, it was different than his other records but it wasn’t that big a leap to follow Bruce down that dark and dusty road.  After all, Dylan had evolved and we all kept up.  So had the Beatles.   

“The songs on Nebraska were good, and some bordered on great: “Atlantic City”, “Nebraska”, “State Trooper”, “Open All Night”, “Highway Patrolman”.  Everyone has their favorites. 

“My brother-in-law, a banjo player who isn’t much into commercial rock, was a big fan of Nebraska.  I remember him saying that it was the one that made him impressed with Springsteen.  Movies have been inspired by the record.  The songs have been covered by many other artists, Johnny Cash, The Band, etc. Ryan Adams has covered the entire record.

“Nebraska isn’t a ‘respectable’ record.   It’s an outlaw thing.  A recording of someone exorcising demons.  The narrators of those songs are fucked up.  So it’s a brave record.  The lo-fi production values (it was recorded at home) seemed risky. And given the trajectory of Springsteen’s career at the time, just after The River and right before Born In The USA, it was a detour that was surprising and perhaps a little dangerous career-wise. 

“Interestingly, Nebraska sold well, soaring high on the charts and becoming certified Platinum.  It continues to be revered.

“Which brings me to Deliver Me From Nowhere. I haven’t worked up much enthusiasm so far. The trailer tells us that Springsteen has become such an icon in our society.  The movie, as far as I can see from the trailer, is part of the myth-making. 

“But the dialogue in the trailer is Hollywood-reverent in a way that makes me somewhat uncomfortable.  Jeremy Strong’s (Jon Landau) dialogue in the trailer is…well, I admire his commitment, but it seems kind of silly (‘He’s going to repair the world’).

“I’m sure Jeremy Allen White’s Bruce will be very good.  But if I want to see young Bruce Springsteen, I can rent the No Nukes concert video of his performance only, which is truly awesome.  I’m not sure I want, or need, to see someone playing Bruce Springsteen at this point.  There are still too many ways for me to see Springsteen himself at every stage of his career.   

“I also have my memories.  Perhaps that is the most important thing.  I don’t want the movie to interfere with my memories of what I thought and felt about Springsteen when Nebraska came out. 

“In his concerts, Springsteen told us about his relationship with his father.  I’ve read the interviews through the years about what he was trying to accomplish with the album.  I know about his struggle with relationships.  I’ve heard this story before.   It’s old news to me in one sense. 

“Perhaps the movie will be surprising in ways, but it will still be a movie with an actor and not the real thing.  In some ways, this isn’t a movie for me.  I guess it’s for a different generation.  That’s okay.  

“This is similar to the upcoming quartet of Beatles movies.  I’m not that interested in seeing actors play the Beatles.  A Hard Day’s Night is always streaming and it’s great to rewatch and admire it, and them.   

“Of course, I’ll probably end up seeing Deliver Me From Nowhere.   I’ve always assumed that there would be a movie made some day about Bruce.   But for some of the reasons above, I wish it hadn’t been made because Jeremy Allen White won’t be as good in my mind as the original, not even close, and it just interferes.”

In his just-published Clint Eastwood book, author Shawn Levy dismisses Breezy (’73), a gentle, deftly handled romantic drama about an affair between William Holden’s 50ish real-estate salesman and Kay Lenz’s free-spirited bohemian, with “ew, just ew” (actually pronounced “eeyooh”).

I really don’t like that kind of thinking or judging about a nicely honed, well-written film that isn’t even vaguely lewd, so here’s what I wrote this morning about the jailbait aspect:

“I think somewhat older guys (10 years older or less) should keep their distance until a woman has hit 20, or her junior year in college.

“That said, there are 30 states in which the age of consent is 16, and 7 states that determine consent can be given at 17. (Connecticut is one of the former.)

“Breezy happens in California (primarily the flush environs of Laurel Canyon and the surrounding hills), where the age of consent is 18. If you accept the film’s narrative about Lenz’s Breezy being 17, Holden is definitely outside the legal zone when their relationship becomes intimate.

“Then again the social perimeters of ‘70s culture, especially in the affluent regions of Los Angeles, were more liberal than in today’s post-#MeToo era, in which taking down or shaking down inappropriately frisky or even half-interested older guys is par for the course. In today’s culture adult males are deer, and every younger woman is armed with a rifle and ready to shoot at the drop of a hat.

“But it wasn’t like dudes in the ‘70s weren’t mindful of the dangers of jailbait. Holden’s real-estate shark is a fairly crusty and guarded type and obviously a social conservative, and yet he doesn’t have a line in which he even ALLUDES to the fact that the age of consent is 18. Does that make any sense?

“Plus it really doesn’t figure that Breezy is 17. She tells Holden that she graduated from high school a year prior to their meeing. It would have been fairly unusual if she’d graduated at 17, but let’s bend over backwards and say she did. It naturally follows she would be 18 when she meets Holden.

“On the face of it, this kind of age gap (roughly 40 years) is unappealing, granted. But it’s the singer, not the song. Eastwood directs and cuts it just so, and Jo Heim’s’ script is nicely sculpted with just the right amount of restraint.”