Jeff Wells

Dahmer Depravity

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All ten episodes of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s Netflix series about Jeffrey Dahmer, the infamous serial killer of 17 men and boys during the ’80s, begin streaming on Wednesday, 9.21. Evan Peters plays Dahmer; the costars include Richard Jenkins and Penelope Ann Miller (as his parents) and Molly Ringwald (as his sister).

The question for me (and, I suspect, for millions of others) is why isn’t the title simply Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story? Why did the producers decide they had to include his last name twice in the same title? Why, in other words, are they calling it Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story? That’s what’s known as a committee title.

The limited series began filming in late winter of 2021, or a year and a half ago. Tatiana landed a non-speaking part as a Dahmer attorney. Sporting conservative attorney hair and straight-laced business attire, she spent two or three days shooting a courtroom scene, sitting the whole time next to Peters. I’ve seen sitting on this casting news for a long time, and can now finally reveal it.

“Web-Toed Metaphor for American Dream Gone Bad”

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“Jerry! Sandra showed me some your fiction and your awards, and I have to say ‘powerful stuff.’ Almost too powerful. I’m wondering if your mind can function down on our level. I grew up in Pacific Grove, and I started reading…what’s his name?…I started reading Steinbeck when I was nine. [Tossing a script on the table.] Here’s a piece of shit, Jerry. I wrote and re-wrote it, but it ain’t workin’. If you can make it work, you’re on…okay?”

Some of us remember Permanent Midnight (Artisan, 9.16.98), a mild-mannered addiction dramedy in which Ben Stiller played author and screenwriter Jerry Stahl.

I thought this pitch-meeting scene with Fred Willard as the creator of Mr. Chompers was quietly hilarious in a deadpan way, mainly because I didn’t sense an effort on anyone’s part (least of all director-writer David Veloz) to make it feel funny. It just was.

Permanent Midnight opened a quarter century ago, and I’m suddenly thinking I’d like to give it another spin.

I was at People at the time, and in an early draft I happened to pass along that Stiller, who needed to look like an emaciated addict, had lost weight by adhering to Dick Gregory’s Bahamian Diet powder, which Stahl had ironically referred to as the “junkie diet.”

Instantly alarmed by the term, Stiller’s team (including producer Don Murphy and publicist Kelley Bush) ganged up on me during a conference call. I was merely amused by Stahl’s term and thought it was okay to mention considering that Stiller was playing a brilliant opiate addict, etc. The term was deleted, of course.

Has this Permanent Midnight recollection stirred any poignant memories?

14th Row Seating?

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President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrived a little bit late for the Westminster Abbey funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Which was rude — let’s be honest. And so the Bidens had to wait to be seated — understandably.

I realize that over 500 foreign heads of state, monarchs and dignitaries attended the event, and that a certain seating protocol is enforced when it comes to major funerals of this sort. But it still seems a bit odd that the President of the United States would be seated in the 14th row. A slight diminishment or vague insult of some kind. No?

I hate posting about this because Orange Plague made a thing out of it, but let’s imagine a similar fictitious British scenario. It’s June 1962, let’s suppose, and President Kennedy is attending a Westminster Abbey funeral for, let’s say, the recently departed Prime Minister Harold MacMillan (who actually passed in 1986). I somehow can’t accept that JFK would have been seated in the 14th row.

Biden works out and takes care of himself, I realize, but if I were he I would make a greater effort to walk like I’m in my mid ’50s or thereabouts. I would summon all my strength and make a greater effort not to sway ever so slightly and shuffle along like a geezer.

Respectful “Fuck It” Aesthetic

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On a 2001 Charlie Rose Show about Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Christiane Kubrick was asked to define a certain personality trait or mental attitude that genius-level filmmakers seem to share in common. She said this is unknowable and therein lies the fascination.

