Jeff Wells

I’ll watch almost anything in black-and-white Scope, which I happen to be queer for, but I draw the line at Billy Wilder‘s Kiss Me Stupid. I tried to re-watch it last night (again), and I couldn’t do it, man. I just couldn’t.

(Oh, and I watched two full episodes of grubby, grimy, endlessly talky Andor on Saturday night, but more on that later.)

It’s not so much the overbearing lead performance by Ray Walston, who was hired at the last-minute when Peter Sellers suffered a heart attack, and Kim Novak is…well, not too bad even though Polly the Pistol is a pathetic character. It’s Dean Martin I can’t stand. He’s playing himself here — a rich, big-name Italian crooner who’s so smug and lazy he can barely say his lines without putting himself to sleep…thinks he’s the center of the universe but in fact is completely out of swing with mid ’60s culture and doesn’t know it and doesn’t care, and who has no funny lines…just a smug, oily-haired lech trying to bang Novak while getting half-bombed.

Kiss Me Stupid is torture to sit through — the sexual hang-ups and uptight vibe of middle-class guilt, denial and jealousy creates a terrible feeling of imprisonment. The imaginary hamlet of Climax, Nevada is a ghastly sound-stage gulag. A joke is made at Martin‘s expense about the Beatles, but the film totally misses the post-JFK assassination culture of ‘64, the year of the Beatles explosion, by focusing on (a) a pair of lost-in-the-past songwriters (Walston and that bear-like moustachioed guy, Cliff Osmond) who are as terrible as Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman in Ishtar, and (b) on lechy, slurry-voiced Vegas hotshot Martin and (c) poor, treated-like-dirt Novak. Nobody wanted to think about Walston as a sexually active fellow…good God.

(l. to r.) Kim Novak, Ray Walston, Dean Martin in a rare color snap from the set of Kiss Me Stupid.

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Sasha Stone on the theatrical death of She Said, a first-rate, totally approvable journalism drama: “Journalism changed completely in 2016, just like Hollywood did. The New York Times joined “the resistance” and lost its objectivity. Ditto high-minded Oscar fare. She Said tells the story as Hollywood always does, as though there is only one perspective on any of it. They just assume all of America agrees, or should because their word is the right one.

“Oscar movies aren’t bombing because they’re ‘woke,’ and many of them aren’t. The Banshees of Inisherin isn’t. It’s that Joe and Jane have been “’woked’ too many times, and so when a film comes along, they think ‘I’ll catch it on streaming.’ The last remaining group, to repeat, is likely staying home due to ongoing COVID fear. That isn’t everyone, but it’s enough to make a dent in the box office.

“I just got woked watching a movie recently that was kind of good overall. But its ultimate message was meant to make me, the viewer, feel bad about myself and my world because that is what they want you to feel. They want you to feel guilty and bad because they, the filmmakers, are noble and holy and are on the other side of it.

“I know lots of white people like this — or I used to, I should say. People who go around carping about ‘systemic racism’ and ‘white privilege’ as white people. That puts them on the other side and makes them seem “good” and “woke.” It gives them a sense of higher purpose.

“But the end result of this is always the same story. It’s like Christian Rock — no matter how good it is at the end of the day, it is always going to be about just that one thing. This movie I was watching, like almost every movie or advertising you see, was reminding me yet again of the hierarchy of race. White people are bad; everyone else is good.

“How can you ever expect actors of color — Black, Hispanic, Asian — to have any sort of chance to tell great stories if they’re trapped in the cocoon of white guilt and must always be portrayed as noble saints compared to the white heathens? Meanwhile, White people get all of the good parts because they are allowed to be imperfect, flawed, and corrupt. And ONLY THEM.

“I think personally that it betrays one’s sense of superiority ultimately, as does equity in Hollywood and the Oscars. They’re saying women and people of color can never be as good as white males, so they have to be ‘helped’ to win. But that robs them of their worth in the end because all it does is reward the whites who are giving it to them in the first place. See how good we are? See how ‘woke’ we are?

“Most people are sick of it, though hardly anyone will write about it because they will be slammed online.”

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Friendo: “I’m surprised that you bought into this narrative about The Menu‘s box-office performance. The Menu isn’t a horror film. It’s a sophisticated satire of foodie culture with elements of horror sprinkled in — totally a movie for adults. That means that its box-office gross this weekend, which will be close to $10 million, is a triumph. In a single weekend, in one fell swoop, it has beat all the other adult dramas of the fall.

“How is this a case of ‘hasn’t sold all that many tickets’? It’s going to be one of the only relatively small-scale hits of the fall. And I personally think it’s a terrific movie that, for once, has sold all those tickets for the right reasons.

HE to friendo:: “I was going by an assessment by Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro. He wrote that “with an estimated $30M production cost and $8.87M opening, possibly $9M, The Menu is not a bomb, bomb, bomb — but nothing spectacular.”

Friendo to HE: “Inaccurate. It did cost more than your average adult drama, but it’s not like its total gross is $9 million. This is the opening weekend. Right now it looks on track to gross somewhere in the neighborhood of at least $25-30 million domestic. And it has a major international appeal. This means that I think it will emerge, in the end, as a success for Searchlight. It’s certainly no bomb.

“But my point about the numbers isn’t simply related to whether it ultimately makes money for its studio or not. Maybe it will (I think it will), maybe it won’t. My point is: Here’s a movie for adults that people want to see.”

HE to friendo: “I thought it was actually pretty great for that reason.”

