Jeff Wells

Five weeks after the Great French Connection Censorship Intrigue was first reported by yours truly (and which resulted in many articles worldwide along with no fewer than six HE articles between 6.3 and 6.20), The New York Times Magazine has boldly jumped into the fray with an article titled “What’s Lost When Censors Tamper With Classic Films.”

Three aspects are worth noting.

(a) The Times almost certainly dodged this story for several weeks out of squeamishness over the use of the N-word, which is what the censoring of a certain Act One scene in William Friedkin‘s 1971 Oscar-winner (i.e., Gene Hackman‘s Popeye Doyle using the epithet in a discussion with Roy Scheider‘s Cloudy in a police station foyer) was all about.

So when they finally posted a story about it, they had story editor Niela Orr, a youngish woman of color, write it. That gives them a certain political protection.

(b) In describing the scene, Orr uses the actual six-letter N-word — something that no one else writing about this story would ever do. Because she can.

(c) The one mystifying and unfulfilled element in this story is the absence of statements from either director William Friedkin or copyright owner Disney about who ordered the cut.

Was the scene edited at Friedkin’s request, as all available evidence clearly indicates? Orr shrugs her shoulders and wonders like the rest of us. If she reached out to Friedkin and Disney, she isn’t saying.

“We can only guess at the precise reasoning behind this particular change to The French Connection,” Orr writes. “Is it Disney, treating adult audiences like the children it’s used to serving? Or did Friedkin, who once modified the color of the film, approve the change?”

For whatever reason Orr doesn’t mention a couple of pertinent facts. A visually confirmed, easily verifiable report that “in Disney’s DCP asset list it says that the currently-streaming version of The French Connection is identified as ‘2021 William Friedkin v2.’” Plus a statement from The Criterion Channel, passed along in “a 6.9.23 HE story,” that “according to our licensor [Disney], this is a ‘Director’s Edit‘ of the film.”

I’ve been told by various girlfriends over the decades that certain boundaries are not cool to cross, and that if I cross them there will be hell to pay. We all understand that women want these boundaries to be respected and observed, and that men who ignore said boundaries will almost certainly be on their own before long.

I’ve understood these boundaries all my life. I know how committed relationships are played and maintained so don’t tell me.

Some of the boundaries that I’ve been warned about over the years are (a) no romping around with groups of women or flirting with various women by way of athletic group activities (hiking, jogging, volleyball on the beach, swimming and boogie-boarding), (b) no posing for photos with various women in my Speedo (this was when I was younger and slimmer) and posting them on social media, and (c) no drinking friendships with guys who are in unstable or neurotic places (loutish party boys, anti-social types, cads).

My ex-girlfriends, in short, have always wanted me to behave in a generally loyal and prudent fashion — like a calm, centered adult and not like some 16-year-old spray shorts. Any guy who says serious girlfriends don’t lay down the law along these lines is a fucking liar.

In late 2021 Jonah Hill laid down the same general boundaries with his longtime surfer girlfriend Sarah Brady, and over the last couple of days she’s gone public with their private texts. She’s called Hill’s general manner with her emotionally abusive and repressive.

They’ve since broken up but What Sarah meant is that she wanted to be free to do whatever and whenever, including socializing and flirting with male surfers and behaving like an attractive and dynamic social-media presence. As the girlfriend of a famous movie guy she wanted her social due — she wanted to be Kim Kardashian on a surfboard or something in that realm. Famous, flashy, livin’ the life.

She now says she felt that Jonah was being a controlling wet blanket and cramping her style and that his attitude wasn’t feminist enough. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he is too controlling, and maybe he was just insisting that Sarah follow the same rules that 98% of women insist upon.

But Brady posting private texts definitely isn’t cool. It’s gauche, in fact.

Friendo: I don’t like Tiktok. I don’t know this guy or why I should care. Even assuming he’s right. He seems potentially dangerous
HE: Of course he’s right! Are you kidding me?
Friendo: People are too angry.
HE: It depends what you’re angry about.

@jotojavin Wrong on So many levels. In the words of Pink Floyd “leave them kids alone” #doctor #sons #boys #physical #girls ♬ original sound – JoToJaVin

HE sez: This guy was justifiably enraged that the doctor in question, a follower of radical wokester protocol, was, by asking his nine-year-old son about gender identity, encouraging the kid to begin an inner dialogue about who or what he might actually be deep down.

By asking for an answer to this question, he felt that they were “planting a seed” in the poor kid’s head by way of psychological subterfuge. Kids are very malleable and influencable, of course, and he strongly objects to this nine-year-old being dropped into “this shit,” as he puts it.

Look at Zoomers — 15% or 20% identify as trans or gender fluid or gender ambiguous on some level. They’re saying this, of course, because they want to be cool (or certainly not UNcool) and they want to merge with the social flow of their peers for safety’s sake.

