Jeffrey Wells

I suffered through a nightmare early this morning. So bad it woke me up, left me with stomach acid.

Detectives knocked on the door of my parents’ Wilton home (which they sold in ‘94), and at 9:30 pm or 10 pm yet. If someone knocks on the door at that hour, you know it’s trouble.

I answered, let them in. The feeling in my chest was terrible…purely about doom The detectives were inquiring about two separate murders. They were maintaining a certain professional cool, but the evidence, they calmly stated, was pointing in my direction.

Even before I opened the door, I knew I was a dead man.

Three detectives — two polite, studiously casual, mellow-as-a-cucumber dudes plus a ginger woman detective (half Rebecca Keegan, half Jessica Chastain) who was giving me a look that would grow hair on a rock. Her eyes weren’t glaring as much as burning a hole.

Obviously a typical nightmare metaphor scenario…a metaphor for something I feel haunted by or am currently fearful of.

As Alannis M. would say, “Isn’t it ironic?”

The Academy created the 10 Best Picture nominee list to include the more commercial films like The Dark Knight (that they passed on nominating) so the Joe and Jane Popcorns of the world would tune in for bigger ratings, which drives their income.

But by inviting all those international filmmakers to become members, the Academy defeated the purpose of the 10 nominees because now those invitees are voting for more int’l films.  Oh man.  What a quandary.  

And here’s the thing: if you’re going to nominate foreign films for Best Picture Oscar, then why have an international category at all?  Just eliminate it or, better yet, restrict any foreign films from competing for the BP category (along with animated films which also has its own separate category).  That way more deserving American films can get in (and British).

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will be able to score very handily now, and a 5 pm “happy hour” inside the Pentagon will become an instant thing.

Personal HE plea to Academy members: Don’t follow through with crowning Emilia Perez. Joe and Jane Popcorn hate this film (especially in Mexico!) and you’ll just be spitting in their faces if you give Jacques Audiard’s film a Best Picture Oscar.

How would you process an Audiard/Netflix win if you were among the Rotten Tomatoes naysayers? “Whee, goodie!”? 70% of the mass audience isn’t feeling the Perez love, and your response is going to be…what, “suck on it because we know better?”

Please step outside yourselves and your identity-above-all, “send Donald Trump a message” agenda…cinematic transportation over wokeism…begging on my knees.

1.25.25 update — posted this morning in comment thread:

The idea behind this post is not hate per se. I was mostly okay with Emilia Perez, remember, when I first saw it in Cannes eight months ago, and I don’t hate it now. But it certainly DOES flirt with mediocrity during the second half. And the bottom-line truth is that if not for the trans signpost factor, Perez would simply not be a Best Picture nominee. This is a plea for Academy voters to emerge from the cultural woke cocoon of the past six or seven years, and to finally put aside sexual-identity or gender issues as deciding criteria. Enough with the social justice warrior crap. Please consider voting for the Best Picture nominee that doesn’t do the woke two-step (please give that nagging “revolutionary” ethos a rest) while actually fulfilling and delivering a kind of high on its own emotional and cinematic terms. Which is what Anora, Conclave and A Complete Unknown manage to do. 

Joe and Jane Popcorn voted for Trump in order to get rid of the wokey or at least tone it down. For the love of God, smell the coffee. The woke point has been made, and now it’s time to set that bird free.

Consider the opening paragraph of David Rooney’s Sundance review of Jimpa. It contains a word that gave me pause. Correction — vaguely pissed me off.

Jett Wells’ Best Picture preferences:

HE’s Santa Barbara crib (2.5 thru 2.12).

Temps below 20 degrees make me miserable. They darken my attitude, lead me into feelings of gloom and nihilism. The blacktop roads turn frosty gray at night, and it just makes you feel godawful.

This is weather that could theoretically kill you. At least it’s not windy…small comfort.

I’d rather be bike riding in Key West or, better yet, Turks and Caicos. Or in Dr. No Jamaica, mon. Or in Montserrat.

Herewith is a spirited chat I had with the cooking-with-gas, bell-bottom-wearing, hippie-haired John Carpenter in either late 1979 or very early ‘80 to promote The Fog (Avco Embassy), which opened on 2.1.80.

It should be noted for posterity’s sake that when I recorded this interview at the Sherry Netherland (I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the Carlyle or Waldorf Astoria) that IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, then a PMK publicist, monitored the conversation.

Inspired by my “Oh, My Beloved” riff about Donald Trump summoning the spirit of Laurence Olivier’s “Mahdi”, I watched the generally tolerable, flirting-with-mediocre, Ultra Panavision 70 Khartoum last night.

Basil Dearden’s 1966 film ends with Olivier reacting with anguished disapproval when his triumphant followers, exuberant after the fall of Khartoum and the death of Charlton Heston’s General George “Chinese” Gordon, arrive at his tent with Gordon’s head on a tall pole.

Brief footage of Heston’s head was reportedly shot and included in the film, but an extremely negative audience response reportedly led Khartoum producers to axe the footage in favor of a quick fade-to-black.

It struck me this morning that the head-on-a-spike fate of Thomas More’s (i.e., Paul Scofield’s) severed eyes, ears, mouth, nose and throat in A Man For All Seasons was also a thing that year.

At no other time and in no other films was the fate of a lead character’s head a topic of interest, but it happened twice in ‘66.

Fred Zinnemann’s film ends with narration that says More’s head sat atop a spike on London bridge before his daughter retrieved and buried it. It would have been vulgar for Zinnemann to show a replica of Scofield’s head in any context, of course, but…well, nuff said.

Khartoum premiered on 6.6.66; AMFAS opened on 12.12.66.

Average Joes and Janes hate you for ushering in an age of progressive ideology in movies (now rapidly drawing to a close, thank God)…a social-cultural spasm that destroyed the mystique of transportational cinema, which had sporadically been in relatively good health until ‘17 or thereabouts.

So given this lingering loathing and a belief that H’wood is a crawling hive of woke wackazoids, do you really want to re-enforce that notion by giving the Best Picture Oscar to a mostly mediocre trans musical in order to send a “blow it out your ass” message to Donald Trump? Do you really want to dig into that hole all the deeper?

Remember when ideology wasn’t the Academy’s ne plus ultra…remember when certain movies and performances delivered profoundly or at least assuredly on their own terms (i.e., Gene Hackman’s bravura inhabiting of a racist New York detective in The French Connection, a performance that would be shouted down today by the wokeys)…do you want to continue living in that woke ditch or do you want to move on?

I’m bringing this up because yesterday the HE community didn’t say jack squat about the final paragraph in “Oh, My Beloved,” my response to Donald Trump’s holy-roller inaugural address.

The snowflakes are so tiny they’re barely visible, but there are trillions upon trillions of them. Six to eight inches of accumulation is far from historic, but it’s noteworthy. I love the quiet…the hush that always accompanies a decent blanketing. (Stuart Terrace, West Orange, NJ.)