Jeffrey Wells

Posted last night (Saturday, 11.23) in response to the famous Terry Valentine / Peter Fonda / Lem Dobbs line from The Limey…a revelatory line that said the proverbial ‘60s thing was “‘66 and early ‘67…that’s all it was.”

HE response, tapped out early this morning…

The most radiant or abundant part of any social-spiritual-musical movement is right before it catches on en masse with the avant garde bourgeois (i.e., plugged-in middle class)…when the spirit electrons and protons have built and buzzed and reached mass combustion levels just before the big explosion.

The ‘60s wave curled and crested and white-foam exploded all over the country with the Summer of Love, which was principally heralded by the June ‘67 release of “Sgt. Pepper” and particularly by that mad marijuana-mescaline glissando rush…that building, crashing, over-lapping orchestra rumble + crescendo in “A Day in the Life” (both of them) along with “Are You Experienced?” (May ‘67) and “Surrealistic Pillow” (released in February ‘67 but fed by ‘66 currents) and “For What It’s Worth” (released in December ‘66) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow–Up (fed by late ‘65 and ‘66 percolations and released in December ‘66) and Country Joe’s “Electric Music For The Mind and Body” (released in May ‘67) and the ‘67 Monterey Pop Festival (June 16, 17 and 18) plus all the amazing activities and inward ruminations and explosions described by Tom Wolfe in “The Electric Kool–Aid Acid Test” (published in August ‘68 but informed by the Ken Kesey–Neal Casady–Merry Pranksters adventures of ‘64, ‘65, ‘66 and early ‘67)…

Way too much to get into here but what Terry Valentine / Lem Dobbs meant is that the huge quaking social orgasm that was felt across the culture in the summer of ‘67 was cooler and more exciting for those who were “there” and had their ears to the railroad tracks in ‘66 and early ‘67 …it felt so much vibe-ier when the spiritual foreplay was happening and building and starting to ignite and come into being and amassing a certain subliminal power — that was when the most exciting and tingly stuff was being felt…”do you feel it? do you sense it? There’s something happening here,” etc.

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, posted in the Guardian on 5.17.18:

“In My Tribe”’s Arnold Kling, posted on 8.16.21:

I felt profoundly disappointed last June when I saw a 70mm print of the much-heralded 4K restoration of North by Northwest.

The projected image at the Village East looked okay but failed to bring anything visually exceptional to the table — no “bump” over previous versions.

I’m now watching WHE’s just-released 4K Bluray of the restored NXNW and guess what? It pops! Bump city!

Plainly and emphatically stated, the 4K disc (no 1080 Bluray is included) reps an unmistakable visual upgrade — extra-vivid detail, more vibrant colors (fire-engine red cabs! bright yellow cabs! gleaming burgundy leather seats!), extraordinary wardrobe threads (the subtle plaid weave in Cary Grant’s Kilgour suit!) and organic textures (polished wood grain! chiseled adobe bricks adorning a Frank Lloyd Wright home! dusty Indiana farmland furrows) that seem a bit more pronounced and life-like…generally a feeling of film-negative newness and refreshment.

In a phrase, I’m experiencing immense eyeball pleasure. Thank you. I’ve been dreaming of this kind of upgrade for decades.

It follows that last summer’s NXNW 70mm advertising promotion was fraudulent bullshit. Two generations away from the core restoration appearance, projected film only diminishes the digital 4K refinements. 70mm projection used to really mean something, but it can’t compare with what pure digital data offers these days.

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This is probably a minority opinion, but speaking as one who’s been dropped cold or given the casual brush-off by several women during my hound-dog heyday (mid ’70s through late ’90s, not counting my four-year marriage from ’87 to ’91), it’s a bit more painful to dump than to get dumped.

I can think of eight or nine times when I suffered terrible heartache after getting the heave-ho. Bottom of the well, my life is over, “Can’t live if livin’ is without you,” etc.

I can recall at least two times when I was so devastated by “love lost at such a cost” that I succumbed to something close to clinical depression. One time in late ’79 I was so bummed that I slept in my West 4th Street apartment for a whole week straight, getting up only for meals or to watch an occasional TV show.

I gradually learned after suffering through these breakups that you can’t negotiate or plead or beg your way out of them. When you’ve been dumped by a woman of character or conviction, the game is over. Nothing you can say or do will change her mind.

The best you can hope for is to persuade her to agree to continue having sex while you both hunt around for the next romantic opportunity. But even that rarely happens because by the time she’s told you she wants to fly solo or see other people she’s probably already found a replacement.

In the spring of ’79 I was seeing a foxy West Village woman on an off-and-on basis. He or she who loves less always controls the relationship, so I guess I was the controller as my feelings for her were on the somewhat casual, come what may, comme ci comme ca side. Her feelings for me were more ardent, or so it seemed.

Then I met someone else who was prettier, hotter, sharper, classier — definitely a better catch. When the new thing began to happen I knew I had to tell the West Village lady. I wouldn’t dare try to two-time anyone. I wanted to play my cards honest and clean. No messing around.

Except when I visited the West Village, off-and-on apartment and lowered the boom, I felt awful. She began to cry a little bit and lament her awful luck with men, and all I could do was stand there and say “I’m really sorry.”

The difference between this and the terrible feeling of being dumped is that dumpees don’t feel guilty — all they have is the ache. But if you drop someone you feel guilty about having caused great emotional harm, or at the very least a bad bruise. You feel like a bad person.

