Jeffrey Wells

Given what I’ve been hearing for years about widespread ignorance among GenX and GenY’s about American history, the possibility that a significant percentage of under-40s or certainly under-30s not having clue #1 about who J. Edgar Hoover was doesn’t sound like a huge stretch. So I would guess Warner Bros. marketing is facing a slight hurdle in selling Clint Eastwood’s biopic to this demographic.

Once upon a time the brainiacs out there might have assumed that J. Edgar Hoover founded the Hoover Vacuum company back in the ’20s, but…well, maybe some do think that.

The Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer opens on 11.9.

Don’t kid yourself — more and more citizens living outside the big cities don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to basic historical data.

Ask Jay Leno about this. I saw him do a question segment with people on the street on the Tonight show a few years back, and he asked a young girl to give the last name of a recent U.S. president whose first name was “Jimmy.” She didn’t know. “He used to be a peanut farmer…” Leno hinted. The woman still didn’t know but she took a stab. “Jimmy Peanut?”, she said.

In a survey conducted in 2008, about 25% of 1,200 17-year-olds “were unable to correctly identify Adolf Hitler as Germany’s chancellor during World War II, instead identifying him variously as a munitions maker, an Austrian premier and the German Kaiser,” according to N.Y. Times piece that I’ve lost the URL for.

A CBS News story by Francie Grace noted that “allmost three out of four fourth-graders could not name which part of government passes laws. Most students thought it was the president. (It’s Congress.)

“About three out of four fourth-graders knew that July 4 celebrates the Declaration of Independence. But one in four thought it marked the end of the Civil War, the arrival of the Pilgrims or the start of the woman’s right to vote.

“More than half of 12th-graders, asked to pick a U.S. ally in World War II from a list of countries, thought the answer was Italy, Germany or Japan. (The correct answer was the Soviet Union.)”

“It’s been more than a bit surreal watching the media grapple with Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots, Ad Age‘s Simon Dumenco wrote on 10.24. “A month ago you could tell that many big media organizations were kind of hoping, or at least expecting, that the movement would quickly fade away.

In a 9.23 piece titled “Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim,” N.Y. Times “Big City” columnist Ginia Bellafante zoomed right in on the flakiest protesters she could find and then made fun of them (with precise aim), starting with a takedown, in her very first sentence, of ‘a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka.’

“She went on: “A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms. Tikka had taken off all but her cotton underwear and was dancing on the north side of Zuccotti Park.”

“Elsewhere, Bellafante criticized ‘the group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably.’ (The columnist had actually telegraphed her intention to belittle and dismiss Occupy Wall Street in a tweet two days earlier: ‘The Wall Street protesters: passion, pizza, horns, toplessness. I fear favorable tax treatment of private equities will continue unimpeded.’)

“Fast forward to Oct. 8 [when] The New York Times editorial board pointedly endorsed the movement and its inchoate rage: ‘It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself.’

“And on Oct. 16, when op-ed columnist Paul Krugman wrote of the early ‘contemptuous dismissal’ of Occupy Wall Street, it almost could be read as a rebuke of what the Times itself had been engaging in just a few weeks earlier.

“The New York Times ultimately had no choice but to take the Occupy movement seriously because it’s gained astonishing momentum in record time — the Washington Post tallied Occupy-themed protests in at least 900 cities around the world so far — and it’s become politically mainstream.

“According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, New York City voters say they agree with the views of the Wall Street protesters by a 67% to 23% margin. And a national Time magazine poll says that the Occupy movement is twice as popular as the Tea Party movement (with favorable ratings of 54% vs. 27%).”

Herman Cain‘s…I mean, Mark Block‘s recently surfaced web ad is an absolute howl because of how it ends. After saying that “I really believe that Herman Cain will be ‘united’ back in the United States of America” and “if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here” and “we’ve run a campaign like no one’s ever seen,” Block sucks in a lungful of cigarette smoke.

Obvious message: If individual voters or small business owners or corporate chiefs want to act in some kind of irresponsible or unhealthy way, President Herman Cain will not give them grief for that because this is a free country. In a way the cigarette finale is almost brilliant. Hah!

“When have there have been so many alleged GOP frontrunners whom we all know haven’t a prayer of being the nominee of their party?,” a filmmaker friend asked this morning. “Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, the Hermanator. Cain is one of the strangest men to ever run for President (up there with Ross Perrot but not as qualified). If he does become the nominee you can expect Obama to win forty-five states.

My response: Cain is building a political-celebrity business. He wants his own Fox News show…that’s all. And to stay on top of the public-speaking circuit. He’s a total hustler and a total animal. He’s in this game for what he can get. Romney will almost certainly be the nominee.

Tonight’s Hollywood Awards ceremony was the first awards show of the season, and it occured to me early on that the major award recipients — George Clooney, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Christopher Plummer, Bennett Miller — were using this event (as they do every year) to try out and refine their acceptance speeches, like a Broadway-bound play playing Boston or Los Angeles. So who fared best?

For most of the show I thought Close was the shit. Her words were eloquent, heartfelt, well chosen. Plus she got a long standing ovation as she walked to the podium. Well loved. But then Davis, glammy costar of The Help and a likely Best Actress nominee, took the mike near the end of the show, and she blew Close out of the water. Calm, sassy, impassioned — it was easily the finest acceptance speech of the night.

A friend tells me that’s not enough. It doesn’t matter if an acceptance speech is really superb unless it’s been captured for broadcast and seen all around. Davis’s speech (along with the show) will presumably be broadcast by Starz, although it’s not listed on their website.

