Jeffrey Wells

On page 196 of his 2009 Warren Beatty biography Star, Peter Biskind describes the work aesthetic of fabled production designer Richard Sylbert: “Sylbert had a method, which consisted of distilling the movie’s theme, choosing visual metaphors reflective of that theme, and then making each and every design element a slave to those metaphors.”

Sylbert’s stark black-and-white interiors in The Graduate (’67), a likely allusion to choice, ethics and morality, was one example; ditto the jungle flora and zebra-skin design of the Robinson’s den, and the preference for cheetah- and zebra-skin slips, bras and bathing suits worn by Mr. Robinson as well as Benjamin Braddock’s mom, which had something to do with unruly libidos and predatory behavior.

In short, Sylbert never focused solely on design elements — he was a kind of co-director (in his mind, certainly) who always focused on the big overall.

Sylbert designed The Manchurian Candidate (’62), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (’62), Lilith (’64), The Pawnbroker (’64), Grand Prix (’66), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (’66), The Graduate (’67), Rosemary’s Baby (’68), Catch-22 (’70), Carnal Knowledge (’71), Chinatown (’74), Shampoo (’75), Reds (’81), The Cotton Club (’84) and Dick Tracy (’90).

I’m not saying that other production designers don’t use the same theme-metaphor approach that Sylbert did. I’m saying that I can’t think of any off the top of my head. So I’m asking.

Here’s a 10.27.06 article I wrote about Sylbert, whom I knew somewhat and with whom I had several great discussions and off-the-record interviews. He died from cancer a little more than a decade ago — in March 2002.

All I’m saying about Cloud Atlas (Warner Bros., possibly December), “an epic story of mankind” with multiple characters and several time-flipping narratives, is that you might want to read David Mitchell‘s 2004 novel of the same name before seeing it. The last thing you want is to watch a film that makes you go “wait…what?” time and again. You want to be truly “with” the experience, and not fighting it or feeling defeated by it. So I’m just telling you as a friend that you need to buy the book and put on the coffee and study it and figure it all out before seeing the film. You’re back in high school and you’ve homework to do. Simple as that.

Yes, of course — George Herbert Walker Bush looks like a very wise and commendable statesman compared to his son, but I don’t know if I can accept a Barry Goldwater-like revisionist view at this stage. HBO is debuting 41. Here’s Maureen Dowd’s chat with the 88 year-old ex-Prez.

“Of course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” – John Huston‘s Noah Cross in Chinatown (’74).

N.Y. Times media watcher David Carr and film critic A. O. Scott — a.k.a., the “Sweet Spot” guys — riff on New York theatre, the Tony Awards, and the savoring of an authentic Manhattan experience. Plus Carr does a little man-on-the-street interview segment.

The summer season has been underway for five or six weeks now, but let’s spitball some of the remainder — i.e., films opening between June 11th and Labor Day that have stirred interest or curiosity — in terms of likely bests, worsts, mehs and in-betweeners. I’ve seen six or seven of the following but otherwise I know zip (I’m sitting in the attic of a hotel inside the medieval village of Cesky Krumlov and don’t feel all that connected as we speak) — this is mainly intuition & premonition. If you know or have heard something, please share.

Boiled down, there are about 15 summer films opening over the next 10 weeks that are either essential or almost certainly worth seeing. If I’m missing something truly exceptional or terrible, please advise.

Essential, Sterling, Nutritious: Beasts of the Southern Wild (6.27), Side By Side (August TBA — best documentary of the summer?)

Obviously Unmissable: The Dark Knight Rises (7.20), Bourne Legacy (8.3), The Campaign (8.10).

Hearing Good Things: Magic Mike (6.29), The Amazing Spider-Man (7.3 — a friend saw it, was genuinely pleased), Savages (7.6).

Sturdy, Commendable, Recommended: Trishna (7.13), The Queen of Versailles (7.20), Searching for Sugar Man (7.27).

Modest, Low-Key, Reasonably Decent: Your Sister’s Sister (6.15), Take This Waltz (6.29), 2 Days in New York (8.10).

Possible Sleeper: Hit and Run (8.24)

Trepidations: Rock of Ages (6.15). Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (6.22), Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (6.22), Total Recall (8.3), Premium Rush (8.24)

No Clue: People Like Us (6.29), Hope Springs (8.10), 360 (.3),

Nope: Red Lights (7.13), Killer Joe (7.27), Sparkle (8.17), Lawless (8.29).

Hidden: To Rome With Love (6.22).

Little Stuffed Bear: Ted (6.29).

Indifferent: Brave (6.22)

Strange Intrigue: Klown (7.27).

Sandler Pics Never Change: That’s My Boy (6.15).

Tyler Perry Pics Never Change: Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection (6.29).

Necessary Sit: The Woman in the Fifth, Tahrir: Liberation Square.

Took a bus down to medieval Bohemian village. Too touristy but pleasantly scenic all the same, and at times breathtaking. Three hours south of Prague. Rolling green hills. Close to Austrian border.

