Jeffrey Wells

The Nikki Haley campaign is, at heart, a classic Republican pride campaign — a valiant attempt to keep alive notions of conservative Reagan-esque sanity. Which isn’t my deal, just to be clear — I’m a Gavin Newsom-Pete Buttigieg-Gretchen Whitmer guy by way of sensible, anti-woke centrism.

Alas, Haley is attempting to prevail within the confines of a once semi-normal political party that over the last seven or eight years has been infected with tear–it–all–down, mule–like authoritarianism and dumbfuckism.

Haley can’t defeat The Beast or hope to persuade those millions of rural, anti-Democracy nihilists to vote sensibly, but if Trump were to drop dead she would almost certainly become the Republican nominee for the presidency and, given her age and gender and mental vigor and non-extremist views for the most part, would undoubtedly defeat Joe Biden in the general.

Read more

I’m thinking of Woody Allen’s remark about the face of one his aunts looking “like something you’d find in a live bait store.” Woody knew that the funniest jokes are the cruelest and that every joke had to have a point. He was saying that life was grim and suppressive in ethnic, working-class Brooklyn, where they sure didn’t breed them for beauty.

Ditto to a somewhat lesser extent in Westfield, New Jersey, where I suffered through my childhood and mid-teen years.

When I was young almost all of the older people I ran into (suburban parents, teachers, merchants, civil servants) were not, shall we say, abundantly attractive. Certainly compared to the on-screen talent. None of them looked like Kirk Douglas or JFK or Dirk Bogarde or Jean Simmons or Elizabeth Ashley or Tony Curtis or Jeanne Moreau or Burt Lancaster.

I’m not saying our adult-aged neighbors were generally ugly but they certainly seemed homely and stessed and spiritually downcast and hardened by age or drink or cigarettes. Whatever glow or promise they had as youths had certainly been ground out of them. Well past their prime.

The men looked just as morose and imprisoned and regimentally dressed as the women. They were tidily or correctly attired and drove nice cars, but to me they seemed to behave like inmates of some huge, sprawling suburban concentration camp.

I was struck by this Times Square photo because this is what so many mothers, teachers and grandparents dressed like. (The Pat Nixon-like woman in the middle is clearly a Republican.) The idea seemed to be “our faces might look grim and puffy or hardened and resigned to an unwelcome fate, but our frumpy department-store clothing completes the effect.”

it was enough to put you off the idea of growing up and becoming an adult yourself.

From my gloomy, lemme-outta-here, eight-year-old perspective the deal seemed to be “if you study hard and follow the rules and obey your parents and get into a good college you too can grow up to look hemmed-in and compromised and dress frumpy…when you grow up you too can develop homely, chubby faces and adhere to the dreary social order of things…but only if you work hard and get really good grades. You don’t want to be left behind!

Posted on 2.22.12:

Friendo: “Neil Burger’s The Marsh King’s Daughter (Lionsgate/Roadside, 11.3) is ostensibly a thriller, and I love thrillers. Good director, talented stars — but Bezos wants $19.99 to RENT the damn thing.”

HE to Friendo: “The combination of Daisy (‘who’s Cary Grant again?’) Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn plus that awful title (who would want anything to do with a marsh king, much less his daughter?) sounds lethal.”

Supporting player #1: “So this guy rules the marshlands, you’re saying? Residents pay tribute, owe him their lives, work for him, fear him?”

Supporting player #2: “Yeah, pretty much.”

Supporting player #1: “I’m taking a film crew into the marshlands next month. We have permits from the state film commission but…what are you saying, we also need permission to shoot in this guy’s territory? We need to butter him up, pay him off?”

Supporting player #2: “I wouldn’t recommend not doing that. He’s a ruthless, powerful cat. You need to show obeisance.”

On the morning of Sunday, 3.25.62, N.Y. Times readers may have scanned a mild little Tom Wicker story about President Jack Kennedy having briefly chatted with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the El Dorado Country Club during a weekend visit to the Palm Desert area.

Quoting press secretary Pierre Salinger, Wicker reported that the Kennedy-Ike discussion had lasted “fifty-one minutes.”

Wicker’s story discreetly observed that JFK was “spending the weekend nearby.” What Wicker meant but was professionally obliged to ignore wasn’t “newsworthy” by Times standards, but was certainly legend-worthy. For the Palm Desert dish that Wicker side-stepped was comprised of three tasty intrigues.

One, Kennedy was staying at Bing Crosby’s sprawling, Spanish–style home located within the grounds of Palm Desert’s Ironwood Country Club,

Two, he had decided on the Crosby estate and against staying at Frank Sinatra’s nearby desert home after being told (by either J. Edgar Hoover or Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy or both) that Sinatra had been maintaining close ties with certain mafia figures, and that Kennedy couldn’t afford the tainted association.

And three, that JFK and Marilyn Monroe had not only attended a party the night before (Saturday, 3.24) at the Crosby estate but had spent the night together at a separate cottage on the property.

This is how things worked in the Kennedy era. Big-time, well-connected reporters didn’t touch this kind of material. That was the understanding.

They’re like racehorses in the stall, going “whurhr-huhr-huhr!” and kicking the wall and champing at the bit…“we want to push back at all those elite industry know-it-alls and Telluride tastemakers so badly!…we can’t wait to set them straight.”

…and in so doing making it seem as if Focus Features’ decision to announce an early (11.28) streaming date a week and a half after the 11.10 wide-release launch…all I can tell you is that this early streaming detour made me feel badly..

To repeat, Focus will start streaming one of the best-written, best-acted and best character-driven films of the year on 11.28.

Focus platformed Alexander Payne’s universally-praised Oscar contender on 10.27 and then went wide (1478 screens), as noted, on 11.10.

Over-40s showed up (I caught it a week ago at a local AMC plex) but your texting, short-attention-span, snorting-at-rave-reviews Millennials and Zoomers didn’t flock (presumably unenthused about a film set in 1970 and preferring something more personally relatable) and the take so far is a passable but no-great-shakes $9 million and change.

The Holdovers is not a sentimental nostalgia trip. It authentically recreates that 1970-ish atmosphere, but it’s mainly about top-tier chops — witty writing, careful character building, wry humor and Payne’s ultra-refined filmmaking instincts.

Posted today by World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy:

…was a moderate realpolitik liberal by early ‘60s standards, and yet by the measurement of today’s political thinking (and certainly compared to the beliefs of the post-2017 censorious wacko left) he would have to be seen as a centrist and even in some respects a center–rightist.

In terms of lightning vibes, cool glamour and soaring oratorical panache JFK’s only equal was and is Barack Obama.

If George McGovern (the “Prairie populist”) had miraculously been elected in ‘72 he might have become, I believe, an inspirational Democratic president. His voice was twangy and his speeches often sounded platitudinous, but he had soul and integrity.

Or he could have suffered the unfortunate political fate of the recently widowed Jimmy Carter.

Bill Clinton, for sure, was and is another charisma prince and an exceptional wowser speech-giver, but administratively he was more or less an Eisenhower Republican.