Jeffrey Wells

Howard Hawks is famous for having said that a movie is properly regarded as a major stand-out or perhaps as an Oscar contender if it has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

What are Wicked’s three great scenes? Put up or shut up.

I’m not sure musical numbers should count as the point of all musical scenes is to express a significant thematic or emotional moment while stopping the narrative in its tracks. Musical numbers are what I would call highly arresting as opposed to great.

Great scenes hit home, touch emotions, signify or deliver major plot pivots or wake-up moments, accomplish something at least semi-profound.

In The Wizard Oz, for example, the three…make that four great scenes are (a) Dorothy being effectively counselled by Professor Marvel, (b) returning to her farmhouse as the tornado approaches and being hit on the head, and then the house landing in Munchkinland as the film turns to color, (c) she and her three comrades managing to vanquish the witch and take her broom back to the wizard, and (d) the “there’s no place like home” finale in Dorothy’s bedroom.

I’ve been running Wicked in my mind and trying to recall the three great qualifying scenes. I’m not being cynical. I’m open to instruction. Please inform.

HE’s annual “By the Measure of Howard Hawks” article will follow later today, applying Hawks criteria to all the major Best Oicture contenders.

…are probably doomed to repeat it.

Three of us ordered breakfast this morning inside Raymond’s of Montclair, an obviously storied, 20th Century establishment that may (I say “may”) have begun serving food as a Swedish smorgasbord eatery called The Three Crowns back in the 1930s or before. I’m not really sure.

It obviously began life as an old-time, pre-war restaurant of some kind. It’s the sort of place that James Stewart’s George Bailey or Gig Young’s Martin Sloan or Fredric March’s Al Stephenson may have visited with their families during the holidays.

Before doing my research I asked three waiters at Raymond’s if they knew when this spiffy yesteryear joint (excellent food, beautifully maintained, well-weathered under the surface) began serving food. Two weren’t sure; our own waiter said 1979. (Note: I found out later that the place apparently began as a breakfast and lunch place in ’89, and the current upscale version was created roughly 20 years ago.)

“That can’t be right,” I said to her. “Maybe the owners began in ‘79 but this place was obviously designed and built in the 1920s or ‘30s..something like that.”

She shrugged her shoulders and said that’s all she knew. Translation: “To me a place that began serving 45 years ago is old, old, old, and that’s about as far back as I can navigate from my Millennial or Zoomer viewpoint.”

Alternate translation: “We don’t really care that much. We’re waiters, not historians. You’re not going to give us bigger tips if we can recite this place’s history chapter-and-verse. We’ve never even heard of It’s a Wonderful Life or The Best Years of Our Lives, much less seen them. To us, Gig Young is about as relatable to our culture or way of seeing things as the pharoah Amenhotep.”

Our waiter told us there are black-and-white photos hanging upon a rear bathroom-adjacent wall, and that’s where I picked up on The Three Crowns.

People born after 1980 don’t particularly want to consider the way things were during the Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt or Truman years, or even the Eisenhower or Kennedy era. It’s all going to be washed away down the road. 20something or 30something mutants don’t want to know. Out of sight, out of mind.

AI Overview: The history of Raymond’s in Montclair, New Jersey, includes the following events:

Raymond’s Coffee Shop

Raymond Badach opened a small coffee shop in 1989 on Church Street.

Raymond’s Restaurant:

In 2004, Badach and Joanne Ricci opened a larger restaurant in the same location. The restaurant was designed with a 1930s diner/brasserie look by artists Ian McPheely and Christian Garnett. Chef Matt Seeber created a menu that was part diner and part bistro.

Roman Polanski haters have kept English-subtitled Blurays of An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse) off the market for the last four-plus years, and no English-sub streaming options have surfaced in the U.S. or Europe either (except via pirate sites). And yet a beautiful all–format Russian Bluray with English subs has been kicking around on eBay for a year or two. It took me a long time to wake up to this. I’m now a proud owner.

Sutton Francis Wells, 11.29.24, 11:45 am:

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…for everything, all of it. Especially delighted that I finally own an English-subtitled Bluray of Polanski’s J’Accuse. Heartbroken that the hooligan bad guys are about to take charge and that the degradation of so much is about to kick in.

Otherwise I’m grateful for the hundreds of small pleasures and comforts and nourishments that constitute daily life…I could write a book. Good wishes and heartfelt greetings to everyone, even my comment-thread enemies…even those I’ve wished cancer upon.

Friendo:

I’d forgotten that before Clint’s Dave Garver slugs Jessica Walter’s knife-wielding Evelyn Draper — pow! — and sends her plunging to a rocky seaside death, Walter gives Donna Mills’ Tobie Williams a severe haircut.

That has to be one of the ugliest and creepiest things a cinematic serial killer has ever done to a victim — “Before I stab you to death I’m going to chop off half of your Jane Fonda-in-Klute hair.”

Clint was a young-looking 40 when he directed and starred; Walter was 29, Mills was 30 or 31, and John Larch, who played the amiable, well-dressed, Martin Balsam-like detective, was in his late 50s.

Evelyn and Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest are birds of a feather. Evelyn is a bit more manic and unhinged —almost an AIP horror film character — but they both slash their wrists in Act Two and threaten the hero’s significant domestic other during the climax.

The sexual ethos of Play Misty For Me (‘71) presents Dave, a KRML deejay who drives an Austin Healy and lives in a cliffside bungalow, as an innocent libertine. By 2024 standards mellow Dave is almost the bad guy — a handsome, low-key hound who gets laid whenever and with whomever (pick of the litter!) with a general understanding that casual, no-big-deal affairs are part of the no-strings nookie game of the Nixon era. No internet or social media spears or frowning feminist currents — an exotic world as different from our own as Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

…that I feel compelled to forgive its primarily structural, non-lethal shortcomings. I certainly felt an urge to brush them aside while chatting late last night with a smattering of the cool kidz (including the Hoboken-residing twin Oscar Expert bruhs) outside theatre #7 within Manhattan’s Lincoln Square complex. No review until 12.10 but in the meantime…

The tail end of the final sentence should read “so much of Unknown is spot–on, the real thing, a bell ringer. I was sorta kinda emotionally melting during the first half hour or so — literally on the verge of tears. Yes, I’ve been deeply invested in Dylan my entire life so I’m especially susceptible but still…

For a likely Best Picture Oscar nominee, this is fairly unusual. Edward Berger’s film opened theatrically only a month ago (10.25). Pops on 12.17.

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Last week writer Vincenzo Barney revealed in a Vanity Fair article that Cormac McCarthy, the late author of Blood Meridien and No Country for Old Men, indulged in a years-long affair with a teenaged be-bop baby.

The woman in question is the now 64-year-old Augusta Britt, whom the celebrated author first met in ’76 or thereabouts, when she was 16 and he was 42.

McCarthy and Britt consummated the deal a year later. She was his “single secret muse”, etc. McCarthy died last year at age 89.

Conventional wokeism naturally asserts McCarthy groomed and exploited a presumably naive young woman, but Britt has insisted otherwise.

McCarthy from heaven: “Condemn all you want but as America was celebrating its Centennial and beyond, it was a be-bop baby for me-hee…a be-bop baby for me.”

…and he doesn’t even mention the twin identity campaigns of Lily Gladstone, who ran as a lead after clearly playing a supporting role in Killers of the Flower Moon, and Emilia Perez’s Karla Sofia Gascon, whose titular character is a strong presence but not a lead — Zoe Saldana has that honor.

Why did Wilson omit even a mention of these two? I’ll tell you why. Because he’s chicken, or because his editors are.