Jeffrey Wells

Early yesterday afternoon I was expecting to meet Jett and Dylan at the little Alpine-styled Lauterbrunnen cabin we’re renting, but they weren’t there when I arrived. So I texted them and they said they were in town and would be along. The problem was that they had the only key to the place, and I was coping with a slight call of nature. But I figured I’d wait it out.

The minutes dragged on and they didn’t show. The little devil on my left shoulder began to think about taking care of business behind the cabin. “No!,” said the angel on my right shoulder, “don’t be an animal!” But Jett and Dylan were taking their time. I looked around and noticed that there’s a small driveway behind the cabin — a possible problem — but also that nobody had driven by in quite a while. I also considered the fact that the rear of the cabin is sheltered from view by a hilly mound. Quiet, quiet, no cars, no cars….fuck it, the devil won out and I stepped behind the cabin.

Four or five seconds later a car drove up the driveway with a family in it, and with a three-year-old staring and pointing at me from the back-seat window. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I could guess. And five seconds after that another car drove by with a pretty girl at the wheel. She also checked me out.

If I hadn’t stepped behind the cabin, those two cars would have never driven by.

Even if you click on the captions and bring up the large versions of these photos, the images don’t cut it. You can’t take a photo of “breathtaking” — it can’t be captured.

Sunday, 6.17, around 4 pm.

6.17, 4:55 pm

Dylan, Jett Wells towards end of the hike — Winteregg to Murren with a lot of uphill.

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Late Sunday morning (or late last night in Switzerland) Deadline‘s Nellie Andreeva posted one of the most transparently ludicrous positive-spin stories I’ve ever read on Deadline or anywhere else. It could be 100% factual and it’s still bullshit because it was told to Andreeva in order to make Lindsay Lohan’s latest erratic episode (i.e., she couldn’t be woken up, leading an assistant to call 911) seem understandable or palatable. Running such a story without inserting at least a slight tone of skepticism immediately called Andreeva’s judgment into question.

It was basically a tale about two people from the hair department on Liz & Dick leaving the production due to “exhaustion” and “severe dehydration.” The story was almost certainly fed to the gullible Andreeva was to suggest that it’s not just poor Lindsay Lohan who’s been victimized by the slave-driving demands of Liz & Dick director Lloyd Kramer — it’s everyone! The entire crew is being affected! They’re dropping like flies! Partly because the production refuses to provide water bottles to the crew, resulting in dehydration!

We were hiking yesterday afternoon and early evening for about five or six hours, and I could think of little else last night except crashing. Andreeva’s story almost roused me out of my slumber when I read it around 10 pm or thereabouts. It’s 7:54 am now, or around 11 pm L.A. time.

Hands down one of the best recreations/capturings of mad generational fervor and ’60s mayhem, Franc Roddam‘s Quadrophenia (’79) will get the Criterion Bluray treatment on 8.28. I first saw Quadropehnia at Manhattan’s 8th Street Playhouse, and then I showed it to the kids about ten years ago. The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve come to realize that this film — loosely based on the Who rock opera and basically the story of Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels) and his identity, friendship and girlfriend issues — belongs in the near-great category.

Excerpt from 8.26 posting: “What a shock to realize that Roddam forgot to change the letters on a movie marquee while shooting a crowd scene, and so we read, however briefly, that Warren Beatty‘s Heaven Can Wait and Randal Kleiser‘s Grease — both released in the summer of ’78, when Quadrophenia was shooting — are the current attractions. What an embarassment for production designer Simon Holland (who’s now dead). I mean, it’s so easy to change the letters on a marquee. It’s not like it costs anything.”

That video of TMZ’s accidental capturing of Terrence Malick while trying to chat with Benicio del Toro appeared three or four days ago. The reclusive, camera-shy Malick hasn’t been phtoographed since that footage of he and Christian Bale shooting during an outdoor Austin concert. My point (and I do have one) is that any roving predator paparazzi who doesn’t even realize that he’s shooting a very rare bird is a fool. It indicates what kind of people TMZ has on the payroll.

“The thing that I worry about more is the media’s bias toward fairness. Nobody uses the word lie anymore. Suddenly, everything is ‘a difference of opinion.’ If the entire House Republican caucus were to walk onto the floor one day and say ‘The Earth is flat,’ the headline on the New York Times the next day would read ‘Democrats and Republicans Can’t Agree on Shape of Earth.’ I don’t believe the truth always lies in the middle. I don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of ‘fairness’ is what’s troubling to me.” — Newsroom producer-writer Aaron Sorkin in a Vulture chat with Mark Harris.

