Jeff Wells

I can only come up with five: (a) Weasel J. Weisenheimer, a rodent drug dealer created by R. Crumb; (b) The singing of “happy birthday, Mr. Rosenheimer!” in an Act Three nightclub scene in The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer ’47) (c) John Frankenheimer, (d) J. Robert Oppenheimer, and (e) the Munich Rosenheimer Platz metro station. Others?

I was particularly annoyed by the second-to-last scene when Wombat wouldn’t let Indy “stay in Syracuse,” so to speak, and thereby separated the poor old guy from what he really and truly wanted (“All my life,” he said). And then she slugs him and suddenly they’re back in his New York apartment, and his heart is completely broken. So was mine.

In what realm is old, aching Indy rekindling things with old, withered Marion (Karen Allen) better than Indy hanging out with Archimedes and possibly managing to save his life from that Roman solder who slew him in actuality?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny doesn’t end on anyone’s idea of a happy, vigorous or triumphant note, but Indy and “Arky” joining forces as they explore an array of scientific possibilities as well as the physical ancient world? Are you kidding? That’s a glorious ending. It would be like being reborn.

Who remembers Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? A trifle, 45 years ago, barely recalled but a catchy title. Right now it’s nonsensically coming to mind because the burning question of the moment is “who or what is behind the departures of all those DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) executives?”

Four have ankled over the last ten days or so, and three since last Wednesday.

Disney’s chief diversity officer and senior vp Latondra Newton, hired in 2017, exited on 6.20 to pursue “other endeavors.” A symbolic beheading over the somewhat disappointing returns on Disney’s The Little Mermaid (especially in China and South Korea), which could arguably be blamed on the casting of Halle Bailey? Or is that a reach?

Eight days later (6.28) the ankling of Vernā Myers, Netflix’s chief of inclusion strategy since 2018, was announced. She’ll apparently remain as an advisor to Netflix as she focuses her attention on her consulting company, The Vernā Myers Company.

Two more diversity execs flew or otherwise exited the coop on Friday, 6.30. Karen Horne, Warner Bros. Discovery’s SVP of diversity, equity and inclusion since March 2020, was laid off, and the contributions of Jeanell English, EVP of Impact and Inclusion with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since July 2022, came to a sudden and mysterious end.

You can call this activity a coincidence and maybe it is, but if this was a thriller of some sort you’d be saying to yourself “something seems to be up.” A case for a latter-day Hercule Poirot a la Clayton Davis with a long pointy moustache?

Media types (critics, editors, bloggers, podcasters) love to perform for each other whenever they congregate, which mostly tends to be at all-media screenings. A lot of them live lonely, concentrated lives in front of screens (myself included), and so the emotional spigots tend to flow when they all get together, and boy oh boy, do they turn on the personality and the charm and do what they can to wow each other!

If you’re sitting solo but not too far from the crowd, you’ve no choice but to listen to all the jokes and repartee and sage witticisms and smart-ass cracks, etc. Very few of these guys are into quiet murmurings or sharing thoughts of an earnest nature. They’re all “on-stage” in a sense, and listening to them is…I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon but listening to them can feel like a faint form of hell. The only cure is to have a conversation of your own, which is probably what I should have done, looking back.

Chickenshit Budweiser execs pretended like Dylan Mulvaney didn’t exist when the shit hit the fan. They should have reached out, maybe offered a little cover or protection or a warm word or two…something. I feel badly about what Dylan went through, and the blonde hair, by the way, works better than the dark.

[Filed this morning at 8:05 am] Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro on modest box-office fate of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny:

Read more

I never saw Alan Arkin in Enter Laughing or Luv on the Broadway stage, but for me he was the king of fickle neuroticism and glum irreverence for decades and decades, and for decades and decades I loved him like few others. And now the journey has ended. He was 89.

If I had to pick my favorite Arkin performances in descending order, I would restrict my list to four. I would begin with his grumpy but compassionate, heroin-snorting grandpa in Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris‘s Little Miss Sunshine (’06). In second place is Captain John Yossarian, the numbed-out pacifist Air Force bombardier in Catch 22 (’70). Third is his wonderfully anxious ands panicky dentist in Arthur Hiller‘s The In-Laws (’79), Fourth but not least is his moustachioed Russian submarine captain in Norman Jewison‘s The Russians Are Coming (’66).

