Jeff Wells

Hollywood Elsewhere is underwhelmed and frankly depressed by Kamala Harris’s choice of Vice-presidential running mate — the four-eyed, verbally vigorous but staunchly unglammy Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who looks like a dull middle-management guy, a bit overfed and a cross between a hardware store clerk and an owner of an upstate New York diner.

He could be played in a forthcoming Walz biopic by Will Patton with black hornrims and white hair dye.

He doesn’t even have that Paul Schrader glint-of-madness, soul-of-a-poet thing going on…Walz’s squinty eyes have nothing behind them, and his teeth appear small and worn down, and perhaps his soul is too…in his own quiet way he’s almost horrifying. Look at that homely face! His bland, greenish-gray suits and ties! Jesus, I’m freaking out here!

I would have been much, much happier with Sen. Mark Kelly (i.e., “Gollum).

I was looking for a little excitement and youthful urban pizazz from Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, but Harris wimped…apparently afraid of pissing off the pro-Gaza progressives (Josh is too pro-Israel?) and with femme militants irate over his having stood by a colleague who was accused of sexual harassment.

Harris, in short, has failed to stand up to pressure from hardcore purist lefties. She needed to lean away from those loons and at least pretend to think and act like a sensible left-moderate, and now she’s blown her first test in that regard. Not cool!

Walz is apparently a good, reliable, highly regarded dude on his own terms but my God, why does his selection make me feel so badly?

He looks like a fringe character actor in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche — your vaguely schlumpy, retirement-age uncle from Hartford or Richmond or Tampa, nothing close to a leading man type, a guy who exudes the very opposite of that Gavin Newsom-y quality, that vibe that seems to fit or fulfill that old JFK notion of an ace-level vote-getter…

He’s another Tim Kaine, whose selection as Hillary’s vp in ‘16 lit no fires and quickened no one’s pulse. In short Walz is an unthreatening No. 2 type, strictly backup, and right now I feel very flat and de-energized.

Walz’s two kids are named Hope and Gus — what does that tell you?

Nate Silver:

…she’s probably going to win in November. Because I can feel it, and because I’ve twice heard that teenage girls of comfort who’ve routinely made faces or rolled their eyes when political topics were raised at the family dinner table…these girls, I’ve heard from unscientific sources, are totally into the Harris campaign.

Discount this if you want, but I think it means something.

It means that Harris’s campaign isn’t political as much as cultural and historical, and people all over want to be a part of what appears to be a major tectonic shift.

SurveyUSA’s 8.5.24 nationwide polling shows Democrat Kamala Harris leading Republican Donald Trump by 3 points in an election held today, August 5 2004.

Today it’s Harris 48%, Trump 45%; 3% of likely voters say they will vote for another candidate; 4% say they are undecided.

Trump leads by 12 points among men; Harris leads by 18 among women — a 30-point gender gap. When we break out men and women by their ethnicity, the enthusiasm for Harris seen among women of color, and especially among Black women, is clear:
Among Black women, Harris leads Trump by 74 points; among Black men, Harris leads Trump by 29.
Among Latino women, Harris leads Trump by 46 points; among Latino men, Trump leads Harris by 5.
Among women of Asian and other descent, Harris leads Trump by 30 points; among men of Asian and other descent, Harris leads Trump by 8.
Among white women, Trump leads Harris by 2; among white men, Trump leads Harris by 25 points.

Suburban women also, as some Democrats might say, seem to understand the assignment, voting for Harris by an 18-point margin, while suburban men vote for Trump by 15 points — a 33-point gender gap.

Elsewhere, Trump leads by 4 points among the youngest voters, those 18 to 34…mind-blowing! Harris leads by 10 points among those 35 to 49, by a nominal single point among those 50 to 64, and by 4 points among the oldest and typically most reliable voters. White voters taken as a whole prefer Trump by 13 points; Black voters prefer Harris by 53; Latino, Asian, and other voters prefer Harris by 19. Trump leads by 9 points among voters with high school educations, by a nominal single point among those who have attended some college; Harris leads by 15 points among those with 4-year college degrees.

Regionally, Trump leads by 5 points in the South; Harris leads by 3 in the Midwest, by 5 in the Northeast, and by 10 points in the West.