The guy, in short, is an Average Joe traditionalist, and if you ask me Average Joe traditionalism is an okay thing. It’s not the only mindset by which to process and respond to the sometimes bizarre nature of social standards in 2023, but it’s certainly a legitimate one.

Especially when you consider that doctors only began to ask average nine-year-old boys about their gender preference…what, a couple of years ago or three? And that nine year old boys were NEVER asked about their gender preference before ‘20 or ‘21, and in fact weren’t asked the same by family doctors and physicians during the entire immigrant history of this country (and were almost certainly never asked this by caregivers in Native American communities prior to the mid 1600s) and were never asked this by caregivers and physicians for HUNDREDS and in fact THOUSANDS of years in various European, Middle-Eastern, African, Aboriginal and Asian cultures around the globe.

Okay, this Average Joe dad is angry and alarmed, and there are some of us who don’t relate to his manner of speaking & would prefer that he state his objections to gender questioning in a more measured and thoughtful and college-campus-y way, but this rattled fellow DOES have many THOUSANDS of years of tradition in his side of the ledger. You have to give him that.

To put it bluntly, kids have been taught and guided and disciplined in a certain general way through the millennia, and then along came trans theology and activism TWO or THREE YEARS AGO. And this guy is saying, quite reasonably, “what’s up with this?” and more precisely “WHAT THE LIVING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE, MAN?”

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Is there a single die-hard Star Wars fanboy who doesn’t want Kathleen “diversity is really important to us” Kennedy fired and banished to the ice planet of Hoth for the rest of her natural days? Right now the pile-on fervor has never been stronger, particularly in the wake of the box-office disappointment of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Posted on 5.2.21: I almost always get up early (between 6 and 7 am), and that’s usually after having gotten five or six hours of sleep. Even though it’s better for people (especially those with demanding, stressful jobs) to get 7 or 8 hours my eyes are almost always open in the quiet morning hours, when things outside are mostly still and just starting to be defined by the faint, grayish, pre-dawn light.

Sometimes I’ll even awaken at 4 or 5 am. There’s no point in trying to go back to sleep so I just turn the phone on and start the usual chores — editing and refining the material I wrote the day before, responding to commenters, figuring what to write about next.

But after doing this for two or three hours, or around 8 am, that sleepy John Lennon feeling returns and I’ll go under again for an hour or so. My body tells me this without fail — “You need this…do it until 8:45 or 9 am.”

The homework period is always blissful, and I’m so grateful that I get to settle in and experience this portion of peace and security every morning.

According to The Guardian‘s Charlotte Edwardes, and more specifically Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy, director Chris Nolan doesn’t have a telephone, an email address or a computer: “He’s the most analogue individual you could possibly encounter,” Murphy says.

About Oppenheimer itself, Murphy calls it “an extraordinary piece of work…very provocative and powerful…it feels sometimes like a biopic, sometimes like a thriller, sometimes like a horror. It’s going to knock people out…what [Nolan] does with film, it fucks you up a little bit.”

A journalist friendo knows a sketchy someone who’s claiming it’s “a bit dull.” (The source, I’m told, is not to be trusted.) Another journalist knows someone who saw Oppenheimer a few weeks ago, and this fellow has described it as “slightly pretentious but with a knockout 30-minute finale.”

On 3.21.23 I posted a warning…actually a feeling of anxiety and trepidation about Nolan’s sound mixing of Oppenheimer. Please God (or please Chris) — allow me to understand the dialogue in this upcoming film. Please don’t drive me crazy with the fucking mix…please. There is no one in the cinematic universe who would be more overjoyed than myself if the dialogue turns out to be audience-friendly.

The Empire Strikes Back climax with a Nolan sound mix:

An excellent exploration of the Nolan sound aesthetic going back to The Dark Knight:

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There is no joy in Mudville over the sluggish response to Adele Lim‘s raunchy Joy Ride, which was produced by Point Grey Pictures’ Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro projected between $7 and $9M at 2,820 locations; now the weekend tally is looking closer to $6.5M. A $1,100,000 haul on Thursday, and $2,600,000 yesterday — $3,700,000 so far. Friday’s per-screen average was $922.

Although the film sent me into a black pit of depression and I only laughed once, I’m not personally delighted by this shortfall. Lim directs with urgency and vigor, and Cherry Cheva and Teresa Hsiao‘s well-structured script delivers heart as well as vulgarity. I’d decided by the finale that I didn’t completely hate it, and that ain’t hay.

But I knew the formerly titled Joy Fuck Club was a dead fish when I saw the B-minus CinemaScore rating plus that statement by David Poland that he’d returned for a second viewing with his wife and 13-year-old son. Yes — I’m referring to an adjunct of the Poland curse.

A Warner Archive Bluray of Howard Hawks‘ Land of the Pharoahs (’55) pops on 7.18. It features grainy WarnerColor and a 2.55:1 aspect ratio.

