Jeffrey Wells

Because I hated David Leitch’s Bullet Train with exceptional passion, I’m 96% certain I’m going to loathe and despise The Fall Guy (Universal, 5.3). I know what Leitch is (ex-stunt man, delusions of adequacy) and what he’s basically about deep down (a quarter-of-inch deep aspirations). There’s an all-media screening in Manhattan on Monday evening (4.29) but I don’t feel that The Fall Guy is worth the hassle of travelling in and out. I’ll catch it locally on Wednesday, 5.1…like a dentist appointment.

“Loud Latino Construction Workers,” posted on 10.25.21: “There’s a Latino apartment renovation crew working in the building next door, three or four guys, and they’re being (what else?) obnoxious — shouting to the extent that their voices sound like sonic booms, playing loud sombrero ballads and singing along and occasionally going ‘whooo-whooo!’

“And it’s awful to listen to, man. It’s hell.

“I’ve asked myself if I should walk over to the worksite and ask these guys to consider the fact that this is West Hollywood and not East L.A. and would they mind giving the neighborhood a break with their awful Tijuana border crossing music, etc. But that wouldn’t accomplish much. I understand that.

“I’ve been all around the block with coarse Latinos so don’t tell me. My battles with the Hispanic Party Elephant in North Bergen. The “Loud Latinos” piece that I posted from Brooklyn in June 2010, and got in trouble over.

Posted on 6.26.10: “We all act thoughtlessly from time to time, but the mark of a real animal is someone who never considers that he/she might be giving offense.

“I’ve been all around Spain and I’ve rarely noticed this level of conversational obnoxiousness in cafes. Nor did I notice this element when I visited Buenos Aires a few years ago. The Latin men and women I’ve observed in other countries can be spirited and exuberant, of course, but they mostly seem to converse at moderate levels. People with money and/or accomplishment under their belts are always more soft-spoken.

“You can bet that if you were to go to a cafe with Paul Shenar‘s Alejandro Sosa, the Bolivian drug dealer in Scarface, that he wouldn’t be shouting and bellowing. Does Edward James Olmos bellow in cafes and cause guys like me to complain about him? I seriously doubt it.”

Longer version: Fuck your sentimental boomer attachments to riveting hot-button movies that ruled the roost between the late ‘60s and Iron Man (‘09). GenX is mostly running the show now but down the road we’ll be taking the fuck over, and if you think there’s too much third-rate, zone-out streaming content now, wait until we get our hands on the gears.

You want some attempts at old-fart, boomer-type flicks? There aren’t any. Try original content longform streaming, and if that’s not nourishing enough, tough.

All we care about are jizz-whizz fiicks — IP reboots, moronic romcoms and comedies, VFX and horror. And we definitely don’t want to adapt books or plays — eff that noize.

We are going to run this business into the ground, man.

A quarter-century hence the corpses of Ben Hecht, John Ford, Spencer Tracy, Daryl F. Zanuck, Gregg Toland, Jean Arthur, John Huston, Ida Lupino, Nicholas Ray, Agnes Varda, Tom Cruise, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, James Stewart, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Meryl Streep, Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner will be spinning in their graves on a permanent basis.

20 years from now people are going to be saying “wow, remember The Fall Guy? What a great film!”

…on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness said that it’s, like, heartwarming and touchy-feely and possibly the most inviting and emotionally friendly film he’s ever made? How would you respond to this scuttlebutt? Boredom, right?

…I had never seen Stanley Kubrick’s bare feet — not in real life, not in a photo. It’s not that big of a deal, but I immediately felt a twinge of regret. Let’s leave it at that. Male director toes should always be covered by animal leather or hip sneakers or at the very least socks. Especially if the male director hails from the Bronx. The only thing worse in this regard are mandals.

Filed on 10.31.11: Following a Savannah Film Festival screening of Barry Lyndon, James Toback told a funny story that happened during the cutting of Spartacus, which Stanley Kubrick directed and Kirk Douglas produced and starred in.

The story came from editor Robert Lawrence, who later edited Toback’s Fingers and Exposed.

“Kubrick and Lawrence were editing the finale when Jean Simmons, escaping from Rome with the help of Peter Ustinov, is saying goodbye to Douglas, who’s dying on a cross. Kubrick told Lawrence he didn’t want to use what he felt was a grotesque close-up of Douglas. Lawrence said the shot wasn’t so bad and in any case Douglas will surely complain when he notices that his closeup is missing. “I don’t care what he says,” Kubrick said. “I’m the director…take it out.”

They later showed the scene to Douglas, and his immediate comment was exactly what Lawrence had predicted — “Where’s my closeup?” Kubrick shrugged and said, “I don’t know, Kirk.” Kubrick then turned to Lawrence and said, “Where’s his close-up?”