Any Fairfield County resident who would place a pair of iron lions on stone pedestals at the entrance to his driveway…I’m sorry but this person (who exists and lives in the Weston-Georgetown area) really doesn’t get the Fairfield County aesthetic. This is the kind of thing you might expect to find in the downmarket regions of New Jersey. You can’t bully people into showing a little taste in the way of landscaping and driveway design. Either you were raised by parents who lived with restraint and displayed a modicum of class in this regard, or you weren’t.

If I’m driving on a mostly-level but older blacktop highway just after a fairly heavy rainstorm, and I’m going 40 or 45 or 50 mph along with everyone else and I happen to notice a large shallow puddle (i.e., the kind that’s almost a small pond, and is possibly more than an inch deep) near the side shoulder, I will probably swerve over to the right so I can hit that pond straight and true and send tens of thousands of water droplets flying.

It goes without saying I wouldn’t do this if any people were standing nearby (especially nuns, schoolkids, old folks, people in wheelchairs, safe-space wokesters), but if the coast is free and clear I would go for the big splash. I’m sorry but it’s fun, and anyone who denies this is lying.

This is Kamala Harris‘s first big, tough, high-profile decision — will she stand up to the progressive left? Not just about picking Josh Shapiro for vp, but about anything. This is not just Marc Halperin‘s view, but also my own. She has to govern sensibly and moderately, and that means occasionally telling the woke wackos to modify their demands, and if they can’t do that to go fuck themselves.

In the thread for yesterday’s Angelina Jolie hit piece, HE’s own Bobby Peru wrote the following:

“Quit sucking Brad Pitt’s small dick long enough to be objective. You obviously know nothing about [Jolie’s] parenting style or who she is as a person. You’re just obsessed with Mr. Movie Star. That’s your entire game here. From what I know, she runs rings around him both as an actress, filmmaker and as a parent.”

HE response #1:

“It’s not about sucking Brad’s wang. It’s about sharing a deep-down regard for and understanding of the many burdens and joys of fatherhood. Serving as a father and showing the necessary devotion at all turns is an absolutely holy and primal thing, and no woman of any decency would actively try to poison the vibes between a dad (unless he’s a child molester or mass murderer or political terrorist or fentanyl dealer) and his children.

“Boiled down, Angie is giving an excellent performance as Lucreatia McEvil.”

HE response #2:

“As a director who chooses or sculpts her own preferred material, Jolie has repeatedly demonstrated a preference for stories about innocents suffering horribly under the yoke of evil forces.

“Does that, like, uhhm, tell you anything about her basic emotional state? Or, you know, her basic psychology? Maybe a little something?

”In The Land of Blood and Honey (’11) focused on a Bosnian muslim woman (Zana Marjanovic) coping with the Serbian genocide.

“Unbroken (’14) was largely about an American soldier being sadistically brutalized in a Japanese prison camp.

“In ’15 Jolie was talking about directing a film about the poaching of elephants with Brad Pitt intending to play poacher-fighter Richard Leakey.

”Then came First They Came For My Father, which deals with the Khymer Rouge’s genocide of Cambodia in the mid ’70s.

”Her latest is Without Blood, which I haven’t seen but is said to be cut from the same torture-porn cloth.

“Four movies about innocents suffering the pains of hell under the yoke of evil forces, directed by the same person within the last 13 years. That doesn’t tell you anything?”

Not to mention the funniest Scorsese film since After Hours, and the best Scorsese short film since The Big Shave.

And it’s called Bleu de Chanel. I love the paradox…an ad spot for Bleu de Chanel that has absolutely nothing to do with Bleu de Chanel…not even a wee bit.

What’s it about then? The hotshit angst and sputtering spigot of super-famous and super-wealthy Timothee Chalamet.

It’s basically Chalamet and Scorsese riffing on the kind of rapid-fire life that Leonardo DiCaprio‘s superstar brat was coping with in Woody Allen‘s Celebrity (‘98).

Best bit: Chalamet being rejected by that hot chick in the dressing room…the one who slams the door in his face.

Tom Shone, posted a day ago: “The 28-year-old Chalamet was reportedly paid $35 million to promote Bleu de Chanel — more than the salary for every film of his up to this point in his career combined, including Wonka ($8 million), Dune ($2 million) and Dune: Part Two ($3 million).

