Jeff Wells

Tough words from author, NYU business school professor and podcaster Scott Galloway on Elon Musk, speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and starting at the 4:55 mark:

“I don’t think we’re seeing the unwinding of a company (Twitter), but the unwinding of a person (Elon Musk). Which I believe is part of a larger trend. As our society has become wealthier and better educated, the reliance on a super-being along with church attendance goes down. but people still look for idols. Into that void has stepped technology leaders, because technology is the closest thing we have to magic. [For a while] our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk has taken on that mantle. And every ridiculously mean, nonsensical, irrational move he makes is somehow seen as chess, not checkers. We’re just not privvy to his genius yet.

“I think [Musk[] is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him, and is going to see his wealth probably cut in half. Just a week or two after the close, this is already the second worst acquisition in history. This is someone who in my opinion shows a bit of a God complex. Someone who vastly overpaid in a fit of mania or seeing something we don’t see. Twitter is a company probably worth 10 billion, [and] Musk paid 45 billion for it. He thinks he can lay off half the staff and treat them poorly and disparage them and not [suffer] any ramifications. I think he’s a terrible role model for young business people. You can’t deny his incredible accompishments, but now he’s running three different companies.

“So this notion that we need superbeings…I have found that this notion never proves out. The Roman warriors who returned after a triumphant battle, and they would have a huge parade for them, and they would hire a slave to follow and whisper in the conqueror’s ear ‘all glory is fleeting, and you are only a man.’ I have never met a person who is infallible, Christiane. They all eventually screw up, and a universal pillar of truth is that the universe doesn’t want a consolidation of power among any country or any society or any individual.”

Bradley Cooper isn’t terse and taciturn enough to play a reanimated Steve McQueen. And let’s not kid ourselves — Cooper won’t be playing a San Francisco cop named Frank Bullitt, who was modelled after the real-life Dave Toschi. He’ll be playing the Great McQueen, of course, and that shit is over and done with and 55 years old.

Cooper’s Bullitt can’t be some sensitive, lily-livered, kind-hearted detective. Moreover Steven Spielberg doesn’t have the courage or the character to direct a movie about a somewhat flinty loner cop who eats TV dinners and doesn’t know from 2022 woke sensibilities. Which is why they should abandon this project right now. Cooper is too sensitive and teary-eyed, and Spielberg doesn’t do hardball genre stuff…hell, he never has. McQueen is dead — leave him alone.

Okay, this could work if Spielberg and screenwriter Josh Singer decide to shoot it as a mid ’60s period thing.

Today marks Sutton Wells‘ first full spin around the sun — born 11.17.21. Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending her birthday party on Saturday afternoon.

I saw Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion (Netflix, 11.23) yesterday morning. The movie is a “game,” and it’s fine. We all know the form — Daniel Craig‘s Benoit Blanc as a 21st century Hercule Poirot, etc. That happens, of course, although Knives Out felt slightly more…uhm, arresting. But the film is diverting enough, especially if you like the idea of woke bastards being hung out to dry.

When Glass Onion was first described it sounded like a Mediterranean companion piece to The Last of Sheila, and it still seems like that.

The well-dressed Craig is somewhere between diverting and approvable. Edward Norton‘s Elon Musk-styled character isn’t as much fun as Norton was in Birdman. Kate Hudson shrieks too often. I kept staring at the weird ripples and fissures on Dave Bautista‘s shaved head. You know going in that Janelle Monáe‘s Cassandra “Andi” Brand character will turn out to be a fearless, steely-eyed angel of justice.

I hate people who laugh loudly at anything and under any circumstance, and so I had a problem with two loud-mouthed women of color who were sitting two rows behind me. They didn’t just laugh at every single thing that could be called vaguely amusing or triggering or whatever — they shrieked their effing heads off. It got so bad that I literally turned around in my seat and stared at the two of them for a full ten seconds. I knew they would ignore me, and of course they did. Nothing was quietly amusing to these two — they screamed and squealed with laughter. Everyone in the damn theatre was flinching.