HE says “holdupski.” HE defines that mindset as an educated “fuck it” thing…mindful and respectful of artistic history and precedent, but not especially intimidated by same…an attitude that says “okay, these other filmmakers did it this or that way and that’s fine, but I’m here now and this is my film so fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

In a phrase, a genius artist is often possessed of a certain kind of reverent irreverence.

Every major-league director I’ve spoken with in person over the decades (and we’re talking quite a few) shares this trait.

While watching this I was also struck by how radiantly young the 59 year-old Martin Scorsese looked during this taping, certainly compared to now. Guys in their 50s and even their early 60s can look really great if they’ve watched their diets and haven’t done too many drugs in their youth. And it’s believed that Scorsese, remember, was a total cokehead in the mid ’70s so he came out of that dungeon without too many bruises.

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Three Years Ago and Change

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Posted on 8.7.19: “Speaking as an X-factor white guy from a middle-class New Jersey and Connecticut upbringing, I don’t feel repelled or disgusted by my Anglo-Saxon heritage and family history.

“I deeply regret the cruelty visited upon immigrants and various cultures of color by whites, naturally, but the fact that racist or tribal attitudes were common throughout most of the 20th, 19th and 18th Centuries in this country and for centuries earlier in Europe, the Middle East and even Africa doesn’t mean that white people (more particularly my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, reaching back to the mid 1800s) were inherently evil.

“By current standards my ancestors may seem insufficiently evolved, agreed, but they were born into a certain culture and were dealt certain cards, and most carried the weight as best they could. They weren’t born with hooves, tails and horns on their heads.

“Nor do I feel that elemental decency is absent among the majority of white people today. Okay, among middle to upper-middle-class coastals.

I feel profoundly repelled by the attitudes of your backwater Trump supporters, of course, but they are not me or my own. I come from a family of “good”, well-educated, imperfect people who had their occasional issues (including alcoholism) but believed in hard work, discipline, spring cleaning, ironing their own shirts and trimming the hedges and mowing the lawn on Saturday afternoons, and who exuded decency and compassion for the most part.”

Updated: I am not the devil’s spawn, and neither are my two sons and certainly not my granddaughter. I’ve witnessed and dealt with ignorant behavior all my life, but I’ve never bought into the idea of Anglo-Saxon culture being inherently evil. Please.

Frank Thring’s Pontius Pilate by way of Gore Vidal: “Where there is great striving, great government or power, even great feeling or compassion, error also is great. We progress and mature by fault. Perfect freedom has no existence. The grown man knows the world he lives in.”

“Lands Beyond”

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A 9.19 Hollywood Reporter article by Rebecca Sun recounts the highlights of Saturday’s (9.17) Academy tribute to Sacheen Littlefeather.

The 75 year-old Native American activist became famous 49 years ago when she conveyed Marlon Brando‘s refusal to accept his Best Actor Godfather Oscar, an act meant as a protest over how negative depictions of Native Americans in Hollywood films.

A portion of the fourth paragraph in Sun’s piece is curiously worded. Saturday’s event “was a nearly two-hour program,” she writes, “attended by a mixed crowd of people indigenous to and originating from lands beyond what is now known as the United States.” Does “beyond what is now known as the United States” mean Canada, Alaska and Mexico? Or, more simply, the North American continent?

Sun seems to basically be saying that the lands and cultures that existed before the United States of Whiteman came along were more spiritually rooted and wholesome.

Littlefeather: “I’m crossing over soon to the spirit world. And you know, I’m not afraid to die. Because we come from a we/us/our society. We don’t come from a me/I/myself society. And we learn to give away from a very young age. When we are honored, we give.”

Littlefeather has the right idea in a sense. We all love the idea of reuniting with deceased loved ones when we pass on, but if there’s one aspect of life that I’ve always understood to be an absolutely solitary journey, it’s dying. Merging with the infinite and the altogether is a glorious notion, of course, but you do have to cross that suspended footbridge all on your lonesome.

