Let’s imagine I had absolute power and a group of scientists and financiers came to me and said, “We can take Abraham Lincoln‘s blood from that Ford’s Theatre chair and clone him…literally recreate him head to toe…an exact duplicate, voice and all…do we have your permission to do this?”

My first reaction would be that the idea sounds more than a little macabre and that it’s probably better to leave well enough alone and that none of us can go home again, etc.

But in all honesty, a part of me would be intrigued by the idea of creating Abe 2.0. Not with any expectations that he would enter politics and become a statesman, of course. If I approved the cloning I would insist, in fact, that the creation of said being be shrouded in total secrecy and that he would be free to live his own life by his own steam and create his own personality and take any path that seemed appropriate, unhindered by anyone’s expectations.

But I would also think it fair that Abe 2.0 (who could end up as a CVS manager or an Uber driver or a basketball player) should be informed of his genetic lineage at age 30, I would think.

Why would I want our 16th President to re-experience the world a second time? Because I would want certain people to interview him and hear his voice — that would be one thing. And because he might take to writing or political activism, and I would want to know what judgments he might have about Twitter, Trump and QAnon, wokesters and the film assessments of Glenn Kenny and David Ehrlich. And secondly, where would be the harm? A person of exceptional genetic tendencies and inclinations would join 21st Century America along with tens of millions of others. How would that be a bad thing?

HE to commentariat: Which historical figures, if any, would you like to see cloned and re-introduced to planet earth?

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reports that Indiewire has taken down its comments section, as in permanently.

“I’ve been keeping an eye out the last three or so weeks to see if the comments section would be re-installed,” Ruimy reports, “but it still hasn’t. I think [Indiewire owner Jay] Penske just nixed it. Older articles have also had comments taken down.”

HE to Indiewire editors Dana Harris, Erick Kohn and Anne Thompson (9:55 am Pacific): “Is is true about Indiewire comments being removed? I’ve just heard this — I know nothing. But if true, why did Indiewire do this? I can guess, of course. Too many commenters were saying Indiewire has become too woke, too p.c., too Stalinist comintern. Then again running for cover is never a good look.”

Indiewire had no response.

For the last three years or so Indiewire and The Playlist have become Woke Central, or the Fox News of wokesterism. I was noticing last week how so many of these Hemingway reviews point out how he was a boozing, brawling old-school white male, etc.

In a 4.9 Indiewire “Screen Talk” piece called “Academy Members Are Tuned Out: This Year’s Oscar Voters Have Some Work to Do,” co-authors Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson write the following:

“The Oscars are just a few weeks away, but many voters still have a lot of work to do. While awards season usually finds Academy members getting deeply familiar with every category, from Best Picture through the crafts and short film sections, the lack of traditional screenings has yielded a more diffuse process.

“And when catching up on the nominees is easiest if you have a good at-home streaming setup, some voters” — i.e., 2021 versions of Ma and Pa Kettle with their 1986 Sony Trinitron on a living-room table along with a VHS player — “have been slow to adapt.

“In this week’s episode of Screen Talk, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson discuss the strange nature of an awards season hampered by a lack of awareness.”

“Awareness”? That’s bullshit, guys. The ’20 and early ’21 award season is hampered by a lack of interest. As in relatively few people give a shit. As in “go woke and go broke.” As in “all this cerebral, socially attuned woke shit makes me want to take a nap.” As in “why is Hollywood doing this to us?”

The idiots who pay to see Fast & Furious movies aren’t going to turn in their idiot cards and develop a sense of taste any time soon. The F9 trailer speaks for itself. The people behind it — principally Justin Lin, the cyborg whore who’s now directed five of these fucking things — help found the satanic death monkey training school that Godzilla vs. Kong‘s Adam Wingard graduated from a few years ago.

Eternal shame upon the F9 cast members who are capable of feeling it: Vin Diesel (does anyone recall his genuinely winning performance in a sublime little Sidney Lumet film called Find Me Guilty?), Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron.

Excerpts from “Gleeful Action Porn Provides Glimpse Into Hell,” posted on 3.31.15:

James Wan‘s Furious 7 (Universal, 4.3) is, of course, a cyborg muscle-car flick made for people who despise real action flicks and prefer, instead, the comfort of cranked-up, big-screen videogame delirium inhabited (I don’t want to say “performed”) by flesh-and-blood actors and facilitated by a special kind of obnoxious CG fakeitude that grabs you by the shirt collar and says “eat this, bitch!”

I hated, hated, hated this film like nothing I’ve seen in a long time.

“What’s wrong with silly, stupid four-wheel fun?” the fans ask. What’s wrong is that movies like this are deathly boring and deflating and toxic to the soul. They’re anti-fun, anti-life, anti-cinema, anti-everything except paychecks.

Furious 7 is odious, obnoxious corporate napalm on a scale that is better left undescribed. It is fast, flashy, thrompy crap that dispenses so much poison it feels like a kind of plague. Wan’s film is certainly a metaphor for a kind of plague that has been afflicting action films for a good 20-plus years.