I’m a fairly decent photographer, but the Godly, forehead-smacking grandeur of the Lauterbrunnen valley — titanic mountain peaks, sheer cliffs, 1000-feet-high waterfalls — just can’t be captured. Too big, too eye-filling. To give even a partial taste it you would need to shoot it on IMAX 3D from a helicopter. Every shot I’ve taken has been “nope, not good enough.” It’s like snapping a friend standing ten feet away and the camera being unable to grab anything more than a belt buckle or an ear lobe. Forget it. I can’t cut the mustard. Not here.

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I have a question for Forbes guy Bill McCuddy, who wrote in a recent email which I posted that Rock of Ages “played like gangbusters” at the screening he attended, and that it might be a “dude-sical” (a musical that guys can not only tolerate but like) and that it looks like a hit, etc. Well, your dude-sical is floundering, homie, and you have to explain why. C’mon, right now…lay it on me.

Nikki Finke is reporting that Rock Of Ages, playing in 3,470 theaters, “is falling to earth with a thud,” having earned a lousy $5.5 million with a projected $15.5 million by Sunday night. That’s “far worse” than Mamma Mia, she notes, “which opened to $27 million with the same pedigree.”

Adam Sandler‘s That’s My Boy, which got a B-minus from CinemaScore, also grossed $5 million on Friday with a projected $15 mil weekend. How much did Jack & Jill hurt the Sandler brand?

Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips on Adam Sandler‘s That’s My Boy: The crowd at the preview screening was unusually vocal, with cries of ‘Nooo!’ and mutterings of ‘Wow’ at each new gross-out attempt. What I didn’t hear was much actual laughter.

“The Sandler character is meant to be enjoyed for his pomposity-deflating boorishness, admired for his skill with the babes, pitied for his attempts at father/son reconciliation. So what do you do if you find yourself hoping the main character will leave his own movie five minutes in?

“More so than Rock of Ages, even, That’s My Boy positions itself as an ‘I Love the ’80s’ special, with supporting roles taken by Vanilla Ice, Tony Orlando and others.

“‘I need a couple hours to fix this,’ Andy Samberg cries at one point. Perilously close to two hours in length itself, That’s My Boy leaves the world a coarser, meaner, more arrogant place than its makers found it. Bring back Jack and Jill.”

Note: I’ve met Sandler a couple of times and he’s doesn’t radiate even a hint of the low-rent commonality that his films are always about. He’s a very sharp, perceptive and even wise fellow who misses nothing. I don’t know how this squares with his being a Republican, but he gives off a good vibe.

I’ve worked as hard if not harder than Lindsay Lohan has during the making of Liz & Dick. I work my fingers to the bone for breakfast, and if you try to wake me up in the early a.m. after an especially grueling all-nighter, I’ll respond like anyone else. I’ll do a little body flinch and go, “Uhm…arrgghh…oh, God…time is it?” I won’t, trust me, be so unresponsive and corpse-like that my attempted waker-upper will call 911.

They don’t know it but some people are irresistably attracted to if not secretly in love with the idea of spiritual transcendence by way of obliteration…with taking that final sublime boat ride up the Euphrates and turning into a perfect smile. I’ll be hugely surprised if Lindsay Lohan makes it to age 30. It’s just a matter of when, where and by what “accidental” method.

If an impudent leftwing reporter had interrupted a Rose Garden press conference given by Presidents Bush ’43, Bush ’41 or Reagan, the rightwing press would have called for his/her head, at the very least demanding his/her instant banning from the White House press corps if not deportation.

Tucker Carlson, founder of the Daily Caller for which Obama heckler Neil Munro reports, said the following after yesterday’s heckling: “A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”

Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro during his interruption of President Obama’s Rose Garden statement about a decision to ease up on young immigrants and basically leave them alone to live their lives.

Thomas Schultze of the Munich-based G + J Media Entertainment was kind enough to take me around Munich this evening, giving me the grand tour, etc. Three hours worth, scratched the surface, took some notes, etc. I was last here in ’92 — it’s a much richer, brighter and more gentrified city now and yet with pockets that are quiet, leafy and serene. Far more beautiful, historic and captivating than Berlin. The vibe feels more like Italy than Germany.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder lived on the second or third floor.

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