Thanks, girls — glad you had a good time.

Lydia Tar vs. “robot” Max is probably my favorite scene in Todd Field‘s TAR. A UHD streamer is commercially streamable for roughly $20, and is digitally purchasable for $25.

Cate Blanchett takes on critical race theory and gender identity politics in her new role. Absolutely based.

pic.twitter.com/pXwvM1K0Zc

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 17, 2022

…and still primarily making films for “the mob” — agenda-driven, social media Zellennial types.

Core message: Stop listening to the woke mob.

Is Thelma and Louise a woke movie? Not in my book. I fell in love with that Ridley Scott film when the rasta man blew marijuana smoke into the trunk that the cop was locked inside of.

Go to Sasha Stone’s Instagram page and watch the clip from The White Lotus‘s second season, episode 3:

Bert Di Grasso (played by F. Murray Abraham): “The Godfather is the best American movie ever made.”
Albie Di Grasso (played by Adam DiMarco): “No, it’s not.”
Bert: “No? Why not? I think so.”
Albie: “Well, you would. [Because of] your nostalgia for the salad days of the patriarchy.”
Dominic Di Grasso (played by Michael Imperioli): “They’re undeniably good movies.”
Albie: “The Godfather is a fantasy about a time when men would go out and solve all their problems with violence. And sleep with every woman. And then come home to their wife, and there would not be any questions.”
Bert: “It’s a normal male fantasy.”
Albie: “No. Movies like that socialize men into having that fantasy.”

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Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros., 2.10.23) will hopefully be the last installment. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Reid Carolin, produced by Channing Tatum and costarring Tatum and Salma Hayek (who replaced Thandiwe Newton when Tatum canned her). Tatum is 42 — too old for this racket.

Brendan Fraser has told GQ‘s Zach Baron that he “will not participate” in the 2023 Golden Globe Awards early next year, even if he’s nominated for his acclaimed performance in The Whale.

He will not do so because HFPA member Philip Berk allegedly came close to fingering Fraser in the ass back in ’03, or 19 years ago at a Beverly Hilton function. Fraser tells Baron that he became gloomy after the alleged incident took place and that he lost respect for the organization.

A Fraser interview popped on the GQ site four years ago. Also written by Baron, it’s titled “What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?” That always struck me as a dorky title because we all know what happened.

Between the early ’90s and late aughts Fraser was a hugely popular movie star, partly for his amiable manner and assured acting skills but largely because of his good looks — slender, hunky and big-shouldered with kind, captivating, wide-set eyes.

During the early to mid teens Fraser’s looks changed — he put on a shit-ton of weight and lost his thick wavy hair**, and so he downshifted, naturally, as all actors do when they get fat and turn bald, from a movie star to a character actor.

He’s been rebounding for four or five years now, but mainly, in my mind, since he costarred last year in Steven Soderbergh‘s No Sudden Move. Now he’s really rebouunding as a likely-to-be-Oscar-nominated hotshot for his performance as a 600-pound beefalo in Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale.

The Philip Berk anal finger story, which everyone’s heard time and again, was recounted in Baron’s 2018 piece. In Fraser’s telling Berk came close to anally penetrating Fraser with Crisco: “His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around.”

Fraser “felt ill,” he tells Baron. “I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry. I felt like someone had thrown invisible paint on me.” (Berk tells Baron that Fraser’s version of the incident is “a total fabrication.”)

Let me explain something. If I had been in Fraser’s shoes and Philip Berk had come close to fingering my ass, I would have immediately grabbed his arm or his wrist and twisted his arm around his back. I would’ve leaned down and shouted to Berk, “Are you fucking kidding me?” And after this incident was over, I probably wouldn’t have felt like a little kid or like I was going to cry. And I damn sure wouldn’t have gone to my wife and gone “gee, I feel badly because Phillip Berk came close to fingering me in the ass.”

** Fraser could’ve fixed the hair situation if he’d gone to my Prague guy.