In Act 3, Scene 2 of William Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus is asked by a crowd of alarmed plebians why he conspired to murder their leader. “T’was not that I loved Caesar less,” Brutus answers, “but that I loved Rome more.” By the same token I spit upon Furious 7 and the whole cyborg action muscle-boy genre not because I love sitting through cranked-up, power-pump, beyond-silly action flicks less (although my feelings of revulsion are as sincere as a heart attack) but because I love real action movies more.

The histories of Kurt Russell and Natalie Wood aside, a significant percentage of child actors haven’t transitioned all that successfully into adult TV and movie careers. By all accounts poor Lee Aaker, the ‘50s star of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, was one of Hollywood’s less enterprising (or less lucky) fortunate sons.

After his career fizzled out in the mid ‘60s Aaker did this and that (including carpentry). The fact that he passed two weeks ago at age 77 and the world is only just hearing about it now is instructive. Ditto the following paragraph from his Wiki page:

Bernie Madoff‘s life sentence has been commuted. The most wildly sociopathic, deeply deranged investment manager in the history of homo sapiens (certainly in terms of scale) has left his prison-confined body and is now swirling or backstroking in an infinite cosmic sea of soul particles.

Another way of putting it is that the guy is fucking dead.

Speaking of sociopathic, consider or reconsider an ethically aloof fantasy piece I wrote 12 years ago about Bernie on the lam, called “In His Shoes“:

Unless he somehow manages to commit suicide, Bernie Madoff is going to die in jail. That seems appropriate to me, but I’m wondering why he didn’t just run for it when he had the chance. He knew the Feds were on his tail and it was just a matter of time.

I’m asking because something in me can’t help but sympathize with a caged bird, especially when he/she is looking at life in the slammer.

If I was Madoff I would have prepared for my escape and disappearance during my ponzi-scam days. All criminals need to face the fact that sooner or later they’ll be forced to lam it.

I would have socked away massive amounts of cash in a few Swiss, Cayman Islands and Venezuelan bank accounts under fake names, with debit and credit cards attached to each account. And I would have hired pros to create several sets of first-rate fake IDs and fake passports. And I would have arranged in advance for plastic surgery with a first-rate specialist based in Moscow.

I would have slipped out of Manhattan before the Feds arrested me. I would have taken a private plane from Teterboro to northeastern Canada and then another to Iceland, and then a third to Belgium. I would then enjoy a leisurely car trip to Russia, my pockets and briefcase stuffed with several hundred grand in Euros, ready to bribe whenever necessary. I’d meet my plastic surgeon somewhere in the Ukraine — haven’t decided where.

After the operation I’d move to Tartu in Estonia and recover for six or seven weeks. Then I’d drive down to Moscow and hire myself a team of four elite bodyguards — two guys, two women — and invest in the finest electronic security systems and outfit all my homes with them.

Then I’d make my way to Vietnam. I’d probably build myself a high-security home in the Central Highlands and live in it for two or three months — no more. The eventual plan would be to have several “safe houses” but never stay in any one for very long. Always moving, never sleeping with more than one eye closed, “like Yassir fucking Arafat.”

I’d buy a 100-foot sailing craft and move around from port to exotic port like a wandering character in a Joseph Conrad novel. I’d hire three full-time prostitutes to travel with me, but they’d have to be prostitutes who know how to sail. I might smoke opium from time to time. I’d pay for even more hookers to drop by on weekends, but they’d have to be highly educated and well-read. No booze, no cigarettes. But I’d chill out with quaaludes or Oxy from time to time.

I’d volunteer with Red Cross organizations to help the poor. I’d move to Darfur and try and use my money to try and purchase some level of comfort or protection for the poor who live there. I’d move the operation to the Amazon jungle from time to time. I’d travel to the South Pole and then to South Africa, and then take a ferry to Madagascar.

I’d certainly catch plays in London twice a year. I’d buy a studio in Montmartre that I’d visit every four or five months for a week or two. I’d always stay inside days, reading and watching movies on my 52″ LCD flatscreen, and working out on a treadmill. I’d go out to dinner and for walks in the evenings, wearing shades and a fishing hat.

I’d eventually get pinched, of course. Sooner or later somebody would sell me out or spot me (even with my altered appearance). But I might stay free for two or three years, and at least I’d have a melancholy Conradian adventure under my belt and many things to remember before spending the rest of my life in miserable confinement, which of course I deserve.

2009 comment by “NotImpressedYet”: They would have to be “prostitutes who know how to sail”?

I’m envisioning some kind of high-end prostitute finishing school tucked away in Switzerland where they learn all the proper sailing knots, how to ride English and western saddle styles, learn about 19th and 20th Century art movements, study the histories of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, write essays about Benjamin Disraeli, etc.

