But first I have to squeeze in a late Sunday afternoon viewing of A Quiet Place II, which a sharp journo pally is calling “awful.”

“Covid-infected bats in a Wuhan wet market”? Not any longer.

Scott Gottlieb is an American physician and investor who served as the 23rd commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2017 until April 2019.

“These kinds of lab leaks happen all the time,” @ScottGottliebMD says of COVID-19 lab-leak theory. “Even here in the United States, we’ve had mishaps. In China, the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs.” pic.twitter.com/NX2iWBIdBx

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) May 30, 2021

We all understand Martin Scorsese‘s currently-shooting Killers of the Flower Moon is based upon David Grann‘s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI“, which was published in April 2017.

It’s about the racially motivated Osage Murders — roughly 60 wealthy Osage Native Americans killed by white supremacists over oil money — that happened between 1918 and ’31.

“The genocide by white America against Native nations during the century leading up to Grann’s period is a metaphor for humanity’s decimation of the natural world which the Natives saw as sacred,” wrote The Guardian‘s Ed Vulliamy. “Grann’s book is a timely and disturbing chapter in the original, terrible atrocity.”

I don’t know enough about Scorsese’s $200 million Apple adaptation to ask anything more than rudimentary questions. I only know the various summaries of Grann’s book, and what’s happened with the film so far, etc. I guess I know a few things, but concerns are welling inside.

I’m feeling this primal fear that Killers, when you boil it all down, is going to play like some kind of huge WHITE MEA CULPA “EXPUNGE THE EVIL” APOLOGY FILM…as in “BLM and 1619 and the woke community have been hammering home the scope of current white venality, and now we’re going to dramatize what it was like back in the 1920s…more hammering!”

In so doing the film will no doubt say (as it should) that the murderous savagery that William Hale (Robert De Niro) and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and other venals perpetrated upon the Osage Nation commmunity…what happened back then was horrific.

But is this strictly a violent history lesson, or is there a 2021 echo in this thing? Will the film simply be saying “look at the horrors that happened nearly 100 years ago” and let it go at that? Or will it be saying “it wasn’t just Hale and his murderous deeds that we’re sorry for as much as the innate evil within ourselves, for there are pieces and slivers of William Hale in all of us, God forgive ourselves and our ancestors, and so white Americans need to atone and atone and atone again.”

I, Jeffrey Wells from suburban New Jersey, may in fact be a chip off the old Devil Incarnate (or perhaps a nephew of the beast who mounted and impregnated Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby) whose ancestors brought horrific racial malice to this once-virgin land. And yes, America may in fact be the ugliest, most racially poisoned serpent’s nest of a country in the history of the globe…nobody’s arguing that.

On top of which Mark Wahlberg is looking….what’s a delicate way to put this?…older. It happens. If you were born in ’71, certain changes will kick in by ’21. A new phase.

I wanted to escape this film faster than Lou Costello wanted to escape the haunted master bedroom in Hold That Ghost. Ian Shorr‘s script has been described as Wanted meets The Matrix. Based on D. Eric Maikranz‘s “The Reincarnationist Papers.”

Perfect song, perfect mix, perfect delivery…nothing amiss.

The following Facebook discussion excerpts, launched by Paul Schrader‘s description of an erotic dream, were actually posted this morning:

Schrader: “Last night I had a dream straight from the #MeToo times. I was filming a scene in which I was sexually humiliating a beautiful actress Before each take I described what I was going to do and received her permission on film to do so. And then did it. By the way, I have never filmed such a scene. But I did just finish a new (mildly erotic) script in six days straight, so perhaps that explains by overheated dream.”

“What I found interesting about the dream is that the ID will always emerge even if it has to wear a #MeToo dress.”

HE to Schrader: “No matter how you phrase it, how you shot it, what kind of assurances you received from the dream actress…none of that matters. What matters is that you dreamt about ‘sexually humiliating a beautiful actress,’ and by that admission alone you are GUILTY in the eyes of the mob…period.

