Jeffrey Wells An HE commenter recently claimed to have attended a 1978 LACMA screening of the original version of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (‘56) — the version that (a) had no narration track and (b) ended with Kevin McCarthy howling “you’re next!” to the camera.
So I asked the great Joe Dante, who quickly lanced the balloon.
So much for that urban legend.
All driver’s licenses include a photo of the licensee, right? So where’s the Connecticut DMV snapshot of Marilyn Monroe Miller on her 1958 license? And why doesn’t it list her specific address (232 Tophet Road in Roxbury, an historic home she shared with husband Arthur Miller)? Just listing the road won’t do. And “M. M. Miller”? C’mon.
The 66-year-old document will soon be auctioned in Wilton, and the highest bid so far is $12K.
If I was actively bidding at the forthcoming event I would do so in the spirit of North by Northwest’s Roger Thornhill. “12 dollars!” I would call out. The perplexed auctioneer would ask, “Don’t you mean $12 thousand, sir?” Casual HE reply: “No, no, I meant $12 dollars…that’s more than it’s worth.”
Opening today as legions of Bob Marley fans watch with flagging spirits and drooping eyelids.
Putting aside Travis Kelce’s unfortunate troglodyte behavior, which is a whole problem in and of itself and one that would give pause to any woman of brains and perception, he is now facing a deck of cards that will probably not pan out in his favor.
For when his fame and power inevitably begin to recede with age, Taylor Swift will begin to value him less. Unless, that is, he somehow becomes a troglodyte macho movie star like John Cena, in which case things will probably be fine. (I honestly don’t think he’s smart or clever enough to fill those shoes — he’s too much of a Midwestern oaf.)
We all know Taylor’s deal as she seems to go through boyfriends like potato chips and uses relationship breakups as song-lyric fodder and probably is, in all likelihood (although I’m obviously not claiming familiarity with her deep down stuff), a fair–weather lover.
Hey, the world’s full of them.
I’m not trying to pigeonhole Swift, but she seems like a leggy, musically banal version of Mary Astor, Tallulah Bankhead, Isadora Duncan…it’s all about impulse and dough and the lyrics in her head.
“A woman must have everything” — a mid ‘70s Joni Mitchell lyric that is probably even more true in 2024, especially when it comes to super-famous, glammy, high-earning, high-maintenance women.
They’re obviously exciting wowser types (hoo-hah!) but they’re mainly about their own self-articulated dreams and creations and are always “hungry for those good things, baby” (Paul Revere and the Raiders w/ Mark Lindsay) and are not your true pallies — if you want a friend, get a dog or turn to your mom or your older sister or the bruhs you’ve known since your teen years.
Super-wealthy, power-pop Swiftian girlfriends can only be happy and satisfied with boyfriends and husbands who are just as rich and powerful as they are and preferably more so. (Think Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd in the mid to late ‘50s)
At best they’re your social ally and mutual sexual celebration partner for as long as the BMW engine is highly-tuned and rumbling along and the good times are flush, but when the music begins to quiet down and the electric generator dynamic begins to downshift into a mild, mid-range hum, watch out.
For “that’s when your heartaches begin” (a Fred Fisher–William Hill–William Raskin song, sung by Elvis Presley).
Joni Mitchell, Paul Revere, Mark Lindsay, Elvis Presley, Al “hoo-hah” Pacino, Isadora Duncan, Elizabeth Taylor…they’ve all been through it.
In short, the Kelce-Swift romance isn’t long for this world unless they get down, get married and have a baby…this is the only thing will save them…the only profound product of their union. A baby will also mean an end to the great sex, of course, but that’s life.
If I were Swift I would find a guy more like Brock Purdy, but that’s me.
For decades I’ve never even thought about having an occasional cup of Ovaltine. To me Ovaltine is nostalgia product that hasn’t existed since JFK or LBJ. It’s like TWA or Pan Am, S & H green stamps, black and white Philco swivel TVs, Geritol (“Do you have tired blood?”), etc. And yet here it is…strange.
Francis Scott Key’s “The Star Spangled Banner” + James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” So why did that super-tattooed guy sing “America the Beautiful”? Was that meant to represent a non-tribal togetherness song?
For the good of the country and our currently fragile tradition of democracy, President Joe Biden really, really has to do a Lyndon Johnson as soon as possible — “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another term as your president.”
Because while he may be able to muddle through, Woodrow Wilson– or Ronald Reagan-style, between now and January 20, 2029 if re-elected, Biden is obviously too old and diminished to run against The Beast.
C’mon, man…wake up. Johnson read the writing on the wall 56 years ago and right now there are only two people who can’t read the present moment — Joe and Jill Biden.
It’s possible that Biden might be able to squeak through to a micro-slender victory in November…maybe…but nobody believes this to be a likely scenario. People are finally starting to realize that it’s actually, truth be told, unlikely.
If he comes to his senses and throws in the towel, Biden’s reputation will suddenly become that of a noble statesman.
Spoken two nights ago on Real Time with Bill Maher but for some reason not on YouTube:
I never laughed at the original James Carville joke of ruthlessness, to wit:
But I just heard the same line tweaked by The Warning’s Steve Schmidt — he omitted “sonuvabitch” and changed “anvil” to “fucking bowling ball” — and suddenly it was funny.
Anvil = not funny. Bowling ball = funny. Probably because most of us have never even seen an anvil but everyone knows how heavy a bowling ball is
Funny Judd Apatow line from last night’s DGA Awards: The 2024 Presidential race is going to be between “a guy old enough to have met Hitler and a guy who wishes he had.”
Without getting into details I’ll be submitting to an examination procedure this morning around 10:30 am, and that’s all I’m going to say. Nothing wrong — just something I have to do. I’ll be out of it and presumably recovering by 12:30 or 1 pm.
All this time I had somehow failed to realize that Jack Arnold’s It Came From Outer Space (‘53), which is based on a Ray Bradbury film treatment called “The Meteor”, was a clear forerunner of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (‘56).
Both were black-and-white chillers about bucolic, small-town communities besieged by aliens with the power to surreptitiously replace residents with creepy, emotion–less substitutes, the difference being that Arnold and Bradbury’s visitors aren’t aggressively evil or looking to harm anyone and certainly don’t serve as metaphorical seed agents for ‘50s-era conformity, as they did in Body Snatchers.
And both focused on a cerebral alpha male hero figure (Richard Carlson, Kevin McCarthy) and nearly identical brunette wifey-girlfriend love partners (Arnold’s Barbara Rush, Siegel’s Dana Wynter) who are taken over by aliens in the third act.
There are too many scenes in which Carlson tries and fails to persuade fellow townies that some kind of alien invasion is actually happening. Over and over and over. Charles Drake’s Sheriff Warren finally comes around toward the end, but by then the skepticism horse has been beaten to death.
I was expecting to engage with Kathleen Hughes, the blonde on the 4K Bluray jacket cover, but she’s only in one brief scene.
I was delighted by the relatively recent digital restoration of It Came From Outer Space. Clifford Stine’s cinematography looks about as proficient and ace-level as this kind of boilerplate big-studio monochrome effort gets. At times the image quality seems as clean and rich as, say, the VistaVision lensing of William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours (‘55), especially during the outdoor-simulating sound stage scenes.
