Jeffrey Wells

Go, Elon!

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I confess to not having read the fine print within Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill — a Poor-Screwing, Medicaid-Gutting, Tax-Slashing, Debt-Increasing Enactment which the Senate has passed but has yet to clear the House — but Elon Musk’s five-alarm, total-war resistance is theatrically striking to say the least…very emotional and absolutist.

Gandolfini Pit Stop

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Located in Montvale, New Jersey, the Garden State Parkway’s James Gandolfini service area feels like a place of semi-solemn observance — well north of Satriale’s pork store in Kearny, northeast of Saddle River, northwest of Gandolfini’s birthplace of Westwood, just south of the New York State line.

It’s not quite on the level of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or JFK’s Hyannisport or FDR’s Hyde Park, but it’s a place that seems to culturally matter…”take your hat off, they serve hot dogs here.”

Gandolfini was a very young boomer (born on 9.18.61**, technically a member of Generation Jones, a cusp between boomers and GenXers). Way too young to have been a ground-floor Beatles or Bob Dylan fan or to have even sniffed the hippie thing…came of age in the early Reagan era…B-52s, Blondie, The Police, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”.

Gandolfini was 37 when season #1 of The Sopranos began filming in mid ‘98, and only 51 when he died in Rome of a heart attack on 6.19.13.

** Six weeks after Barack Obama.

First Liberty Island Visit Since ‘80

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Blue skies, hot temps, no breezes.

Posted on 2.13.23:

Norman Lloyd‘s falling finale would’ve been better if Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t relied on that fake-looking process shot.

If I’d been in Hitchcock’s shoes, I would’ve had Universal’s prop department build a special wind-up mechanical dummy, one capable of moving its arms and legs a bit. Then I would’ve mounted the downward-facing camera on the railing of the actual Statue of Liberty torch, and then I would’ve simply dropped the dummy and filmed the long fall.

Then, in the editing phase, I would’ve shown Lloyd losing his grip and starting to fall, then a quick shot of Robert Cummings‘ horrified expression, and then cut to the falling dummy and stay with it until hits the pavement below. I would also have recorded the sound of a pair of tied-together watermelons slamming into the pavement from a height of, say, four or five stories.

“I’ve Got A Baaad Feeling About This”

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This line was spoken by Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back (‘80).

What are we supposed to get exactly from this image of a chick-of-color (presumably Chase Infiniti) holding a pistol outdoors? What’s the message? Who cares? Where’s Leo?

A Venice Film Festival debut, right?

Family Secret

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In yesterday’s riff about Kieran Darcy-Smith‘s Wish You Were Here, I wrote that “it’s basically a ‘get away from me, you fucked my sister!’ movie…it’s about the cost of suppressing the truth and not coming clean, and the cost of coming clean about meaningless infidelity.”

In the comment thread I wrote the following about this kind of infidelity — i.e., a husband doing the deed with his wife’s sister:

“On a real-life and real-deal consequences basis, a married person getting hot and heavy with a wife or a husband’s sister or brother…forget it. It’s so far beyond the pale. Only backwood hillbillies would even flirt with such a notion. What is life without discipline?

“Had it not been for Wish You Were Here, I would’ve never even imagined….wait…hold on.

“I’ve just remembered a long-buried family story that my mom once passed along. Something happened between (a) her father (and my grandfather), a traumatized World War I veteran named Vincent who was apparently a randy fellow in his youth, and (b) his wife’s sister Edythe (my mom’s aunt, my great-aunt). It occurred when they were in their mid or late 20s.

“The injured party was my grandmother, whose first name was Dorothy or ‘Dot.’

“My maternal grandparents had married under the gun in ‘22, mind, when my grandmother became pregnant with my mom, Nancy. Relations between Dorothy and Nancy were always a bit chilly and remote, my mom told me, as Dot was ashamed of having gotten pregnant outside the bonds of marriage — a Scarlet Letter offense back in those semi-Victorian days.

“Obviously the Vincent-Edythe thing was quite traumatic once the cat was out of the bag, but despite the shock and hurt my grandmother found her way past a Felicity Price meltdown, and she and my grandfather, both around 25 or maybe a bit older when the indiscretion occurred, left it there and reconciled and moved on.

“And that’s real life. Middle-class people regarded marriage as a solemn institution when Calvin Coolidge was president. I’ll bet divorces were far less common back then.

“Edythe never married, by the way.”

Wish You Were Here‘s Felicity Price to Joel Edgerton after she finds out: “You effed my much more attractive sister? You filth. You loathsome animal. You contemptible hound. You think you know what marital misery is? Well, you’re going to suffer like never before. In fact, I’m so enraged that I’m going to put the audience through as much agony as you, my dear husband. We’ll all sink into the quicksand together — you, me, Jeffrey Wells, all the other people in the audience.”

Random “F1” Uptick Notes

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I’ve just emerged from my second F1-in-IMAX viewing…big Danbury plex, king-sized screen, excellent sound (sharper speakers than those at the AMC Kips Bay), throbbing bass rumble…and I swear to God it felt better this time.

Knowing what’s coming relaxes you, puts you into a calmer, more receptive mood. I was ticking off my list of fave and not-so-fave scenes (ixnay on Pitt, Idris and Condon sharing that Vegas casino poker moment), shots and lines, plus there was a decent indoor climate this time (no a.c. inside theatre #10 on Tuesday night, enveloping invitees in warm, close-to-suffocating air).

F1 is not top-tier, as noted earlier today, and yes, it suffers from formulaic plotting and a mechanized mindset, as noted, but it somehow plays better if you’re secure in the knowledge that it won’t quite get there. The anxiety factor was absent this time (naturally), and at least it all fit together just so and all the players, committed as they are to a glossily corrupt mission, delivered their best.

Loved William Bradley Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, the blonde tire girl whose name escapes …good gang, excellent company.

There’s no believing in a film that professes to say “it’s not about the money” while revelling in the flush clover of a $200 million Apple budget…F1 is not an honest film plus it activates a kind of buzz-saw effect in your head. But I’m also thinking of that Pauline Kael line about Richard Brooks’ The Professionals (‘66) working the viewer over with the skilled hands of a veteran prostitute.

I’ll tap out some randoms when I get home, but the second viewing somehow kicked in or settled in…whatever. It sure as shit didn’t diminish.