“You know, of course, that there are Twitter jackals out there, drooling and licking their chops and ready to pounce upon the slightest not-woke-enough provocation. Why even mention this kind of dream? You know what the fanatics will do with it. We are living in 1794 Paris. If you want to live, you can’t even imagine yourself to be an ally of Georges Danton, who in real life was known for certain ravenous sexual appetites. ”

Schrader to HE: “So dictates Jeffrey Freud Wells. Off to the Gallows — and take your dreams with you!” More: “Gee, Jeffrey, we’re all dying to hear your PG dreams. Maybe the one about how you lost the keys to your car?”

HE to Schrader: “I’ve been losing keys and even wallets all my life. Last year I absentmindedly dropped my wallet into a dumpster so don’t tell me.” Later: Here’s a dream posted on 3.21.20.”

Facebook friendo #1: “Paul, how dare you, as a serious artist, attempt to decipher a dream you had while engaging people in an adult conversation? Apparently policing thoughts isn’t enough, dreams need to be included as well.”

Slow-on-the-pickup Facebook friendo: “Seriously, Jeffrey?”

Dean Michael Kuehn: “Well, I guess many of us are one step away from the Future Crime Unit locking us up then.”

Nic Valle: “Seriously, guy. Art can no longer be art when feelings can light it on fire out of existence.”

HE to Valle: “Are you guys really this clueless? Are you living in sealed-off chambers?

Alan Ormsby: “The #MeToo dream police will hear about this!”

Michael Brakemeyer: “Danton was on the right side of history, so I would have probably sided with him.”

I later explained to the Schrader community that I was “attempting to satirically channel the spirit of today’s Maximilien Robespierre virus. As in ‘hello?…anybody home or sniffing the air?'”

Los Angeles-residing Facebook friendo: “Your comment has clearly been misunderstood.”

HE to LA friendo: “And that’s on me? I can’t be responsible for the failure of Facebook people to comprehend the current political atmosphere, and what has been clearly stated by yours truly. If they want to walk around oblivious to the prevailing climate of terror, that’s their decision.”

Headline says it all. All is well until the next crisis. A heartfelt thanks to the Good Samaritan rescuer, who shall remain nameless.

Producer Jerome Hellman was a gentleman and a class act. He had a stellar 20-year run between the mid ’60s to mid ’80s — The World of Henry Orient (1964), A Fine Madness (1966), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Day of the Locust (1975), Coming Home (1978), Promises in the Dark (1979 — Hellman also directed) and The Mosquito Coast (1986).

Cowboy‘s Best Picture Oscar triumph was the peak moment. Plus Hellman (I’d forgotten this) played a small part in Hal Ashby‘s Being There.

The Mosquito Coast was a bust, and we all know it’s hard to launch your next film when the most recent has wiped out. It still seems curious that someone as driven, cultured and connected as Hellman, 58 in ’86, never produced again.

We all know that Hollywood movie culture began to coarsen in the mid ’90s and drift more toward Jan de Bont-type films, and was therefore more and more at odds with the kind of mature, adult-friendly film that Hellman stood for. And we know that sooner or later older producers always get elbowed out of the room by whippersnappers.

A man of refinement, intelligence, smoothitude. I don’t know for a fact that Hellman never wore gold-toe socks, but I’m betting he didn’t.

I’m especially sorry that Hellman had to suffer through the ignominious April ’18 release of Criterion’s notorious teal-tinted Midnight Cowboy Bluray — by any reasonable visual standard a complete desecration.

B.J. Thomas got lucky with three singles issued between the late ’60s and mid ’70s — “Hooked on a Feeling” (’68), Burt Bacharach and Hal David‘s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” (’69 — the song that popularized Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and vice versa) and Larry Butler and Chips Moman‘s “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” (’75).

Thomas was a popular, attractive, first-rate crooner — great pipes, knew how to breathe and phrase, cool cheekbones, intense eyes. His singing of the final “nothin’s worryin’ me” became his peak moment — Thomas stretched “me” into 11 notes or flutters or whatever the correct term is.