Friendo to HE: “I wasn’t sure how much you liked/didn’t like it. I think it’s tons more fun than anything Michael Haneke ever made. And with respectful disagreement: I think it’s a very funny movie. The horror stuff, you’re right, is just horror (though with a wild edge that you could certainly argue has a black-comic frisson), but the satire is delicious. It’s the rare movie that gave me honest laughs. At the end, when Ralph Fiennes called the smore “a fucking monstrosity,” I just about busted a gut.”

HE to friendo: “It’s essentially about malice and hate and unfettered loathing. Dryly or darkly satiric, okay, but not ‘funny.'”

At age 37, William Holden was too old to play Hal Carter, a youngish drifter, in Joshua Logan‘s film adaptation of William Inge‘s Picnic. A few weeks after Picnic opened on 12.7.55, Holden appeared on the cover of Time — a semi-official proclamation that he was peaking as a big-time movie star. Except the painting of Holden that Time used made him appear no younger than 45, which was really too old to play a guy who hadn’t yet figured out what to do with his life.

Holden and his Picnic costar Kim Novak had relatively short runs as super-duper movie stars slash sex symbols. Holden’s began with his breakout role in Sunset Boulevard (’50) and ended with his costarring role in The Horse Soldiers (’59). (He kept working until his death on 11.12.81, but the shining glory era lasted only a decade.) Novak’s Picnic performance made her a star, but her peak period lasted only until her lead role in Of Human Bondage (’64).

Sex, nude scenes, great wealth, naked ambition — Daniel Petrie and Harold Robbins‘ The Betsy (’78) is one of the most hilariously offensive groaners in the sub-genre of hothouse soap opera.

But early on there’s a great little scene in which aging auto tycoon Loren Hardeman Sr. (Laurence Olivier) is hiring race-car driver Angelo Perino (Tommy Lee Jones) to build “a groundbreaking fuel-efficient car.” Toward the end Oliver/Hardeman’s enthusiasm gets the better of him — “All right, now build me a car! Wheeee!”

The 71-year-old Olivier also has a brief scene in which he’s ravaging one of the housemaids…bip, bip, bip, bip.

I understand, I think, why The Menu (Searchlight, 11.18) hasn’t sold all that many tickets over the last couple of days.  I saw it Friday, and immediately warmed to the cold, pared-to-the-bone discipline aspect.  It’s basically Michael Haneke‘s  Funny Games transposed to the realm of high-end gourmet dining. 

It’s essentially about contempt for the one-percenters — a contempt especially felt by creatively gifted types.  As well as a general all-round contempt that some of us have deep-down for ourselves. 

I would actually call The Menu dry-ice cold rather than just boilerplate ice-cube cold. 

The Menu‘s Wiki page calls it “an American black comedy thriller.”   That’s misleading.  It’s a dry, pitch-black chamber piece  — archly-written and performed with a chilly, darkly ironic attitude — but it’s certainly not comedic.  It’s about 12 financially flush diners squirming over the distinct prospect of possibly being killed in some horrible way, and if you find this kind of squirming comedic there’s really and truly something wrong with you.

“We’re Gonna Die,” posted on 8.11.22:  “Obviously The Menu is a black social satire. The focus is on the repulsion that some gifted artists feel for consumers, including the rich elite. The idea, apparently, is that Ralph Fiennes‘ Slowik, the celebrity chef behind an exclusive restaurant called Hawthorne, is a sociopath. He’s probably a variation of Leslie Banks‘ “Count Zaroff” in The Most Dangerous Game (’32).”

The fact that Adam McKay and Will Ferrell produced The Menu (along with Betsy Koch)…this fact should tell you something.  None-too-brights have interpreted this to mean that The Menu is a kind of comedy.  In fact it’s a misanthropic fuck-you satire.

So Robert Richardson‘s lensing of Emancipation (Apple, 12.2) is basically black-and-white with very soft hints of watercolor green. Was Antoine Fuqua‘s period drama shot in full digital color and then desaturated down to near monochrome?

The almost-no-color scheme seems to be about visually blending with the famous black-and-white “scourged back” photo of Gordon, an escaped slave from Louisiana. Will Smith plays Peter, a character based upon Gordon.

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It’s been patently obvious for several years (i.e., early ’17) that President Donald Trump was a criminal, anti-Democratic sociopath and bully boss grifter. The Biden administration has been in power for nearly two years, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has only just announced that potential prosecutions of Trump and his criminal colleagues will henceforth be seriously examined by Jack Smith, a special prosecutor.

People have been calling Garland a wimp and a foot dragger for many months now, and if you ask me for more than sufficient cause. Bring on the new Archibald Cox slash Leon Jaworski!

N.Y. Times‘ Michael Schmidt: “Special counsels were created to put distance between the politics of the moment and the investigative work of the Justice Department. Under the regulations for special counsels, the Justice Department will have to tell Congress about any major investigative moves that the special counsel wanted to take that were overruled by senior department officials. Also, the special counsel can be fired only for cause — essentially, for not doing their job.”

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, Gabriel Clarke & John McKenna’s 2015 doc, states very plainly that Le Mans (‘71), the semi-legendary race-track pic, was the film that broke McQueen’s spirit as well as his legend to a significant extent, and that things were never quite the same after it.

In my mind McQueen had a great 14-year run from ‘60/‘62 (The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is For Heroes) to his last quality spurt (Junior Bonner, The Getaway and The Towering Inferno) that ended in ‘74. Call it 14 years. Okay, 15 or 16 if you count Wanted Dead or Alive.

But his Godly McQueen aura, that quietly measured and invincible thing that peaked with Bullitt, that Zen-like, supercool man-of-few-words + awesome motorcycle and Mustang-driving era was shorter — The Great Escape (’63) to Le Mans (‘17) or roughly an eight-year stretch. That’s all it was — eight years.