Jeffrey Wells
Is WB Too Panic-Stricken To Bring PTA’s “One Battle After Another” to Venice?
I’ve been sensing uh-oh vibes from Paul Thomas Anderson One Battle After Another since 3.29.25, which is when I talked to a fellow who’d recently seen a preview screening and called it “a satire of radical left revolutionaries”…”it’s played for comedy but the wokeys won’t like it”.
Who the hell cares enough about rural looney-tune radical lefties to see, much less enjoy, a satire of their behaviors? I hated PTA’s last Thomas Pynchon adaptation so what are the odds I’ll be receptive to this one?
Preview guy also called it “a guy movie like Uncut Gems but aimed more at black women and [even] white conservative women than liberal white women on anti–depressants…I wouldn’t take my girlfriend to it…it’s not a 2025 movie…it would’ve gone down well during Obama’s second term, but movies like this are not made today.”
It is therefore not surprising to read a Jordan Ruimy report that the Warner Bros. distribution team may have decided not to premiere the PTA at the 2025 Venice Film Festival (8.27 to 9.6):
I’ve been sniffing weirdo gas fumes (i.e. the eccentric “I love black women!” kind) from this pricey PTA flick all along. If the Italian Cinematore guy is correct, it would appear that WB p.r. execs are persuaded that the film will draw a “mixed” or half-negative critical reaction in Venice and have decided it’s better to cut bait rather than fish.
The Venice lineup will be announced on Tuesday, 7.22.
Arguably The Greatest Night of The Great One’s Life
Jackie Gleason’s 39th birthday party was held on 2.26.55 at Toot’s Shor’s (51 W. 51st Street). He was rolling in clover and adulation back then, and on this particular night (i.e., Saturday) he was being toasted and celebrated by every showbiz hotshot in town (including Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio).
Plus ratings for The Jackie Gleason Show had been surging since ‘53 or thereabouts, and Gleason had recently decided to gamble big on a full season (39 episodes) of The Honeymooners, a hugely successful half-hour series which ran from 10.1.55 to 9.22.56 and is still being re-watched as we speak.
Gleason was a genius madman back then — big drinker, smoker and spender, living for the highs, burning the candle at both ends — and he enjoyed a long and successful career, of course, but I hated his constantly seething Buford T. Justice in the Smokey movies, and I never cared much for his old-school, tweedle-dee mustache.
Gleason was beautiful when youngish and livin’ large and full of beans, but the old pizazz ebbed away as he got older. His heyday had happened in the ‘50s, and everyone knew that.
When you’ve got it, flaunt it. Life is short. Go for the gusto while it’s still gusting, etc.
Gleason’s final peak momrnt — at least in my estimation — was his performance as Minnesota Fats in Robert Rossen’s The Hustler (‘61). for which he was Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category. Gleason should have damn well won the Oscar, but West Side Story’s George Chakiris unjustly edged him out.
All Hail John Milius
Poor John Milius is grappling with the big C. Here’s to a great eccentric gun owner, a great individualist, a great commentary-track raconteur, an allegedly devotional surfer and one of the most influential director-writers of the ‘60s, 70s and ‘80s. Salute!
Feelings Matter, But So Does Girth
How do you write about Lena Dunham’s semi-autobiographical Too Much, a 10-part Netflix series that popped on 7.10, without stepping on a land mine or stepping over the woke-terror line by addressing the elephant in the room?
You start by praising Dunham’s writing, I suppose. (Right?) The dialogue is well honed and just right — wise and zeitgeisty and agreeably settled-in and never less than perceptive. I immediately felt at ease because of this talent, this signature, this attitudinal stamp.
And because of Megan Stalter’s believably dug-in and disarming lead performance.
But we can’t just sail along and pretend that Too Much, despite its emotional precision and candor and generally elevated vibe, isn’t a chubbo sell-job.
The truth is that I briefly gasped when a shot captured a partially disrobed Stalter in profile. I didn’t gasp because I wanted to earn or ratify my ayehole credentials. I gasped because a voice deep inside went “holy shit!”
Remember when the great Shelley Winters (who once told me I reminded her of an old boyfriend) ballooned up in the mid ‘60s? In Jack Smight and Paul Newman’s Harper (‘66) she was candidly and unapologetically described with the “f” word. Imagine!
Remember James Mangold ‘s Heavy (‘96)? And Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (‘01)? Remember that moment in Sideways when Thomas Haden Church described Missy Doty as “the grateful type”? The Stalinists would never tolerate this terminology now..
Too Much is an engaging, faintly downish but agreeably hip and certainly chuckle-worthy feminist romcom that is also (I’m repeating myself but an emphasis is warranted) an attempt to normalize.
Normalize what? Well, what has always seemed to me and tens of millions of others like an exotic concept, which is that obese, whipsmart, Type-A women and lean, open-hearted, chubby-chasing dudes often hook up and wind up happily entwined or even married. Not to be spoil-sportish but this kind of thing is not by any stretch a common relationship occurence, not even among size-affirming Millennials and Zoomers.
We all understand the basic appeal of curvy, zaftig and even a little Rubenesque action. As far back as the ‘70s a friend used the term “tons of fun”, and I knew exactly that he was joking about, conceptually speaking.
Speaking as a trim guy from way back, how many overweight women have I “been” with? One. Okay, maybe two. (And I don’t mean obese.) Did I mostly steer clear of calorically challenged lassies because I’m a bigot? It sure didn’t seem that way back then (i.e., the 20th Century). Nobody “slept” with fatties.
Backstory–wise, Too Much is about a moderately fetching Dunham-esque producer-writer-whatever (Stalter) who moves to London in the wake of a traumatic breakup with a longtime Brooklyn boyfriend (the trimly proportioned Michael Zegen) who’s dumped her for a model-esque hottie (Emily Ratajkowski).
The main order of business is about Stalter falling for a poor, well-sculpted musician and kindred spirit (The White Lotus’s Will Sharpe) who, in a non-wokey, normal-seeming world, would almost certainly be seeing a girl more his own size and shape. Or at least a zaftig rather than a tubby tuba.
What happens between Stalter and Sharpe is the meat and essence of the show, of course. Most of it romantically resonates and touches bottom and all that good stuff. (Including, I’ve read**, one or two harsh stand-offs.) Dunham is grade-A all the way. But how do you get around those gasp moments?
** I’ve only seen the first three episodes
Grim Slide
I felt so drained Wednesday night and Thursday by my recent diagnosis that I figured I couldn’t stand the combination of atherosclerosis plus watching James Gunn’s Superman. But now that I’ve settled into (i.e., accepted) the glumness of things, I guess I can handle a Superman viewing. That’s what I’m doing now. Suffering through the godawful trailers, I mean.
Healthwise I’ve Been Carefree Or Certainly Cavalier For Ages
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.
Most Enticing Happy Couple Posters
…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.
Can’t Wait To Hate (If At All Possible)
I’m getting ready for my 7 pm Superman screening. My mind and my heart are open to whatever.
Who Has Visited The Corleone Compound on Lake Tahoe’s West Shore?
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.
Was “Nashville” The Most Misanthropic (Or Certainly The Most Dismissive and Mocking When It Came to The Country-Music Community) Film of the ‘70s?
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?
