Jeffrey Wells

I Am Sorta Kinda Max Von Mayerling

by

In Billy Wilder Sunset Boulevard (‘50), the regal, curiously old-world, organ-playing, stiff-necked Max von Mayerling (Eric Von Stroheim) is not just Norma Desmond’s chauffeur. He is also her ex-husband and a once-powerful Hollywood director.

In the 1920s and early ‘30s Stroheim himself was a major, auteur-level Hollywood director (Greed The Merry Widow, Queen Kelly), which is why the snickering, smart-assed Wilder cast him as Max — a “wink wink” meta thing.

Like Von Mayerling, Von Stroheim’s imperious manner, exacting standards and creative arrogance had led to his being elbowed out of the elite circles of Hollywood power before he was 50.

I was never a filmmaker, of course, but I was undeniably an influential and consequential industry reporter and freelance commentator, print-wise, in the ‘90s, and then I became a major columnist, opinion-monger and “Oscar whisperer” when Hollywood Elsewhere took flight in ‘04 until…oh, roughly ‘21 or thereabouts, which is when I was Twitter-torpedoed by the Stalinist wokezoids, and by the femmebot-trans contingent in particular.

I hadn’t “done” a damn thing — it was all about my not-woke-enough or anti-woke views and opinions.

The 2025 version of HE is just as perceptively snap-dragon and on-target and lusciously well-written as it was in my Clinton-Bush-Obama-early Trump heyday.

But supplemental-income-wise I have become, in a sense, a Max Von Mayerling variation, chauffeuring Fairfield County swells to the four NYC-area airports while radiating a certain worldly, “oh, I’ve been around and done a few little things in my time” mentality or attitude, although always with a wink and a smile.

On top of which after his fall from grace Max Von Mayerling wasn’t a well-read, Bhagavad Gita-fortified columnist who annually attended the major film festivals (Cannes, Telluride, Venice) by way of crowd-funding and the kindness of certain friends.

In a certain light I’ve sorta come full circle. The first really cool job I ever had was driving for Checker Cab in Boston (’70s), and all the while I was a secret genius.

Von Stroheim never accepted the humiliation of becoming his ex-wife’s chauffeur, but he certainly suffered an industry-mindset comedown in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. He was only 72 when he died in 1957.

Son of Sullivan Travels (i.e., Keaton Inspired)

by

Posted seven and a half years ago:

Most of yesterday afternoon was about hiking in Sullivan Canyon, a leafy, horse-trail community just west of Mandeville Canyon.

We defied the posted warnings and parked on Old Ranch Road, about 1/2 mile north of Sunset. We walked up a cloppy horse path to Sullivan Canyon trail, which goes on and on. By the time we were back to the junction of Sunset and Old Ranch we’d hiked five miles.

We also checked out Diane Keaton’s super-sized, industrial-chic home, which was written about last October in Architectural Digest. Keaton also published a book about it — “The House That Pinterest Built.”

We only scoped out the exterior, of course. It’s magnificent and exacting, so beautifully textured and all of a piece in so many ways, but at the same time (here it comes) so immaculate that it feels more like the workspace of an enlightened, forward-thinking company (it reminded me a bit of J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot headquarters) than what most of us would call a “home.”

Homes need to feel imperfect and lived in and just a little bit ramshackle — a tad sloppy and messy with the scent of white clam sauce and sliced lemons, and maybe a hint of cat poop. A good home always has magazines and books and vinyl LPs all over the place, not to mention flatscreens and blankets draped over couches and at least three or four cats and dogs hanging around.

Keaton’s place might feel homier inside, but the exterior seems a bit too precise.

Oh, and there’s hardly any tree-shade in the front yard of Keaton’s place. Warren Beatty once said that great-looking hair constitutes 60% of a woman’s attractiveness; by the same token a great-looking home needs great trees (sycamores, jacaranda, lemon eucalyptus, pin oak) to drop a few thousand leaves and shade the place up.

6:15 pm update: I just ran into Warren Beatty and Annette Bening at Le Pain Quotidien on Melrose…honest! I told him I loved the quote about hair constituting 60% of a woman’s beauty or appeal, and he said, “I don’t think I ever said it.” Huh. “You read this somewhere?,” he asked. Yeah, I said. In an article about Diane Keaton or about her home, and just this morning. I definitely didn’t invent it, I emphasized, but I love the observation regardless.

Diane Keaton’s spacious, self-designed home, just around the corner from Old Ranch Road and exactingly designed like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Read more

Keaton’s 15 Years of Peak Vitality and Zeitgeist Communion (‘72 to ‘87)

by

Diane Keaton first began to pop through on stage, initially in Hair (‘68) and then, the following year, as Woody Allen’s object of demure devotion in Play It Again, Sam.