I knew Davis was hitting it right 20 seconds after she began but I was too slow and too stupid to shoot video of her speech right away. I finally picked up the camera toward the end and caught the last 78 seconds’ worth. I knew then and there she’s going to win the Best Actress Oscar. She knew it, the room knew it. You could just feel it.

George Clooney handled himself with assurance and charm. Candid, amusingly blunt, self-effacing, gracious…the usual one-two-three shazam. And Beau Bridges‘ introduction of Clooney was choice. Christopher Plummer delivered with wit, class and aplomb. But Quentin Tarantino‘s introduction of Diablo Cody was the most pizazzy and high-voltage of all. Cody clearly felt he’d oversold her.

By the way: Cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki (Tree of Life, Gravity) told me earlier tonight that his next film, he believes, will be for Terrence Malick (again)…the one with Christian Bale that was filming in mid September in a park outside Austin.

George Clooney

Carey Mulligan

Viola Davis

Michelle Willliams

Ben Affleck

Diablo Cody

Jonah Hill

I’m blowing off a screening of Tower Heist to attend the Hollywood Awards at the Beverly Hilton. It starts with an hour of cocktail chit-chat from 6 to 7 pm and then will run from 7 pm to 9 pm (or something like that). Every actor, director and producer chosen for an award has to attend because if they don’t, someone else will be chosen and they’ll attend so there’s no way to win except to show up, etc. Everybody gets that. Nobody cares. It’s the first pre-, pre-, pre-senior prom.

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George Clooney will accept the Actor award for his performance in The Descendants, Moneyball director Bennett Miller will be handed the Director Award; the cast of The Help will receive an Ensemble Award, Williams will get an Actress award for her performance in My Week With Marilyn, Christopher Plummer will be handed a Supporting Actor award for Beginners, Mulligan a Supporting Actress Award for her work in Shame, Diablo Cody will get a Screenwriter Award for Young Adult, and Albert Nobbs star Glenn Close will receive a Career Achievement Award.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Gold Derby‘s Tom ONeil and I riffed on the usual-usual yesterday. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

A few days ago Spike Jonze, Simon Cahn and Olympia Le-Tan‘s stop-motion short Mourir Aupres de Toi (To Die By Your Side) surfaced online. It was first seen at last May’s Cannes Film Festival as some kind of partnership deal with Jonathan Caouette‘s Walk Away Renee. It’s set inside Shakespeare & Co., the old-time Paris book store.

One of the interesting things is that the Macbeth skeleton’s head looks like the skeleton of a cat’s head.

This is one of the most overtly carnal stop-motion shorts I’ve ever seen. Particularly due to a couple of hand gestures made by the red-haired vampire girl.

Here’s a “making of” short that appeared last April.

Why does the trailer allow us to hear Asa Butterfield pronouncing his character’s full name, i.e, Hugh Cabret? Won’t that alienate the bubbas out there who don’t like to hear any French-sounding words? Paramount changed the title from Hugo Cabret to Hugo for precisely this reason, right? In fact, why not play it safe and dub the film so that Hugo’s last name can be changed to Flabbergast or Appleseed or Wishbone? Wipe that French off the map!

Question for those who saw Hugo at the NY Film Festival: Is Hugo specific enough to identify the Paris train station where most of he action takes place? Is it Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, Gare d’Oreans, etc.? Or it just a generic storybook Paris with a single unidentified train station? Because giving it a name would confuse the kiddies?

Q: What’s with the Metropolis-like wire-framed robot figure? A: Brian Selznick‘s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” “is the true story of turn-of-the-century pioneer filmmaker Georges Melies (played by Ben Kingsley in the film), his surviving films “and his collection of mechanical, wind-up figures called automata,: says the Wiki page. “Melies actually had a set of automata, which were either sold or lost. At the end of his life M√©lies was broke, even as films were screening widely in the US. He did work in a toy booth in a Paris railway station, hence the setting.”

Paramount will release Hugo on 11.23.

This is bad. This can’t be good. Okay, maybe it’s better than it seems but if William Shakespeare‘s ghost had the ability to keep tabs on Hollywood adaptations of his plays, there would be much concern right now. “It’s bad enough for Roland Emmerich ‘s Anonymous (Sony, 10.28) to assert that Edward de Vere was the actual author of my plays,” the outraged ghost might complain, “but the idea of sci-fi/fantasy journeyman-drone Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) shooting an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing…that’s past the point of tolerance!”

From HE reader/journalist Gabe@ThePlaylist, posted earlier today: “I mostly liked Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and I’m not sure if I’m just touchy about 9/11, or that you genuinely have to be an asshole to HATE it. But it kinda gave me a headache, and the kid was unbearable. Still, except for me, not a dry eye in the house. I haven’t seen a movie work like that in awhile.

“It turned me around on a lot of things: (as) Favorite Stephen Daldry movie by far…though I am not a fan; (b) Favorite Sandra Bullock performance. Again, definitely not a fan; (c) Max Von Sydow‘s character feels gimmicky. Of COURSE he’ll get Oscar attention. Though I would throw it Bullock’s way, and I think Jeffrey Wright has a great scene near the end that straddles the line between ‘I am answering a lot of questions for myself right now’ and ‘I am touched by the context you’re bringing to this.’ Only great actors make those similar reactions into completely different attitudes; (d) Some of the mother/son stuff is TOUGH. I think there’s a lot of misplaced rage people have when they lose a loved one, and when it’s a hyperactive child, it’s tenfold. I was impressed how dark and affecting this was.

“I think, as far as Academy voting [is concerned], it works on every necessary level. Tugs appropriately at the heartstrings, has just enough edgy content, plays with colorful editing and ‘edgy’ unconventional storytelling, and grandma will love it.”