Thomas’s “Hooked” was released on October ’68 and therefore first out of the gate. But most Average Joes prefer Blue Swede‘s 1974 version (“Oogah-oogah-chow-chow-chow”).

Thomas passed today at age 78.

This is my idea of a moving Memorial Day essay. The highlight comes when Lt. Col. Fred Wellman (retired) says the following: “Let’s never forget the oath they took to uphold and defend the Constitution, against enemies both foreign and domestic. And if the events of the last five years has taught us anything, we still have to fight for our nation, and we still support those who do.”

Wellman’s delivery reminds me of similar sentiments spoken by Harve Presnell‘s “George Marshall” in Saving Private Ryan, only more straightforward.

I’ve always preferred the terms “those who served” or “those who fell in service to our nation” as opposed to “those who gave their lives.”

My father, a former Marine Lieutenant who battled the Japanese at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima (and who once confessed to having downed a few belts of Scotch with some fellow officers before the assault on Iwo Jima on 2.22.45), always dismissed the wording of that sentiment.

Nobody “gives” their life in combat — they fight as best they can to achieve victory or at the very least not get killed, and sometimes fate tilts against them.

If any one group fits the definition of “domestic enemy,” the January 6th bumblefucks are the pig’s poke. Deranged, stupid, beardos with dad jeans…enemies of our Constitution, defilers of decency, the lowest of the low.

5.29, 9 pm Update: HE’s comment numbers are back, thanks to a very good friend and an excellent human being. Crisis concluded!

Earlier: On top of all the other daily aches and pains and gashes in the soul, the WordPress plug-in that displays the number of comments per each post has stopped working. I just have to find the right plug-in and then update it. I’m sure it’ll only take me three or four days or maybe 48 hours…a twinkling in the broad cosmic scheme of things. But until it’s fixed, every story will “appear” to have zero comments. I live for these grueling experiences. They make my day.

I will somehow get this matter fixed. I’ve reached out to some tech guys. Yes, it’s infuriating and deflating.

A few days ago I highlighted a quote of a Daily Beast Tom Wolfe interview, posted seven or eight years ago. “People are willing to confess to anything colorful or exciting [in their lives]…they murdered somebody or they smoked a lot of dope…it could be almost anything. Except for the humiliations. They will never write about the humiliations, which, George Orwell said, make up 75% of life.”

This is one such moment — a humiliation.

Again, I’m trying to repair it with the help of someone who’s smarter than me when it comes WordPress plug-in issues. This effort is failing so far, partly because some people don’t like working on Saturdays. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that HE is now looking like a shunned site.

No film lover cares about Cruella (Disney, 5.28). I certainly don’t. Obviously a Disney parent punisher. Thank God such films were fewer and far between when my sons, Jett and Dylan, were tykes from the early to late ’90s. The Katzenberg period.

It’s noteworthy, I think, that a film aimed at the family trade runs 2 hours and 14 minutes? Whatever for? Yes, it’s an origin story but such an effort should be no more than 110 minutes tops, and preferably closer to 100 or even 95. Especially given the fact that Dalmatians puppies barely appear in it.

Anthony Lane: “Emotions are not toyed with glancingly [in Cruella] but stretched out and blazoned forth, and the result is that the new film is nearly an hour longer than the original 101 Dalmatians cartoon. Needless to say, any pretense that children might still want to watch a light, spirited, mutt-centered gambol has been skinned to the bone, to make way for human bitching, and anyone hoping to play Spot the Dalmatian will be sorely vexed. I counted exactly three of the beasts, plus another two at the end. In short, Cruella is more catty than canine. Grrr.”

Lane #2: “In truth, there are passages of Cruella that seem like scraps of music videos, loosely stitched together. Forget about the plot: ask your heroine to pose in splendiferous outfits; crank up the Stones, the Zombies, the Clash, or Doris Day; and, woof, there’s your movie.”