Her big-screen dramatic breakthrough, of course, was her pained and conflicted Kay Adams in the first two Godfather films (‘72 and ‘74).

And then, concurrently at first, came the six-film Woody streak — 1972’s celluloid Play It Again, Sam (not as good as the play) plus Sleeper (‘73), Love and Death (‘75), Annie Hall (’77), Interiors (‘78) and Manhattan (‘79).

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (a dud) came out the same year as Hall but nobody much cared.

Then came the final six films of the Keaton peak — Reds (‘81), Shoot The Moon (‘82), The Little Drummer Girl (‘84 — a bust), Mrs. Soffel (‘84), Crimes of the Heart (‘86 — an over-acted headache movie), and Baby Boom (‘87).

From ‘88 on Keaton was fine or fun or earnestly mannered or perky or bothered or flaky-eccentric in some agreeable or interesting way, but the heavyweight era was over.

Another Exercise in Mute Nostril Agony

by

Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is about miserable, gloomed-out Linda (Byrne), a weary, facially-lined, stressed-out, emotionally and psychologically gutted therapist and struggling mother of a young ailing daughter (heard but unseen until the very end)…

Call her a 40ish woman under siege…anguished to a fare-thee-well and at her absolute wit’s end…a victim of a tortured, infuriating, harrowing, one-urban-indignity-after-another gauntlet that — surprise! — assaults and saps the life force out of the audience as much as Linda if not more so.

Within the first five minutes I was telling myself “you’re not going to last through this whole thing”. But I decided I would tough it out, dammit, for at least an hour. Which I did. It was agony and I was checking my watch every ten minutes, but I made it!

In Jeannette Catsoulis ‘s N.Y Times review (10.9), she calls If I Had Legs “wrenching and at times suffocating”, as well as “a horror movie…a howling maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor”.

There is no humor-spiking at any point in this film, trust me. Zero.

Catsoulis also writes that “some viewers could find the movie’s relentlessness exhausting“.

Famous Steve Martin line in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (‘88), spoken to John Candy: “Do ya think so?”

Nightmare Scarves

by

The dude who designed this ugly-ass, black-white-and-blue Soho scarf (top photo) should be fined if not arrested.

Not to mention the semi-ghoulish return of the “Castro clone” look of the mid to late ‘70s, complete with a rough-and-ready, “Don’t Stop Me Now” Freddie Mercury moustache.

Honest question: Who walks around with a folded scarf hanging out of a jacket’s side pocket? We all recall the colored-handkerchief signage from the leather-bar culture of several decades ago. Is the folded scarf thing a variation of some kind?

Something Wicked Has This Way Come

by

As we all stand together before the gaping, fang-toothed jaws of AI engulfment, I’ve never felt more of an intense longing to see films that operate on the simplest renderings of dramatic or comedic or fantasy-seeking basics — movies that hopefully arouse the mind, trigger the heart and generally go deep.

Translation: AI is fine, but it has to be invisible.

Mr. Scorsese Dropped The Ball

by

A fair and honest portrayal of Martin Scorsese’s life and career would acknowledge that Killers of the Flower Moon is arguably his worst film (yes, even worse than Hugo and Kundun) .

I’ve explained this numerous times, but this is because (a) KOTFM was driven by an all-but-total capitulation to glum woke theology, which meant that (b) Lily Gladstone’s Molly Burkhart had to be portrayed as not only gloriously imbued with God’s radiant and rhapsodic light but as a deeply fascinating character (not).

Scorsese had a great Eric Roth adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 novel to work with, but he and Leonardo DiCaprio were too afraid of offending the DEI fanatics by making Texas Ranger Tom White the central character.

KOTFM was therefore, Robbie Robertson’s haunting music aside, the least Scorsese–esque film to ever bear his name. It was about Marty dropping to his knees and showing obeisance to the early 2020s power of woke fanaticism.

Does Rebecca Miller’s Mr. Scorsese (Apple TV+, 10.17) acknowledge this? I haven’t seen it, but it sure as hell sounds like she doesn’t.

At Least I Was Able To Not Only Witness The Post-Peak Heyday of L.A.’s Thriving Entertainment Industry First-Hand

by

…and derive a half-decent living from it while getting to know and laugh and trade insights with all kinds of top-tier creatives, hangers-on, wise guys, dazzling intellects, flamboyant fellows, gifted pretenders, crusty seen-it-alls, ruthless studio suits, seducers, flunkies, critics, screenwriters, Fast Eddie opportunists, soul-less sharpies, gimlet-eyed poker players, gladhanders, cool cats…at least I was able to bask in all this while savoring the glamour and the history while drinking from the trough. 40-plus years of this!