Jeffrey Wells

Snapped at 8:16 am, 11.3.24.

Commonwealth Ave. between Clarendon and Dartmouth, facing northeast — Saturday, 12.1.07, 3:25 pm:

In a fair and just world James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (Searchlight, 12.25) would just be a film and that’s all…an experience to be judged and savored and possibly enjoyed according to how good it is, period..,how straight and true and honest it feels on a no-bullshit, deep-down, character-driven basis.

But of course it won’t be processed that way.

For Mangold and Jay Cocks’ Bob Dylan biopic is arriving at the tail end of the boomer nostalgia era, which arguably began 41 years ago with Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (‘83) and peaked with Robert Zemeckis ‘ Forrest Gump (‘94).

HE commenter Eddie Ginley posted this yesterday:

Throw in Zemeckis’ Here (Sony, 11.1) and the forthcoming Jeremy Allen White-Bruce Springsteen biopic and you have to admit that the hour has probably come for boomer sagas and sentimentalists to give it a rest and sorta kinda go away…to hand the mythological movie torch to GenXers and even, God forbid, Millennials, some of whom who are now in their early 40s and are probably nurturing sentimental looking-back notions of their own (i.e., Eminem, Korn, Limp Bizkit).

A friend insisted this morning that no matter how crafty or admirably well-written or emotionally affecting or compellingly performed A Complete Unknown turns out to be, the younger Academy members and particularly the mutants who adored Parasite and Everything Everywhere All At Once are too dug into their boomer hatred, which is why Steven Spielberg’s The Post was blown off.

If a generational yardstick has to be used, a fair way to frame A Complete Unknown would be as the last noteworthy boomer flick…the last ambitious ‘60s atmosphere film….an auld lang syne to the pot and protest and sexual revolution generation (nookie from the late ‘60s to early ‘80s was really and truly astounding) in the same way that Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers and The Fog of War were seen as farewell-to-the-greatest-generation movies.

She’ll be Best Actress-nominated, of course, but in the blink of an eyelash our tectonic plates have shifted and…wait, what’s happening?…identity campaigns are no longer a compelling poker hand.

Or so says an 11.2 N.Y. Times article by Jeremy W. Peters and “Identity Trap” author Yascha Mounk in particular.

If you ask me Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone losing the Best Actress Oscar vote earlier this year to Poor Things’ Emma Stone was an early indication of this cultural-turning-the-road thang.

Eat shit, wokesters!

Fascination, intrigue, recognition, emotional alignment, spiritual uplift, a reflection of a cultural-political era, etc.

Kris Tapley has allegedly seen A Complete Unknown, but David Poland apparently hasn’t. I’m completely serious about the “Poland curse” — whatever James Mangold’s film turns out to be, I don’t want it to suffer because of this write-up. It wouldn’t be fair.

Last night in Glendale, Arizona, Donald “king of beasts” Trump summoned a violent fantasy by seeming to threaten Liz Cheney with a potential shooting…”nine barrels aimed at her.” But not so fast. To be fair Trump was using the same kind of hypothetical that a late ’60s or early ’70s anti-war protestor might have been suggested in the cases of Robert MacNamara or Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War — “If Kissinger or MacNamara were suddenly thrust into combat duty in Vietnam, the war would very quickly come to an end” or words to that effect. Trump mentioning the idea of Cheney facing bullets was obviously a rogue, stupid, inflammatory thing to say, and once he said this you can bet that a sizable contingent of gun-toting rightwing wackos immediately began to imagine Cheney being shot. But Trump, I think, was mainly trying to buttress his argument that Cheney is a “radical war hawk”, apparently because she favors supporting Ukraine in its long war against Russia.

Quentin Tarantino to Brett Easton Ellis on Joker: Folie a Deux:

Posted on Hollywood Elsewhere, 10.3.24:

I’m not running for elective office so I can blurt out the raw truth of it. Most semi-educated, hungry-for-knowledge people hate the lazybone bumblefucks — the rural Pennsylvania ones in particular — and their grunting, shuffling, “why can’t I live like a fabulous wealthy person?” attitudes.

I didn’t mean to say “stupid” — I meant ineducable.

I am personally soothed and even delighted to hear that so many of these overweight, poorly-dressed, gold-toe-sock-wearing life forms are frustrated and unhappy. Because they deserve to suffer. Because God wants them to…really. It’s their fate, their Biblical burden. The world is for the few.

I’ve rarely said this out loud as it makes me sound like a misanthrope, but the misery of these grumbling mope-heads kinda warms the cockles of my heart. I won’t express this in social situations, of course. Socially I smile and say “thank you” and show deference, but my deep-down feelings are a different story. Especially when I’m visiting the “Alabama” sections of Pennsylvania.

…by pronouncing it correctly. It’s not PORTO Rico, as so many have pronounced it since last weekend’s MSG MAGA rally. It’s pronounced (tapping this out phonetically for the dumbshits) PuhWEHRTO Rico.

Okay?

Seriously. Iconic.

I’ve just purchased a Trivial Pursuit “Silver Screen” edition, which is only for older hardcore film buffs — Millennials and Zoomers will have a very tough time with it, and even younger GenXers may be stumped for the most part.

The questions were written in ‘85 or thereabouts so unless you’re up on the careers of William S. Hart, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Ben Hecht, Brian Donlevy, Edmond O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, Gregg Toland, Andy Devine, David O. Selznick (a racist, sexist, pep-pill-popping scumbag!), Joan Blondell, Myrna Loy, Pat O’Brien, Rudolph Valentino, etc.

It makes me sick to go through online movie trivia games that have obviously been written by (or are aimed at) clueless under-40s.

I wish for the sake of Thanksgiving gatherings that a 1984-to-2024 edition could be made available. Way back when I always aced the ‘85 questions, and I’d manage the same, of course, with my imagined Silver Screen 2. Maybe there is such a board game — maybe I’m overlooking something.

Last Friday (10.25) I posted a Nightmare on Elm Street election–anxiety freak–out piece so I can’t go there again — it’s only been 72 hours. My waiting-to-be-electrocuted feelings are only going to intensify between now and 11.5 — eight days!! — so medicating is almost certainly on the rise.

Ari Emanuel to Puck’s Matthew Belloni:

“[It’s] going to come down to 120,000 votes. You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala.” Wait — 40% of registered women voters are going for The Beast? Ari: “It’s a jump ball. We’re going to find out who wants this more — men or women.”

From Molly Ball’s 10.27 Wall Street Journal report, “America Is Having a Panic Attack”:

Here’s my favorite paragraph:

HE for one believes in the sleeping-male–Kamala–supporter theory…thank you! Okay, not really but I’d like to believe in it.

As I confessed last Friday…