Everyone remembers a concluding line in a certain Catch 22 conversation between Lt. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) and Cpt. Yossarian. It wasn’t written by original novel author Joseph Heller but Buck Henry. Heller reportedly approved.

Minderbinder: “Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.”

Yossarian: “What difference does that make? He’s dead.”

Minderbinder: “Then his family will get it.”

Yossarian: “He didn’t have time to have a family.”

Minderbinder: “Then his parents will get it.”

Yossarian: “They don’t need it, they’re rich.”

Minderbinder: (beat) “Then they’ll understand.”

Read more

CNN’s Abby Phillip, temporary host of The Lead, vs. author Kenny Xu (“An Inconvenient Minority: The Harvard Admissions Case and the Attack on Asian American Excellence“) and a board member of Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiff in an historic argument over race-based admissions which the Supreme Court found in favor of yesterday.

Phillip: “If you take race out of it, let’s call it socioeconomic status, whether or not they grew up wealthy or poor. Is that not something colleges might have an interest in considering?”

Xu: “The reason why you shouldn’t consider that is because you should consider the success of an applicant. Because of affirmative action, Black Americans graduate from law school at the bottom 25 percent of their classes, largely speaking. And we don’t want that. We want Black students to succeed. We want every student to succeed. Low-income students to succeed.

“You have to put them in scenarios in places where they’re likely to succeed. And lowering your standard to admit somebody of a socioeconomic status or race would not help them do that. In fact it would harm their graduation rate and excellence.”

Phillip: “Well, as the case also points out, the standard isn’t necessarily lowered because the students are all admitted. It’s the question whether race can be an added consideration, a tipping point…”

Xu: “The standard is lowered.”

When Xu said “the standard is lowered.” Phillip obviously decided to shut down the discussion:

Phillip:: “Kenny…”

Xu: “The standard is lowered. As the Students for Fair Admissions data shows, an Asian has to score 273 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a Black person…”

Phillip: “Kenny…”

Xu: “So the standard is lowered for Black applicants.”

Phillip: “Kenny Xu, thank you for your perspective. We really appreciate it.

If, like myself, you’re a foot man, you probably agree that the recent hoopla over that Barbie shot of Margot Robbie‘s arched feet brought about a certain realization. It reminded me of an unfortunate or at least a lamented reality, which is that over 99% of the female peds out there (and I often have my eyes peeled) are no match for Robbie’s.

Outside of the Hollywood and modelling worlds, exquisite, perfectly shaped feet are such a rarity that numerical percentages are almost unworthy of mention.

Read more

All hail the young anonymous woman behind Nerdworld, a YouTube channel that I discovered last night. She’s a brilliant 20something Canadian feminist of a different order — a woman who’s felt increasingly annoyed by aggressive feminist, anti-male posturing in movies and laments the trashing and diminishing of straight-up, non-toxic masculinity, not just in cinema but in all corners of the progressive community these days. She seems to have been strongly influenced by the great Camille Paglia, and for that alone HE is an instant fan.

Nearly ten months ago I saw Nancy Buirski‘s Desperate Souls, Dark City, and the Legend of “Midnight Cowboy” at the ’22 Telluride Film Festival. It’s a sprawling, large-canvas capturing of a revolutionary and fairly breathtaking moment in American cinema — a constantly probing look at not just the making of John Schlesinger’s 1969 classic but everything that was happening back then…culturally, creatively, the whole magillah.

Zeitgeist and Kino Lorber opened Desperate Souls on 6.23.23 — it’s now playing at the Film Forum.

It’s been noted that Buirski’s film doesn’t really answer why Midnight Cowboy received its X rating, which was later downshifted to R. I’ll tell you why — it was because of that scene in the 42nd Street theatre when Bob Balaban goes down on Jon Voight and gives him an off-camera blowjob. That was it, cut and dried.

Apart from Peter Glenville‘s oblique and non-sexual Becket (’64) and outside of Andy Warhol‘s experimental, barely-seen Blowjob and even Lonesome Cowboys, no mainstream film had ever grappled with gay activity quite as frankly as Midnight Cowboy, especially in its acknowledgements of down and dirty street life and gay street hustlers, not to mention Ratzo’s derisive reference to cowboy garb as “fag stuff”.