Guess what? The woman I left her for dumped me six months later.

The only other time I felt like this was when a woman I’d been seeing on a fairly serious basis became aware of a little side dalliance with a married woman. (We’d met while performing in a community theatre play.) The serious relationship woman began to quake with weeping, and all of a sudden I felt like a beast who needed to be whipped. I’m sorry so sorry sorry…I’ll never do this again…please, forgive me…so sorry.

Boiled down, hurting someone feels much worse than being hurt.

Specific thoughts will be tapped out later this afternoon…

Two or three days ago Cameraimage festival director Marek Żydowicz made a huge political error by writing, boiled down, that enforcing DEI gender quotas (i.e., more women directors and dps) could lead to “mediocre film productions” in place of the proverbial good stuff.

Industry progressives have freaked out over this. Directors Steve McQueen (Blitz) and Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) have bailed on attending the forthcoming Polish festival as a protest against Zydowicz’s statement.

Zydowicz has offered an apology and an explanation, but let’s cut to the chase.

Politically ill-advised as Zydowicz’s 11.8.24 article obviously was, saying that DEI quotas allow for potential mediocrity in the ranks is not a lie or a misstatement. It’s true in theory, and anyone who states that artistic quality is more important or more valuable than equity and representation is not standing on shaky ground.

An excerpt from Zydowicz’s mea culpa:

Bad Day at Black Rock (‘55) is a good, strong John Sturges film except for one thing. Nobody in that tiny little desert backwater is doing Anne Francis.

It makes no sense that Francis would even BE there, as a woman this fetching would never settle for a grim existence in a dinky little ghost town like this. Life is short — you have to go for the gusto and the goodies.

But even if you accept that Francis’s “Liz Wirth” would be content to live in this dusty hell hole, human nature dictates that someone in that miserable hamlet would’ve stepped up to the plate and said to her, “I’m your man and we can make beautiful music together and have all kinds of nice plants on the patio.”

Someone always steps up and seals the deal in these situations. It happened in each and every cave settlement in prehistoric times, in every village in ancient Judea, in every clay-hut, grass-roof settlement in medieval Europe. Not that a knockout like Francis would’ve rubbed shoulders with everyday European villagers or Judeans or cave-dwellers.

If I was Spencer Tracy, I would’ve sized things up and sauntered over to Robert Ryan or Lee Marvin or Walter Brennan or Wirth’s brother Pete, who works at the hotel, and said, “Are you telling me that no one’s giving Anne the high, hard one, or at least trying to? Because that really goes against basic human nature.“

Anne Francis passed in 2011 at age 80.

John Krasinski is a nice-looking, well-tended guy as far as it goes, but he’s always seemed a little bit nerdy with those brown, marble-sized eyes and the slightly swollen Polish-prole nose and grubby beard stubble.

And his tepid response to HE and Richard Brody’s Quiet Place social theory (i.e., the brown spider monsters are metaphors for wokesters pouncing on anyone who says the wrong thing) indicated that he might be intellectually lazy or, you know, stunted.

So he really can’t qualify as People’s Sexiest Man Alive. He seems pleasant enough but he just doesn’t have that supreme alpha-dude thing going on. He’s far from “Warren Beatty in the 70s” pretty, and is just this side of schlumpie…due respect. Agreeable, nice-guy vibes but no cigar.

Okay, if he’d paid lip service to the Quiet Place theory I might feel differently…

Except there’s obviously no THE in the title…

HE-posted on 8.31.24:

After innumerable savorings and re-savorings of Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone over the last several decades (no one ever seems to speak all that fondly of Night Gallery) and almost 50 years after Serling’s untimely passing at age 50, where is the acute hunger for a family-approved Serling documentary?

I’ve read all about Serling’s pre-Twilight Zone life and have seen Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight a couple of times and have watched all the noteworthy Twilight Zone episodes (which I own on Bluray) over and over…so what’s the idea exactly? To reach Millennials and Zoomers who’ve never heard of him?

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way will produce the Serling doc; Jonah Tulis will direct. Serling’s daughters, Jodi and Anne, are in for a hefty slice of the action as executive producers.

I’m probably beyond the reach of psychotherapy, but thanks to all for the birthday greetings.

Here’s a link for an L.A. Times Calendar piece that I wrote 31 years ago about Dan Richter, the ’60-era mime who played the bone-tossing Moonwatcher in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here are three scans of the original article — #1, #2 and #3.

My father met Dan at a Connecticut AA meeting in ’91 or thereabouts, and at my dad’s suggestion I called a while later and visited Dan at this home in Sierra Madre for an interview.

I remember he was dealing with chemotherapy at the time and not walking all that well, but he’s still here and doing fine.

In 2022 Richter published a 2012 memoir — “The Dream Is Over” — that’s mainly about a four-year period that he spent off-and-on with John Lennon and Yoko One (’69 to ’73).

Nancy Porter, an old childhood friend who was also living in Sierra Madre in ’93, came with me to visit Dan at this mountainside home. She later complained that he talked too much about himself. “But he’s the guy who picked up the bone to the strains of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathrusta’,” I replied. “And…you know, he hung with Lennon all those years and his stories are fascinating.”

If you’re hanging with someone who has lived large and touched serious history and has several first-hand recollections to share, you sit and absorb and give thanks. Either you get that or you don’t.