Jeff Wells

“Why Was I Not Made Of Stone Like Thee?”

by

William Deterle‘s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (’39) was one of my father’s favorite films. He took my mother to see it at a Norwalk revival house on their honeymoon. No one’s idea of a romantic gesture, and yet he may have been subliminally reaching out — he may been saying to my mother “will you be my Esmeralda?”

When I was 8 or 9 I would scare the neighborhood kids by pretending to be Charles Laughton‘s Quasimodo, contorting my face and squeezing a pillow under my T-shirt and running around with that lumbering sideways gait.

Dieterle and his dp, Joseph H. August, should have shot this one in color. If future technology allows someone to colorize this classic decently, as opposed to how these clips look, I would happily re-watch it this way.

Alfred Newman‘s score is masterful.

Wiki except: With a budget of $1.8 million, Hunchback was one of the most expensive movies ever made by the studio. It was shot at the RKO Encino Ranch, where a massive replica of medieval Paris and Notre Dame Cathedral was built — one of the largest and most extravagant sets ever constructed.

“The sets were constructed by Van Nest Polglase at the cost of $250,000 (about $4,974,622 in 2021 dollars), while Darrell Silvera worked as set decorator. Walter Plunkett oversaw the costume design.

“Filming was difficult for the cast and crew due to the hot temperatures, particularly for Laughton, who had to act with a lot of makeup.

“In her autobiography, O’Hara recalls one day arriving on the set and finding chimpanzees, baboons and gorillas. Dieterle wanted monks to be on the set but his assistant mistakenly thought he wanted monkeys because of his poor English and thick German accent.”

Inclusivity Mandate

by

A friend is feeling depressed about the GenZ effect upon films. Their demand that POCS graced with presentism have to be featured in everything. If this doesn’t happen GenZ will destroy, attack and reject the film in question. We’re living through a 21st Century version of China’s Great Cultural Revolution in the ’60s. The idea that admirable non-white characters always have to be prominent no matter what, and that they have to be portrayed as “good” while white people are only allowed to be complex failures. By friendo’s estimation there have only been three 2022 films that haven’t been inclusivity-stamped to a fare-thee-well — Top Gun: Maverick, The Fablemans and The Banshees of inisherin. Any others that friendo is forgetting about?

Missed Opportunity

by

From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety riff on Daniel Craig’s dancing-around-Paris Belvedere spot: “If the new Belvedere Vodka commercial, starring Daniel Craig and directed by Taika Waititi, were a scene out of Craig’s latest film, it would be the best scene in the movie, or at least the one that everyone’s talking about. Then again, no one would mistake it for a movie scene.

“The commercial has a postmodern strike-a-pose viral aesthetic — it‘s two minutes of bliss frozen in time. As Craig saunters and dances through a swank hotel in Paris, it becomes the rare commercial in which a movie star isn’t being used to sell a product so much as he’s using the commercial to sell a shift in his own image.

“Yes, the extended spot is hawking vodka, and Craig probably got a paycheck that leaves most movie-star paychecks in the dust. Yet that’s all kind of beside the point. The commercial is Craig’s way of announcing who he is, or might be, now that he’s done with the role of James Bond.”

HE to Gleiberman: “Your Daniel Craig riff is very good. The ad is an inspired image makeover.

But it was a SERIOUS MISTAKE, I feel, for director Taika Waititi to send Craig into the interior of a glitzy-ass Kardashian Paris hotel. Because once inside that golden dungeon the endless organic glories and intrigues of Paris disappear. Because glitzy Kardashian hotels are the same boorishly vapid experience the world over…Paris, Milan, Moscow, NYC, Berlin, London, Seoul, Los Angeles, Dubai, Barcelona, Stockholm…exactly the same damn experience and atmosphere.

“And so the Belvedere ad fails in terms of spirit and imagination. And this failure, I regret to say, rubs off on Craig a little bit. It’s good but it could and should have been a lot better if it had been about silky Craig-as-Fat Boy Slim Chris Walken dancing and shuffling around several Paris nabes, it could have been ten or fifteen times better.”

“Beetlejuice” in 1.37

by

From Mark Salisbury‘s “Burton on Burton“: “Warner Bros. management disliked the title Beetlejuice and wanted to call the film House Ghosts. As a joke, Burton suggested Scared Sheetless and was horrified when the studio actually considered using it.”

Just $1 million of Beetlejuice‘s $15 million budget was spent on visual effects, which included stop motion, replacement animation, prosthetic makeup, puppetry and blue screen. It was always Burton’s intention to make the style similar to the B-grade movies he grew up with. Burton: ‘I wanted to make them look cheap and purposely fake-looking.”

Wiki: “Test screenings geenrated positive responses, and prompted Burton to film an epilogue in which Beetlejuice angers a dead witch doctor.”

“Babylon” Bursting Water Pipes

by

I was told several months ago that Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon is a highly energetic, epic-sized smorgasbord (188 minutes!) in which the excesses of The Wolf of Wall Street serve the basic story template of Singin’ in the Rain (i.e., Hollywood transitioning from silents to sound).

