Jeffrey Wells

Catching Furtive Zees

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The cabin windows are open, the sun is bright and the cloud-free sky is a gleaming light blue as our SAS flight approaches Copenhagen. It’s 8:26 am in Copenhagen, 2:26 am in NYC and 11:26 pm in Los Angeles. I’ve gotten maybe 90 minutes of sleep, if that. HE’s connecting flight to Nice leaves from CPH terminal 3 at 11 am. Nice touchdown at 1:25 pm.

Bardot Says French Courts Should Let Depardieu Skate

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The long-retired Brigitte Bardot, who turned 90 on 9.28.24, is obviously no #MeToo advocate. Earlier today she told BFM that she believes renowned French actor Gerard Depardieu, 76, who will soon face an array of sexual assault charges (13 women have accused him) under the French legal system, should be left alone.

This can only be filed under the general category of eccentric opinions. Bardot and Fanny Ardant aside, no one on the planet earth seriously believes that swaggering, hard-drinking, old-school rich guys known for occasional ornery behavior (like Depardieu) should just be forgiven and cut loose when it comes to allegations of louche or unlawful sexual behavior…nobody.

Middle-Class “Big Chill”-ish Commune

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Several Fairfield County homies (myself among them) during the Nixon administration, posing on the side porch of a large, ramshackle, six-bedroom home in Southport, CT. There was a small barn out back where we’d pass the pipe around. The guy in the striped T-shirt made a 16mm short in which I starred, called Beyond Embarassment. I’ve never forgotten what a friend wrote on the dining room wall: “We are all merely sea men.”

Nearly Ten Years Ago

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Posted on 6.9.15: “Nancy Wells, my dear mom, passed Sunday night. She gave me everything — life, love, love of the arts (she turned me on to Peter Tchaikovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, John Updike, Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin…the list is infinite) and particularly love of theatre.

“She was the beating heart and balm of our family — 90% of the joy and spunk and laughter came from her, and she basically saved me and my brother and sister from my father’s alcoholic moodiness when we were young. (Not to diminish my dad’s influence too much — he gave me the writerly urge along with the barbed attitude, such as it is.) But I would have been dead without my mom’s emotional radiance and buoyancy. “

My mom loved show business, plays, films, music. She worked for NBC and BBC in the old days, acted in several plays in New Jersey (including Somserset Maugham‘s The Constant Wife) and directed two or three plays at the Wilton Playshop. She was partnered in her own real-estate business in the late ’70s and early ’80s. “

She had been gradually slipping away for a couple of years (during my last visit she didn’t even open her eyes). Now, at last, her peace is absolute.

Choose or Lose: Cannes Day #1 (5.14)

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Amelie Bonnin ‘s Partir Un Jour (lowered expectations) at 9 am, the Chris McQuarrie thing at 12:30 pm, Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling at 3:30 pm, ixnay on the Robert DeNiro thing, MI: Final Reckoning at 6:45 pm, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors at 10:15 pm. Four films. Come hell or high water, I must commit at 1 am eastern, tonight.

What The Hell Is This?

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What forms of prospective hell might be wrought by this threat of protectionist economic brutality? This declaration of retribution? This is rash, mad–king stuff. What are the likely consequences? I’m asking.

An echo of Network s Arthur Jensen, thundering from the heavens: “You are threatening to meddle with the primal forces of nature, President Trump, and I won’t have it! Is that clear?

“An abrupt imposition of a 100% tariff on foreign-produced films and streaming content would not incentivize but brutalize…it would be punitive and authoritarian and therefore impose a radical disturbance of natural ebb and flow, of tidal gravity…of economic and ecological balance.”

THR’s Patrick Brzeski and Scott Roxborough are reporting that Trump’s threatened 100% tariff on foreign-produced features and streaming content is more or less the fault of Jon Voight, one of Trump’s Hollywood emissaries (along with Mel Gibson and Sly Stallone).

Voight has taken several meetings, Brzeski and Roxborough have written, and has passed along a portrait of a besieged industry. Voight apparently hasn’t been urging tariffs, but with Bully Boy at the helm this is how it’s nonetheless shaking out.

Frank Langella vs. David Begelman

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I’ll never forget the delicious, almost adrenalized thrill I got out of reading “David McLintick‘s “Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street“, which was published 43 years ago…talk about a wayback machine.

I’d love to re-read “Indecent Exposure” on Kindle, but it doesn’t appear to be on Kindle…odd.

I did a phoner with David Begelman once, although I can’t recall what the topic was. It was sometime in the early ’90s, I think. I’ll never forget the theatrical charisma, the calculated smoothitude in his voice. That patented Begelman vibe, which arose out of many years of being an agent, was immediately soothing or at least placating…you felt you were talking to a very skilled salesman as well as a bon vivant.

The following excerpt is from Frank Langella‘s “Dropped Names” (2012). Quite the smoothie himself in his 20th Century heyday, Langella, a fellow Wiltonian, was represented by Begelman for a short period.

I needn’t remind that Langella got into trouble a while back for getting a tiny bit handsy with a female Millennial or Zoomer costar…”you touched my leg in a familiar fashion!!…eeeeeeee!”

Langella, now 87, is a skilled writer. “Dropped Names” is an easy and pleasurable read.