Jeffrey Wells

An attorney friend said this morning that he’s starting to think that Trump will be re-elected. Because the Democratic primary echo chamber is one thing, and mainstream voters are another. Biden is too old and too yesteryear, he feels, and that reality will sink in more and more as the months wear on. And he fears that average voters will be reluctant to support someone perceived as overly owned by or indebted to the leftist-outrage woke camp.

I love the idea of Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren winning, but I’m also scared. Harris will kick Trump all over the stage in a debate and will almost certainly win the blue states and city voters, but how will she do with the same Middle American slowboats who couldn’t stand Hillary? I can imagine Warren snagging the Democratic nomination but I’m extremely fearful of her being out-tweeted and out-bludgeoned by Trump. I’m heartened by the polls that show Biden leading Trump by a large margin and I’ll vote for him , of course, if it comes to that, but he’s the wrong guy for the 2020s. We all know this in our gut, but many, like myself, are also afraid of what might happen with Harris or Warren.

Mayor Pete is the guy, but African American voters are apparently dead-set against him (or so I’m reading) along with what I’m guessing are millions of closet homophobes.

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I forgot to attend last night’s Lion King all-media screening. Apologies. We all understand that “forgetting” to do something is usually a result of a lack of interest in same. I know it’ll be slick and “satisfying” to the serfs and make a lot of money, but what’s the point, really, of sitting through another CGI reboot of another Disney animated feature from 15 or 20 years ago? I felt so Lion King-ed out back in the mid to late ’90s (two viewings of the 1994 original, a viewing of the Broadway musical in the fall of ’97) that 20-plus years later I’m still reluctant to revisit any further permutation. Make that deeply reluctant.

It has always struck me as ludicrous that the dominant predators of Africa could somehow be re-imagined as possessors of royal blood. Not to mention the idea of various species of prey bowing their heads in respect to the lordly Simba…please!

Every day on YouTube I watch at least one African wildlife killing **, and each one is cruel and horrific. The poor victim cries and howls in terrible agony and death is never quick. In my humble opinion the daily YouTube murder channel (which of course didn’t exist in the mid ’90s) has not only desanitized but fundamentally altered our understanding of what predators actually do and how they operate. Predators are part of the nature’s natural order, of course, but try watching hundreds of these videos and see how it affects your basic outlook. A quarter-century ago I found myself half-investing in the Lion King mythology, largely out of deference to the kids. But no longer.

My lack of interest is such that I wasn’t even interested in reading Lion King reviews. But now I feel differently. Because I’ve been revived and rejuvenated by what Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich has written:

“Unfolding like the world’s longest and least convincing deepfake, Jon Favreau’s (almost) photorealistic remake of The Lion King is meant to represent the next step in Disney’s circle of life. Instead, this soulless chimera of a film comes off as little more than a glorified tech demo from a greedy conglomerate — a well-rendered but creatively bankrupt self-portrait of a movie studio eating its own tail.

“With the possible exception of 2015’s Cinderella, which was touched with just enough magic to feel like a new wrinkle on an old fairy tale, all of Disney’s live-action rehashes have been faint echoes of their animated predecessors. But The Lion King isn’t an echo, it’s a stain. This zombified digital clone of the studio’s first original cartoon feature is the Disney equivalent of Gus Van Sant’s Psycho.”

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The boilerplate synopsis says that James Gray‘s Ad Astra (Disney, 9.15) is about an astronaut (Brad Pitt‘s Roy McBride) who embarks on a space voyage in search of his long-lost father Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones) “whose experiment threatens the solar system.” Right away I’m thinking “huh?” What kind of an experiment could threaten even a single planet, much less the whole solar system?

Be honest: If Tommy Lee Jones’ “experiment” were to eradicate Jupiter in the same way Alderaan is destroyed by the Death Star, who would care? It’s just a pretentious ball of gas. **

My second thought is that Ad Astra (a Latin phrase meaning “to the stars”) may not sound dumb enough for your lowest-common-denominator filmgoer. Americans tend to regard askance any film with the slightest hint of erudition.

