Jeffrey Wells

HBO-wise Adam Driver peaked with “Girls” but theatrical feature-wise he peaked with his Stephen Sondheim-singing moment in “Marriage Story” — I loved him in that scene.

But then he all but assassinated himself by starring as one of most loathsome, thoroughly demonic characters in cinema history in Leo’s Carax’s “Annette”.

Then he played a morose pot-bellied academic flabby-ass in “White Noise”.

And then he played two — two! — Italian business-brand magnates (Maurizio Gucci, Enzo Ferrari) within a couple of years of each other. And I really liked Ferrari as far as it went.

And then he delivered the self-annihilating coup de grace by wearing James Mason-in-“Julius Caesar” hair in Francis Coppola’s mind-blowingly awful “Megalopolis.”

And then Driver appeared in a Kenneth Lonergan play at the Lucille Lortel theatre wearing GOLD-TOE socks, and that’s what really did it, I think.

Driver is finished for now. Not altogether but he needs to lay low. He’s certainly living proof that nothing recedes like success. He’s a good actor but I don’t want to ever, EVER sit through a histrionic, definitive-statement, large-personality Adam Driver movie EVER AGAIN.

Throw Stuff At The Screen

Honestly? If I was asked to pose for a Los Angeles magazine cover story with some other award-season blogaroos and they asked us to pose in pairs, let’s say, and if a colleague came up behind me and gave me a double-arm T-shirt hug like the one Adam Driver is giving Viggo Mortensen here, I would be cool about it but my first thought would be “the fuck?” My second thought would be “okay, I’m getting a warm erotic man-hug here, but does that mean I should tenderly place my right hand over the right arm of my man-hugger?” To me this photo is only a step or two removed from that 1963 shot of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not me. I’ll do an arm-around-the-shoulder hug if I’m posing for a shot with a male friend or one of my sons, but that’s about it.



Glenn Kenny to Ben Reddick in mid 1930s: “Stop trying to make the term ‘Oakie’ happen. It sounds like something a 12-year-old would say, and I don’t care if Woody Guthrie had used it a couple of times “

Nothing horrible or turbulent, all good.

It never really registered before today that Julie (Creature From The Black Lagoon) Adams has a significant costarring role in Arnold Laven’s 1957 film, which I’ve never seen but is loosely related to On The Waterfront.

The Gotham Awards abandoned quality for its own sake some years ago. They’re basically become the gender-neutral, identity-celebrating, social virtue-signalling Wokey Awards…like their West Coast Spirit Award brethren they’ve become cultists in a kind of Branch Davidian way.

I haven’t seen Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man so who am I to talk, right? My avoidance impulse admittedly stems from weakness…from a sense of prospective anxiety and discomfort about hanging with an actual neurofibromatosis sufferer (in this case Adam Pearson). Which makes me a terrible person, of course.

I don’t want to avoid the disfigured…well, okay, I guess I do but I certainly don’t want to darken their lives in any way, shape or form. I merely choose to avert my gaze. If you ask me these feelings are benign and hands-off. And you know what? 98% of humanity feels the same way. Just ask Victor Hugo, Tod Browning (director of Freaks, which Andrew Sarris called “one of the most compassionate movies ever made”), Charles Laughton, Rod Serling.

I suggested in a piece last July that in response to my alleged or seeming cowardice and narrow-mindedness a certain kind of virtue–signalling hate snobbery (I called the proponents of this faith “neurofibromatosis wokeys”) would praise and embrace A Different Man as a way of trumpeting their open-hearted virtue and emotional support for not only the sufferers of this disease but anyone suffering from any oppressive handicap, biological or social.

They’re also determined to condemn anyone like me…anyone from the benign avoidance community, I mean…to eternal agonizing damnation. They are committed, trust me, to applying the bullwhip and sending we narrow-minded uglies straight to hell.

Last night the Gothams re-affirmed their social justice warrior belief system by giving their top prize to A Different Man — bingo! Like wind-up tin soldiers they walked right into their own self-lampooning satire…right into the mindset behind my snide little perception. In so doing they more or less said “we’re 100% sincere and real about this….neurofibromatosis sufferers have to be loved and supported and hugged, and we’re just the kind of enlightened organization to spearhead this social movement.”

Let me explain as carefully as I can that while neurofibromatosis wokeys are primarily guided by kind and gentle social impulses (as I am or at least try to be — I simply don’t want direct visual access to a manifestation of nature’s random cruelty) but they are also SJW snobs and haters. Remember Charles Bukowski’s “The Genius of the Crowd”? He nailed these detestable little scolds like few had ever managed. I’ve endured their slings and arrows in HE comment threads so I should know.

..sez that Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (Focus, 12.25) sorta kinda blows a bit, and especially that Lily Rose Depp’s lead performance doesn’t cut the mustard.

I’ve spoken to a friend who feels this way, and at least one just-posted trade review agrees; another doesn’t argue all that strenuously. Any Eggers film is a must-see, of course, but this one sounds dicey.

Wait…IndieWire’s David Ehrlich thinks Depp is just swell!

Jane Mayer’s 12.1 New Yorker expose, based on a Concerned Veterans for America whistle-blower report from 2015, all but certifies that Fox and Friends weekend cohost Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s Defense Department nominee, is the new Matt Gaetz.

Edward Berger’s Conclave finale was cooked up by author Robert Harris in 2015 (the book was published in ‘16), or well before the trans wokey thing (another factor that tarnished Biden and helped to ruin Harris in the eyes of bumblefuck voters) kicked into gear in the early ‘20s.

I feel soul-sick myself but the Great Woke Legend is that straight men are generally broken and corrupted and bad news, and that it’s time for women (and in one particular situation a cardinal with a uterus) to step in and call the shots.

Obviously a slight majority of voters disagreed with that scenario on 11.5, and so here we are…totally fucked as a nation and about to endure the pains of MAGA fascism.

I blame the wokeys. I really do. They brought this about. Right now they’re understandably searching for tall grass.