Saturday, 6.9, 7:25 pm

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Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus opened yesterday so it’s time for reader opinions. Individual critiques, of course, but how did the room feel? My 6.1 review again: “Impressively composed and colder than a witch’s boob in Siberia. Visually striking, spiritually frigid, emotionally unengaging, at times intriguing but never fascinating. It’s technically impressive, of course — what else would you expect from an expensive Scott sci-fier? And the scary stuff takes hold in the final third. But it delivers an unsatisfying story that leaves you…uhm, cold.”

For Tom Cruise it’s Cocktail (and to a lesser extent Far and Away). For Harrison Ford it’s between Random Hearts and Regarding Henry. For Robin Williams, it’s Hook. For Johnny Depp, The Secret Window…or maybe, deep down, his corporate cash-ins with Garth Drabinsky and Jerry Bruckheimer. For Clark Gable, Parnell. For Cary Grant, a duel between The Howards of Virginia and The Pride and the Passion. For Kirk Douglas, The Big Trees. I could do this all day.

In a piece called “Suddenly That Summer” in the July Vanity Fair, it’s stated that “1967’s Summer of Love” brought the Mad Men era to a halt [with everyone] trading martinis for LSD and cocktail parties for Human Be-Ins.”

True — the warm months of 1967 were when the spiritual transcendence thing that had been percolating in rarified circles in late ’65 and ’66 seemed to kick in big-time. But I thought it was widely understood that the Summer of Love was more of a finale than a peak moment.

May, June and July of ’67 was when Sgt. Pepper brought the current to the suburbs and the minds of the somewhat less hip, and when the Life magazine media mob resultantly began to play up the psychedelic nirvana aspects and how this would be changing — i.e, threatening — the careerist vistas and priorities of college students and 20somethings, etc.

But by August it was over. The bloom was off the rose, and dealers were putting speed into acid to make tripping seem more intense. And then Hollywood jumped in with depictions of acid trips as sexual ecstasy levitations in The President’s Analyst (which came out in December)

I thought the definitive statement about this period had been delivered by Peter Fonda‘s Terry Valentine character in Steven Soderbergh‘s The Limey (’99), to wit: “Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before? A place that maybe only exists in your imagination? Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up. When you were there, though, you knew the language. You knew your way around. That was the ’50s. [pause] No. It wasn’t that either. It was just ’66 and early ’67. That’s all there was.”

I’ll never forget a preppie guy I knew who was into projecting a casual Brooks Brothers vibe. He was always wearing khaki pants (or pressed jeans even) and a pink or yellow Brooks Brothers dress shirt, and driving his father’s Jaguar XKE around. One night we’d all dropped and were at a party, and I remember watching this guy try to smooth-talk this pretty girl when all of a sudden an LSD chest-flutter muscle spasm hit him so hard he almost lost his balance, and the whole collegiate Brooks Brothers aura was shattered in an instant.

There’s a Bruce Handy q & a with Mad Men‘s Jessica Pare (i.e., Megan) in the July 2012 Vanity Fair, and on the website there’s a video piece about her. I knew going in that the subject of Pare’s rabbit teeth would not even be alluded to, much less touched upon. But honestly? As much as I admire & enjoy Pare’s work on Mad Men, her teeth are the first thing I see when she comes to mind. Followed by her eyes, hair and speaking voice. And then “Zou bisou bisou.”

And what’s wrong with having rabbit teeth (or ‘rather prominent front teeth,’ which is how a guy in the mid ’60s described the chompers of Patti Boyd Harrison, who had worked as a model before marrying George Harrison)? Absolutely nothing. You could argue, in fact, that Pare’s teeth are what give her beauty a distinctive edge. Don’t modify or hide a physical trait — flaunt it! But the reason Pare is in Vanity Fair is not, right now, because she’s the new Meryl Streep — it’s because she’s very particular and believable in Mad Men but primarily because she’s hot in a kind of mid-60ish way. (The VF copy calls her “a French-Canadian firecracker.”)

You know that if Pare was just starting to happen as an actress in the mid ’60s, the first thing her manager would tell her would be to “go to a dentist and file your teeth down and even them out a bit.” Not so much today and that’s fine, but any guy who says he wouldn’t be at least thinking about the possible pitfalls of receiving oral sex from Pare if he was seeing her in real life is a liar.

I’m sorry that it has to fall to me to bring this stuff up, but, like I said, it was absolutely assured going in that Handy wouldn’t touch Pare’s dental issue with a ten-foot pole. Honestly? If I were Pare I would probably ask my dentist for a slight modification. Just to take the fear factor out, so to speak. Would this interfere with Pare’s Pare-ness? A tiny bit, yes, but every actress has her edges sanded down when she becomes famous. At least slightly. Are you going to tell me that the Kate Winslet of 2012 looks even faintly like that carrot-haired actress in Heavenly Creatures? Look at Kristen Stewart‘s glammed-up, heavily made-over appearance on the cover of the July Vanity Fair. She looks hot, all right, but are you going to tell that me that her special Stewart-ness hasn’t been all but smothered?

Patti Boyd Harrison during a visit she and George Harrison made to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district in August 1967.