Here it is mid-April and I remain torn between two HE futures — (a) Substack, which is a whole new universe of function and operation, vs. Patreon, which would retain the classic HE look, structure and functionality but on a paywall basis.

In favor of Substack, according to Adviser #1:

(a) I can keep the www.hollywood-elsewhere.com domain and use it for the Substack website; (b) I can import HE’s RSS feed of previous posts into Substack easily, so the historical work is preserved; (c) For every post, I can decide in the settings where or not this post is for paid subscribers or not; (d) I can use Substack as a website AND a newsletter. You determine which posts are for the newsletter and which are for the just basic posts on the website. The posts still combine in the backend.

That said, it’s obviously in my interest to keep the majority of HE behind the subscriber paywall.

Plus there are some cool features in Substack. (1) Substack offers an easy-to-use tool for embedding podcast / audio content. (2) There’s also a community tool called “Threads” which are basically topics for the community to get into vs writing a full post for people to comment on. Example: What is the most hard-to-rewatch Steven Spielberg film ever made? And then it just becomes a comment board on its own. Plus I can determine if it’s a subscriber-only thing or a free-for-all.

Visual representation of how I, Jeffrey Wells, am feeling right now about the Great Substack vs. Patreon Debate at this stage. At times I am of two minds at the very least, and possibly of three. At other times I am all in on Substack. At other times I find the idea of jettisoning HE, which I’ve built up over the last 17 years, upsetting if not shattering. I’m just sittin’ on a fence. You could say I got no sense. Trying’ to make my mind, it really is so hard to find. So I’m sittin’ on a fence.

All in all, Substack “is way more versatile that I gave it credit for,” says Adviser #1. “You can create different types of content with less struggle using code and servers to host image files. All of this is super user-friendly and built-in.”

Plus there’s no cost to using Substack. No server fees. I just pay $50 to use the HE domain for the substack. No Liquid Web speed issues. No upkeep. No maintenance. I’ll save a fortune, I’m told, and stand to gain consistent income through platform that is universally trusted.

Adviser #2 says…

“I think Substack is the best possible pathway forward. I can’t tell you how liberated I feel since being in the subscription realm. I feel like I’ve been set free to do the best work of my career. You have a dedicated readership already…you’ll have to trust they will stick with you.

“I would recommend reaching out to Substack and talking to them about whether they could port your archives and URL over if you made the leap. They did that for me when I moved to them, and it went pretty painlessly. The only downside is that it would entail a change of look to HE…but it’s a season of change. And once you are on Substack, it makes all the backend stuff and the money collection completely painless. Before I was on \Substack, basic administrative stuff was taking up a day and a half a week for me. Now its maybe 15 minutes a week.”

“Substack doesn’t support ads, but you can drop them in as image Jpgs, which is what i do and basically, they look the other way on it, They wont help you, but they don’t stop you either.

“Plus I figured out a way to jury-rig the template to put a banner above the logo.

From a 4.13 Anne Thompson Indiewire piece, an anonymous publicist and Oscar voter…

Now that sunny, blue-sky weather has returned to the New York City area after two days of blustery chills and occasional rain, Tatiana and I are sadly returning to Los Angeles. Our United flight leaves Newark around 4:15 or 4:30.

Every so often I’ll post some dismissive remark about Howard Hughes and Dick Powell’s radioactive, cancer-ridden The Conqueror (‘56). But that’s because the basic concept (John Wayne as a Mongolian warlord) and poster art have always seemed so silly on their own terms. The truth is that I’ve never seen this allegedly tiresome film. Has anyone?

This was batted around on Twitter a couple of days ago by Tomris Laffly, but here goes anyway. I agree that Casey Affleck in Manchester By The Sea and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant (combined with his even-better performance in The Wolf of Wall Street) — two 20teen performances that won the Best Actor Oscar — are truly exceptional and way better than the other eight.

Actually let’s add Joaquin Phoenix‘s Oscar-winner in Joker and make it a triumvirate.

I respect Colin Firth‘s work in The King’s Speech, but I’ll never watch that film again. Ditto Jean Dujardin in The Artist — a film that I begged critics and Oscar handicappers not to embrace so uncritically. Did they listen? Of course not.

Good enough, fine, good job but calm down: Daniel Day Lewis in Lincoln, Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyer’s Club, Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour, Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody.

Last night I asked HE’s Chicago-based design guy Mark Frenden to take a stab at redesigning the logo for Hollywood Anonymous, a new Substack that I announced on 4.6.

The basic concept, as noted, is anonymously written reportage about what Hollywood life is actually like these days in terms of production, distribution, casting, financing, publicity, Hollywood-angled journalism, fleeting social alliances, ferreting out the insufficiently woke and so on. The kind of “this is how things really are these days” articles that people aren’t allowed to write at publications anymore. No names, no hints, no allusions, no nothin’.

Anyway, here’s what Mark delivered in terms of a horizontal banner and a small box-like accompaniment:

I like it — a thematic cousin of HE and operating within the same universe.