In a September ’78 issue of Film Comment Martin Scorsese stated that Pharoahs was one of his guilty pleasures. It’s certainly “big” and colorful — it was partly shot in Egypt — and boasts a lot of great-looking sets and costumes, and Hawks used something close to 10,000 extras.

But the only thing that’s truly great about Pharoahs is Dimitri Tiomkin‘s score.

The musical accompaniments by the Russian-born Tiomkin often had a soaring, grandiose, even bombastic quality, but his scores were so rousing they almost served as characters in and of themselves.

The greatest Tiomkin scores: Duel in the Sun, It’s a Wonderful Life, Red River, The Men, The Big Sky, High Noon (film historian Arthur R. Jarvis, Jr. once claimed that Tiomkin’s music “saved” that Oscar-winning Fred Zinneman film), The High and the Mighty, The Guns of Navarone, Strangers on a Train, I Confess, Dial M for Murder, The Thing from Another World, Giant, Rio Bravo, The Alamo.

A week and a half ago (6.26.23) I noted the 40th anniversary of the opening of Twilight Zone: The Movie, and mentioned an interest in wanting to find a copy of Stephen Farber and Marc Green‘s “Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case” (1.1.88).

I asked my local library if they had a copy — they did not. But they offered to search for a copy at other libraries in southwestern Connecticut. Two days ago they told me they’d found one and that it had been sent down by courier. I’m now reading it. Smoothly written, excellent reporting. Thanks to the Wilton Library.

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In yesterday’s comment thread for my Joy Ride review, a commenter named “The Machine is still on Moira” said “this review is up there with Wells’ review of To The Wonder.”

Excerpts herewith:

To The Wonder “is a wispy, ethereal thing composed of flaky intimations and whispers and Lubezki’s wondrous cinematography with maybe 20 or 25 lines of dialogue, if that. It’s basically The Tree of Life 2: Oklahoma Depression. It’s Malick sitting next to you and gently whispering in your ear, ‘You wanna leave? Go ahead. Go on, it’s okay, I don’t care…do what you want. But you can also stay.'”

“I’ve been dumping on this film since catching it at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, but I want to emphasize something important. The trick is to see this thing without expecting it to act like a movie. Because it works if you submit to it like you would an art gallery experience. It’s passive and reflective like the sea on a windless day, but in a Moby-Dick sort of way: “The sea where each man, as in a mirror, finds himself.”

“Malick gives you so little to grapple with (at least in terms of a fleshed-out narrative and that thing we’ve all encountered from time to time called ‘speech’ or ‘talking’ or whatever form of oral communication you prefer) that” — like staring at paintings or sculptures in a museum — “it’s pretty much your responsibility to make something out of To The Wonder‘s 112 minutes,” I wrote on 9.11.12.

“It’s all about you taking a journey of your own devising in the same way we all take short little trips with this or that object d’art, whereever we might happen to find one. The film is mesmerizing to look at but mostly it just lies there. Well, no, it doesn’t ‘lie there’ but it just kind of swirls around and flakes out on its own dime. Run with it or don’t (and 97% of the people out there aren’t going to even watch this thing, much less take the journey) but ‘it’s up to you,’ as the Moody Blues once sang.

“To The Wonder doesn’t precisely fart in your face. It leads you rather to wonder what the air might be like if you’ve just cut one in a shopping mall and there’s someone right behind you, downwind. That’s obviously a gross and infantile thing to think about, but To The Wonder frees you to go into such realms if you want. It’s your deal, man. Be an adult or a child or a 12 year-old or a buffalo. Or a mosquito buzzing around a buffalo. Naah, that’s dull. Be a buffalo and sniff the air as Rachel McAdams walks by! You can go anywhere, be anything. Which is liberating in a sense, but if you can’t or won’t take the trip you’ll just get up and leave or take a nap or throw something at the screen. Or get up and leave and head for the nearest mall.

“I went with it. I wasn’t bored. Well, at least not for the first hour. I knew what I’d be getting into and I basically roamed around in my head as I was led and lulled along by Emmanuel Lubezki‘s images and as I contemplated the narcotized blankness coming out of Ben Affleck‘s ‘Neil’ character, who is more or less based on Malick. Or would be based on Malick if Malick had the balls to make a film about himself, which he doesn’t. If Malick had faced himself and made a film about his own solitude and obstinacy and persistence…wow! That would have been something.

“But Malick is a hider, a coward, a wuss. He used to be the guy who was up to something mystical and probing and mysterious. Now he tosses lettuce leaves in the air and leaves you to put them all into a bowl as you chop the celery and the carrots and the tomatoes and decide upon the dressing.

“I don’t know how many times Olga Kurylenko (who plays Ben Affleck‘s French wife who winds up stranded and gasping for air in Bartlesville, Oklahoma) twirls around in this film, but she does it a lot.”