It’s understood that everyone in Cannes is going to bend over backwards to be open-hearted and gracious in their reactions to Megalopolis, and where is the downside in doing so? I’m not saying anything yea or nay, but among those who may have issues with Coppola’s film, who will be so cruel as to blurt out truth bombs? Turn the other cheek, consider the risk factor, judge not lest ye be judged.

If you’re capable of feeling anything above and beyond the immediate and especially if you’ve been lucky and double especially if you’re been gifted with any kind of enviable insight or ability, it’s hard to not weep with gratitude…even with all the lumps and bruises and the endless parade of shitty people and craven impulses, not to mention the crushing, soggy banality that constitutes so much of civilized life on this planet…if you’ve had any kind of “ride” it’s still a gift.

As one New Jerseyan to another, happy birthday, Jack!

Criterion has a multi-disc Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Bluray package coming out on 7.2 — two 4K discs, two 1080p discs, all kinds of extras.

It will contain three versions of Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 western. The longest and most true to Peckinpah’s original vision (allegedly around 122 minutes) is called the 50th Anniversary Release. A 115-minute version, I think, and the truncated 106-minute theatrical cut will round things out. Something like that.

I saw the 106 way back when, and it’s slightly better than okay. Standard Peckinpah flourishes. Talky. Decent performances (James Coburn’s Garrett stands out, Kris Kristofferson’s Billy is okay, Bob Dylan’s “Alias” is mostly a goof). Peckinpah himself has a cameo. The film reaches for sadness, radiates a certain folklore current, a loathing of selling out and thereby losing your soul, etc. I recall R.G. Armstrong getting shot by Kristofferson, and Kris performing a sex scene with Rita Coolidge.

I wouldn’t call it a problematic film, but I can’t imagine an extra 15 minutes making a huge difference. I’m therefore not sure that the film is worth the royal Criterion treatment.

Posted, ignored and quickly fire-walled on 8.7.21: It was a warm midsummer evening in the small town of Walton, New York, possibly ’81 but more likely ’82. I was staying that weekend with my dad, Jim Wells, at his country cabin on River Road, right alongside the West Branch of the Delaware River.

Jim was an avid fly fisherman, and when dusk fell all he had to do was put on the rubber waders and stroll into the waist-deep water, which was less than 100 feet away. I’m not exactly the Henry David Thoreau type, but I have to admit that the cabin and the surrounding woods and the other atmospheric trimmings (crickets, feeding fish, fireflies) was quite the combination as the sun was going down.

Alas, I was frisky back then and accustomed to prowling. As a Manhattanite and Upper West Sider (75th and Amsterdam) my evening routine would sometimes include a 7 pm screening and then hitting a bar or strolling around or whatever. The “whatever” would sometimes involve a date with a lady of the moment or maybe even getting lucky with a stranger. It all depended on which direction the night happened to tilt.

So there we were, my dad and I, finishing dinner (maybe some freshly-caught trout along with some steamed green beans and scalloped potatoes) and washing the dishes and whatnot, and I was thinking about hitting a local tavern. I wasn’t a “sitting on the front porch and watching the fireflies” type. I wanted to get out, sniff the air, sip bourbon, listen to music.

So I announced the idea of hitting T.A.’s Place or the Riverside Tavern and maybe ordering a Jack Daniels and ginger ale on the rocks. If I’d been a little more gracious I would’ve asked Jim to join, but we weren’t especially chummy back then. Our relationship was amiable enough, if a little on the cool and curt side. Plus the idea of Jim and I laying on the charm with some local lassie seemed horrific.

I wasn’t seriously entertaining some loony fantasy that I might meet someone and luck out, not in a little one-horse town like Walton, but then again who knew? It was the early ’80s, the ’70s were still with us in spirit, I was looking and feeling pretty good back then, the AIDS era hadn’t happened yet, etc. You had to be there, I guess, but singles had just experienced (and were still experiencing to a certain degree) perhaps the greatest nookie era in world history since the days of ancient Rome.

Plus you could still buy quaaludes at the Edlich Pharmacy on First Avenue. It sounds immature to say this, but life occasionally felt like a Radley Metzger film.

Jim apparently had thoughts along the same lines, as he quickly suggested that we do T.A.’s as a team. I immediately said “uhm, that’s okay,” as in “I’m thinking about going stag and you’ll only cramp my style.” I shouldn’t have said that, and if my father is listening I want him to know that I’m sorry. It was brusque and heartless to brush him off like that.

To his credit, Jim was gracious enough to laugh it off. I heard him tell this story to friends a couple of times.

Jim had bought the River Road cabin from Pam Dawber, who was pushing 30 and costarring in Mork & Mindy at the time. It was located outside of town about three or four miles. My father would send her a check every month, and was very punctual about it. Walton was roughly a 100-minute drive from Manhattan.