What would happen if Stanley Kubrick had never made 2001: A Space Odyssey 50 years ago, and if Gray had directed the exact same film with Ryan Gosling as Dave Bowman and it was coming out in the fall? What kind of money would it make? I’ll tell you what it would make. It wouldn’t make squat. The ending would piss people off, and the Cinemascore rating would probably be a B or more likely a B-minus. The Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores would be mixed. The word of mouth that happened among stoners in ’68 would never materialize, and even if it did Gray’s 2001 would be kicked out of theatres and put into streaming so fast your head would spin.

All to say that the crowd that flocked to Spider Man: Far From Home is probably going to be a teeny bit suspicious of Ad Astra. This latest TV trailer suggests it might not be half bad (it seems like something I might like except for the Gravity shots and that moment when Tommy Lee Jones makes a scary face), but “if people don’t want to see something you can’t stop ’em.”

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In a just-posted Cut piece titled “Could Jeffrey Epstein Avoid Life in Prison?”, Irin Carmon writes the following:

“If all else fails, Epstein’s attorneys could try to get a deal by offering his cooperation or he could plead guilty to a lesser charge. But don’t count on it. ‘In my experience as a prosecutor involved in trafficking cases in the SDNY, that office is not in the practice of giving slap-on-the-wrist deals to sex offenders and will prosecute the case fairly but with appropriate zeal,’ wrote Mimi Rocah in the Daily Beast. In the view of says former SDNY prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, cooperating is [Epstein’s] “best chance to get a lower sentence. But even if he cooperates, he has to be willing to give up everybody and everything that he knows about.” Namely, his famous and powerful friends and possible clients.”

Also from Rocah: “What should we make of reporting that Epstein’s prosecution is being overseen by the Public Corruption Unit of the SDNY? Short answer: It’s too soon to say. It could mean that a public official is being investigated or will be charged with Epstein. That could be a minor public figure or a major one. It could mean that SDNY is investigating misconduct in the plea that Epstein was given in 2008. Or it could mean none of those things.”

One odd thing: In another Cut piece titled “The Décor in Jeffrey Epstein’s NYC Townhouse Is the Stuff of Nightmares,” Hannah Gold lists several curious or bizarre features of Epstein’s NYC mansion on East 71st Street. “The Prison-Guard Mural”. “The Wall of Fame”. “The Heated Sidewalk”. “The Human Chessboard”. “The Doll Chandelier”. But under a section titled “Dramatic Proportions,” Gold notes that the front door of Epstein’s mansion “is an unnecessary 15 feet high.” Huge wooden doorways (or medium-sized doors mounted inside a large wooden frame) are totally common in apartment buildings in Paris and Rome. They’re everywhere.

The exalted Rip Torn has passed at age 88. A fine, intense, occasionally snarly actor who was gifted (and seemingly afflicted from time to time) with just a slight touch of madness.

Born in ’31, raised in Texas, professionally and creatively shaped in the ’50s, drawling and cruising through thick and thin for over half a century. And Rip Torn wasn’t a screen name. For some reason I’ve long thought of Torn as being spiritually related to the equally moody and sometimes surly Warren Oates and Timothy Carey — outliers, all.

All the obits will lead with Torn’s Henry Miller in Joseph Strick‘s Tropic of Cancer, his rural Southerner in Martin Ritt‘s Cross Creek (’83) and the ongoing “Artie” role on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show.

But for me Torn became lightning with a pair of performances released two years apart — the eccentric Raoul Rey O’Houlihan in Norman Mailer’s Maidstone (released in ’70 and infamous for that improvised fight that began with Torn charging Mailer with a hammer) and as country music star Maury Dann in Daryl Duke‘s Payday (’72). Dann was a minor-leaguer who snarled and mistreated and generally out-nastied Paul Newman in Hud.

I don’t even remember Torn’s uncredited role in A Face in the Crowd, but he was certainly interesting as a laid-back officer Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill, as Judas Iscariot in Nicholas Ray‘s King of Kings (’61), and as a sinister, to-the-manor-born Southerner in Sweet Bird of Youth (’62).

The Maidstone fight scene [after the jump] is astonishing still.

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m suddenly feeling a mixture of super-negative emotions — bummed out and trembling with anger — after reading a 7.9 Variety story that says Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds will score “massive paydays” (i.e., $20 million each) to costar in Red Notice, a Netflix thriller about art thievery.

Matt Donnelly and Brent Lang are reporting that Reynolds will be paid $20 million with Johnson making that plus “millions more” from a producer’s fee. Gadot is “expected to make the same after salary and the streamer’s practice of buying out typical ‘back end’ profits stars would make from a theatrical release.”