“And the ad [itself is] different. Witty, self-conscious and meta…more like [a] mini-movie.”

I am in friendly but fervent opposition to anyone on ANY campus who picks up a microphone and says they feel “actively victimized” by ANYthing except by real, actual, legitimate threats (i.e., possibly being raped, harmed in some physical way or killed).

Sensible, real-world, non-woke opinions are not threats. They simply represent an aspect of the normal rough and tumble of political dispute, which is par for the course if you (ahem) live off-campus.

The phrase “actively victimized” is a woke cliche used by people who fetishize the threat of victimization in order to display their woke bonafides.

Life IS hard and sometimes even scary. It’s not a walk in the park, certainly in the case of woke wimps and candy-asses. It IS a good idea to toughen your hide and maybe wear a helmet. I despise campus wussies and their litany of complaints about everything that doesn’t look, sound or feel “right” or “safe” to them.

Imagine the settlers in a John Ford western going up to Scar, the hostile Comanche chief in The Searchers, and saying “your war paint is not cool…you guys are making us feel actively victimized, and we really don’t feel safe…waaah.”

The eight-year war between the still not-yet-fully-divorced Brad Pitt and Angelica Jolie has devolved into something truly sick and diseased.

And the proof in the pudding are those smug-ass, Village of the Damned Jolie-Pitt kids…their Val Lewton-ish, zombie-like submission to Angie’s “Brad is truly evil and therefore must be shunned” belief system.

What kind of deranged mom indoctrinates her kids (natural and adopted) into this kind of hate theology? This is fucking cult behavior. This is Manson family stuff.

Who in the world believes that Brad is as “bad” as she seems to believe, or that he’s even “bad” at all? As in unredeemable, deserving of damnation, etc.

Has anyone in the history of Western Civilization ever waged a Mexican standoff war over divorce terms and child custody that lasted eight feckin’ years?

Did Pitt do something ghastly and demonic? Answer: Not by normal people standards. Not if you’re coming from a place of mental health.

Whatever happened to “we’re sorry you let alcohol turn you into a different person eight years ago, dad, but we‘re also glad you embraced sobriety so let’s construct something new…let’s open our hearts, move forward and take it one day at a time”?

I believe that Jolie is definitely the bad guy here.

Pitt’s David Mills character in Se7en: “She’s a nutbag.”

Can kids “catch” emotional dysfunction from their mother? Like mumps or the measles?

Try to flush this out of your mind as you watch Pablo Larrain’s Maria in Telluride.

Page Six’s Sara Nathan:

I’m looking very much forward to seeing Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson (Netflix, late ‘24). Because the writing will be excellent —- that I know. An adaptation of August Wilson‘s revered 1987 play, pic stars John David Washington (who also starred in a 2022 Broadway revival of same) and was directed and co-adapted by Malcolm, his brother. Denzel Washington and Todd Black have produced.

I’m presuming The Piano Lesson will screen at Telluride before playing Toronto.

John David Washington needs a leg up as performance-wise he hasn’t really connected thus far. If you ask me he was fairly blah or so-so in Spike Lee‘s Black Klansman (’18). Chris Nolan‘s Tenet (’20), which wasn’t an acting platform for anyone, offered no acceleration. Then JDW suffered a one-two punch with his mac-and-cheese wolfing scene in Malcolm & Marie (Netflix, 1.19.21), followed by another flat performance in David O. Russell‘s Amsterdam (’22), which caused me great anguish.

From my Malcolm & Marie review:

Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, which began streaming yesterday on Max, is an attractive, watchable gloss that plays it safe and tidy at every turn. It’s a valentine — nothing funny or nervy or the least bit impudent. No Larry Fortensky jokes. No clip of John Belushi‘s “Liz choking on chicken bones” skit. Not so much as a glance at Ron Galella‘s Fat Liz photo.

Director Nanette Burstein deserves a certain kind of cynical credit for sanding every possible edge off the legend of La Liz. So much material has been ignored. Too damn friendly.

Even the brief mention of Taylor’s suicide attempt during her marriage to Eddie Fisher feels somehow soft, mainly because it doesn’t make sense.