Other influences, according to one who saw a rough cut last spring, were John Schlesinger‘s The Day of the Locust, the orgy sequence from Eyes Wide Shut, and maybe a dash or two of Steven Spielberg’s 1941.

But in the wake of last night’s Academy screening, I’m hearing from one viewer that it’s basically a three-character Great Gatsby film (set primarily in the late 1920s) blended with a grotesque version of American Hustle. Brad Pitt, Diego Calva and Margot Robbie respectively play fading movie star Jack Conrad, ambitious industry climber Manny Torres and the Clara Bow-like Nellie LaRoy — a trio analogous to Gatsby‘s Jay, Nick and Daisy. And it has a delightful ending, I’m told. And it’s true that sometimes a really good ending can save a film.

On the other hand Babylon is all woked up and seemingly angled at Zoomers, who all insist on angelic people of color (in this instance Jovan Adepo‘s trumpet-playing Sidney Palmer, Li Jun Li‘s Anna May Wong-inspired Lady Fay Zhu) being marginalized and pushed to the side by evil whites. The minorities are just their skin color and type because that is how we’re trained to see them now — “gay”, “Asian”, “Black”, “Mexican-American”…check check check.

“You don’t watch Babylon — you endure it,” says a friend. “Chazelle took a lot of risks…it’s such a daring film and Damien goes all the way with it, and one can’t help but be impressed by the end. But it’s really hard to watch…at times very gross, loud, shrill, too long…they all scream their lines. Pitt’s character is the only one you really feel for…Robbie may have pushed it too hard….Diego just stares.”

“Fabelmans” Fess-Up Time

by

So who’s seen The Fabelmans and what’s your reaction? Mine was “well made and engaging as far as it goes, but too long, flagrantly ‘acted’ and not, at the end of the day, hugely interesting on its own story terms. Knowing that it’s Spielberg’s saga is what holds us, of course, but what if it wasn’t about Spielberg’s formative years? How would it play if it was just a movie about a boomer kid who wanted to make movies from an early age? The only parts that really sing are the teenaged filmmaking moments in the Arizona desert, and the ending at Radford Studios.”

Jay Leno as Ed Sullivan?

by

HE is relieved to report that that Jay Leno isn’t doing too badly following a skin-scorching accident that happened in his garage. The 72-year-old comedian and car aficionado said, “I got some serious burns from a gasoline fire [but] I’m okay. Just need a week or two to get back on my feet.”

The incident reminded me that Leno is playing Ed Sullivan of all people in Sara Sugerman‘s Midas Man, a drama about the life of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

Leno looks nothing like Sullivan, nothing at all. Sullivan was a short, slender-built fellow with a narrow face, and his hair was darkish and slicked back with Brylcream — a physical polar opposite of what Leno looks like now with his heavyish face, lantern jaw and white hair.

All Hail “Greaser’s Palace”

by

Chris Smith and Robert Downey‘s Sr. (Netflix, 12.2) is currently enjoying a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 77% rating on Metacritc.

“Respect for Robert Downey’s Genius Dad,” posted on 7.7.21: “Hollywood Elsewhere salutes Robert Downey Sr., the once-legendary director of iconoclastic, guerilla-style, counter-culture stoner classics like Putney Swope (’69) — the deadpan Madison Ave. comedy that put Downey on the map — and Greaser’s Palace (’72), an absurdist western comedy about the second coming of Christ.

Not to mention lesser Downey efforts like Chafed Elbows, Pound, an adaptation of David Rabe‘s Sticks and Bones, Up The Academy, Too Much Sun and Hugo Pool.

Downey died in his sleep earlier today (7.7) at his Manhattan home. He was 85.

I interviewed Downey 24 and 1/2 years ago during the ’97 Sundance Film Festival, where Hugo Pool had its big debut. Nobody thought it was very good (including Downey Sr. himself), but the man was such a legend that all the journalists wanted to chat with him. My sit-down happened at a Hugo Pool party at a handsome chalet-type home in Park City, sometime in the mid to late evening. Downey Sr. was 61 at the time and brimming with personality — fleet, funny and wise. (And totally white-haired.) I liked him immediately, and felt honored to have been given my 20 minutes.

It can’t be over-emphasized what a huge counter-cultural deal Putney Swope was when it first broke; ditto Greaser’s Palace three years later. I’m not saying these films don’t “work” according to classic or present-day sensibilities, but they were much funnier and significantly enhanced if you were ripped.

Here’s a pretty good q & a (“Six Decades of Robert Downey Sr.“) from Interview‘s Kaleem Aftab, posted on 12.8.14.

I’ve never forgotten the silly sexual current in Herv Villechaize’s gay cowboy scene in Greaser’s Palace. Stanley Gottlieb‘s performance as Villechaize’s cabin-partner “Spitunia” is a classic. Villechaize was 28 or 29 when this scene was shot; he killed himself at age 51.

A Putney Swope Bluray popped on 7.2.19.