I felt even worse when I read that director-writer Rawson Marshall Thurber (the Mysteries of Pittsburgh + Skyscraper guy whose six-syllable name makes me twitch with discomfort) will be paid $10 million.

On the surface Red Notice sounds like just another slick escapist package, this one about an “Interpol agent tracking the world’s most wanted art thief.” Apparently another reworking of a familiar genre. Entrapment, Ocean’s Twelve, William Wyler‘s How to Steal A Million, the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair…there are only so many ways you can slice this kind of pie.

When I read this story my very first thought was “eff you guys and your huge effing paychecks.” Not that I want Netflix to take a bath (I don’t), but I won’t be unhappy if these actors have a harder time landing a super payday when they negotiate their next deal.

I’ve been accustomed to the idea of life being unfair since I was 11 or 12, but the idea of these three plus Thurber being paid $70-million plus to deliver an art heist movie? My blood boils.

Due respect and apologies to Netflix, but I now have an attitude about Red Notice.

Earlier today I was sent a decade-old draft of Steven Zallian‘s The Irishman. 134 pages, dated 9.15.09. I read the last ten pages, and then the first ten pages. And then a ten-page passage somewhere in the middle. I’m presuming it’s been intensively developed (refined, added to) over the last few years, and that the odds of it bearing a substantial resemblance to Martin Scorsese’s finished film version are…who knows? But they could be slight.

I’m not sure I want to read all of it, but I may not be able to help myself. Because Zallian’s Obama-era script is so spare and direct and absorbing, such a page-turner, so seemingly familiar with the behavior, rituals and language of 20th Century northeastern criminals, and so meditative and authentic and “final.”

Remember the ending of Goodfellas with the sound of a jail cell slamming shut? I got a similar feeling from this, but in a withered old man vein. It also made me think of the last few minutes of The Godfather, Part II. It really does seem to be a melancholy summing-up of the whole Scorsese criminal culture exploration that began 46 years ago with Mean Streets. A fascinating assessment of what this kind of life amounts to, and what it costs in the end.

A $200 million, decades-spanning saga of the life and times of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a labor union leader and alleged hitman for the Bufalino crime family. Presumably coming to your local cinema in a few months’ time.

In a national poll of average American voters (7.6 thru 7.8), Emerson has found — are you sitting down? — that Donald Trump nudges out Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, 51% to 49%.

This isn’t a dream — it’s a nightmare. 51% of the respondents actually stated that it’s better to stick with the compulsively lying, amoral, raping, racist, criminal, traitorous, climate-change-denying, ADD-afflicted authoritarian fraud that they know than three liberal accomplished Dems whom they don’t know so well.

That’s it…between this and the climate disaster that will be lapping at our shores within 70 or 80 years, this country is officially finished. A slight majority of voters actually prefers the most odious, incompetent and self-deluding U.S. president in the nation’s history because they don’t like the idea of a woman of color from Oakland, a progressive bespectacled schoolmarm or a brilliant, 37 year-old gay teenager taking his place. These are their actual persuasions.

It crushes my spirit to acknowledge this, but “Typewriter Joe” Biden is the only one who has Trump beaten by a significant margin (53% to 47%).

Emerson quote #1: “Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters said they followed the Democratic debates. A plurality of viewers, 30%, said Harris had the best debate performance. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters said Biden performed the best, 13% said Warren, and 10% chose Sanders. Conversely, when asked which candidate had the worst performance, 19% of voters said Biden, 15% said Sanders, and 13% said O’Rourke performed the worst. ”

Emerson quote #2: “President Trump’s approval has ticked up one point from the June national poll, with 44% approval and 48% disapproval. In June, the President’s approval was at 43% to 48% disapproval. Trump continues to hold a strong lead in the Republican primary with 91% of the vote against former Gov. Bill Weld at 9%.”

Emerson quote #3: “The most important issue for voters in deciding their vote for President is the economy at 26%. Healthcare is the second most important issue for voters at 21%, followed by immigration at 17%, and social issues at 16%. There is a party divide however, as among Democratic primary voters, 29% chose healthcare as the most important issue, followed by social issues at 22% and the economy at 14%. With Republican primary voters, 42% chose the economy as the most important issue followed by immigration at 25%.”