Sometime in ’79 or ’80 I saw Elizabeth Taylor in the flesh. She was standing about ten or twelve feet away in a dense crowd of guys at an after-party at the Roxy, the popular Manhattan roller disco on West 18th. I managed a glimpse or two of her eyes, and was slightly surprised to discover that they really were as beautiful as I’d been told. I was mesmerized. I think I actually said out loud, “Wow.”

I’d been looking at Taylor in film after film all my life, of course, but those real-life peepers had an extra-glistening, pools-of-passion, send-your-hormones-to-the-moon quality that I’d never quite gotten from a live female before. And they actually did seem to be violet colored, as legend had it.

The once-legendary Taylor hit her career peak between ’51 (A Place in The Sun) and ’60 (Butterfield 8). This was also when she seemed the most erotically enticing.

I heard and read a lot about her over the decades, and gradually became persuaded that she was tough and real and super-loyal to her friends…although I never understood why she befriended that freak known as Michael Jackson.

I had read once that Taylor saved Montgomery Clift‘s life just after his 5.12.56 car crash by extracting a dislodged tooth that had been stuck in his wind pipe. By all accounts she was a good person to know and share time on the planet with, and also that she was feisty and steady and reliable and no fool. And she liked to drink and have fun and laugh through it all….hah!

I think, in short, that she might have been a better person than she was an actress.

I’m not dismissing her very good ’50s performances in A Place In The Sun, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer and Butterfield 8. But she was seriously miscast in the lusciously miserable Cleopatra, and with the exception of her brilliant, possibly all-time best performance in Mike Nichols‘ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, she stopped getting the good roles after that and just wasn’t a very interesting presence in the ’60s and ’70s.

Taylor was pretty much out of the game by the early 80s.

Her golden time was the 1950s, period, and she was at her hottest back then also. She started to put on weight after Butterfield 8 (i.e., after she hit her early 30s), and the hard truth is that she looked vaguely plump in Cleopatra, and that roundish, slightly boozy and besotted look never went away after that. I’m sorry but that’s how it pretty much was. But those eyes of hers were givers of rapture and splendor.

My only other first-hand connection with La Liz came with my numerous sleepovers at the Nicky Hilton-Elizabeth Taylor house on Route 102 in Georgetown, Connecticut, as the guest of the late cartoonist Chance Browne. It’s a small cottage where Hilton and Taylor stayed for a period in 1950 during their brief rocky marriage before she sued for divorce (she complained of spousal abuse) — local legend says Hilton threw Taylor out a window during one of their drunken fights.

There’s really not much feeling in Burstein’s film. It’s too admiring, too subservient to generate anything that truly hits home.

It’s possible, I suppose, that a few old biddies will be shocked to learn that Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s attorney husband of ten years, cheated on ex-wife Kerstin in 2009 with nanny + elementary school teacher Najen Naylor, who was 32 at the time.

The prospective First Gentleman has admitted to the episode. Even the N.Y. Times has reported on the matter.

Big deal, right? Professionally prominent husbands blowing up their marriages by fucking the family nanny…isn’t that a cliche in the annals of affluent domesticity? Didn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger do the same with housekeeper Mildred Baena?

Naylor and Baena both got pregnant and gave birth, but Naylor apparently didn’t keep the child.

Fucking the help is, of course, a passive-aggressive way of dissolving a marriage as the betrayed wife will inevitably sniff things out sooner or later.

Boiled down, Emhoff has been exposed as having been an imperfect human specimen 15 years ago…an average, sexually frustrated fellow who succumbed to temptation, got busted, apologized, accepted responsibility and moved on.

Emhoff met Harris on a blind date in 2013; they were married the following year.

This matter obviously has no bearing upon Harris’s presidential campaign. We all understand that men in their frisky prime (Emhoff was 45 when the affair occurred) are fundamentally dogs.

What I personally find surprising is the fact that Kerstin, the 57 year-old chief of a “creative think tank” called PRETTYBIRD, is clearly a hotter number than Naylor. My first thought after glancing at a recent photo of the 47-year-old Naylor (posted by the Daily Mail) was that whomever or whatever she may have been at age 32, the last 15 years have taken their toll.

Top photo (l. to r) : Kerstin Emhoff, daughter Ella, Doug Emhoff.

Middle photo: Najen Naylor (recently)

Bottom photo: Naylor in 2008 or thereabouts.