Billboard Chris vs. Hyper Zoomer Girl

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This 9.17.22 video, shot by “Year Zero with Wesley Yang“, is an argument about gender ideology between Billboard Chris (the billboard says “children cannot consent to puberty blockers“) and hyper Zoomer girl with the white glasses. It could be an interesting discussion if you could hear more of what they’re saying, but the jet planes keep roaring overhead. I’m with Billboard Chris…sorry.

“Blonde” Having To Defend Itself From Hard Lefties

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A 9.17 IndieWire piece by Samantha Bergeson has attacked Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, 9.28) for being pro-life. I’m presuming that others in the wokester press membrane have had similar concerns. The objection is over a scene in which an unborn fetus talks to Marilyn Monroe / Norma Jean from inside her womb and asks her not to kill again, as she did during a previous abortion.

Excerpt: “The fetus who actually speaks to Monroe while she is gardening and asks if she will ‘do the same’ to it as she did to the other, i.e. terminate her pregnancy — results in a violently bloody miscarriage after Monroe trips over a rock at the beach and collapses in sand.

“Dominik [has] categorized his film as capturing ‘what it’s like to go through the Hollywood meat-grinder’ and [has] bragged that his magnum opus is ‘like Citizen Kane and Raging Bull had a baby daughter’…one who seems to have grown up to be Amy Coney Barrett.”

Industry friendo to HE: “Is Blonde a rightwing pro-life movie? That scene where the unborn fetus asks Merilyn not to kill again? This is a film from one of the most progressive production companies in the business. So I find it very surprising.”

HE argument: “As Blonde is completely absorbed by the mentality and emotions of Marilyn/Norman Jean, it’s reasonable to presume that the talking fetus is from her own imagination…that the guilt-wracked actress is hearing the fetus talk to her and beg for its life…it’s not crazy to interpret this as a reflection of Marilyn’s own thinking and is not as agenda being put forth by Andrew Dominik.”

“Fabelmans” Is On Best Picture Path

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It’s no surprise that Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans has nabbed the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice award, given the glowing reviews and all. The People’s Choice award is a strong indicator of across-the-board appeal. Then again previous winners have included Belfast, Jojo Rabbit, Room, The Imitation Game, Precious, etc. So you never really know.

“Some People Are Shits”

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Imagine if the beloved Martin Scorsese had announced that Killers of the Flower Moon will be his last film and that he’ll henceforth he’d be devoting himself to novel-writing. Or if, God forbid, James Cameron or Kathryn Bigelow or Alexander Payne or Guillermo del Toro were to announce the same.

Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, trust me, would almost certainly collect a few admiring quotes from colleagues while lamenting the eclipse of a great and prodigious talent. Their stories would also list some of his or her more luminous career highlights.

So what did the trades publish in response to Woody Allen’s announcement that he’ll be retiring from filmmaking after he completes work on his 50th film, a Paris-based dramedy that’s allegedly in the vein of Match Point? They mainly recited police-blotter stuff — dry, flat summaries of how Allen’s career has been diminished in the eyes of wokesters and the mainstream press over the past few years due to Dylan Farrow‘s account of what allegedly happened on 8.4.92 with no logical counter-views, and how Amazon cut him loose, his autobiography was dropped by Hachette and he’s had to rely on European financing, etc.

In so doing Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have effectively said the following: (a) “Well, it’s not surprising that Allen is finally throwing in the towel,” (b) “We can’t honestly say that we’re distraught over this news” and (c) “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea that Allen goes away and stays away, considering his current reputation.”

On 7.28.22 Indiewire‘s Christian Zilko and Ryan Lattanzio reported that Allen had told Alec Baldwin that he was thinking of retiring, and they posted the same kind of chilly summary.

HE to Variety‘s Anna Marie de la Fuente, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Ryan Gajewski, the Indiewire team and their editors (along with all the others who’ve posted similar remarks): “No offense, guys, but you’re showing disrespect in a way that strikes most of us as odious and repellent. You honestly make me want to throw up.

“Allen is incontestably a great filmmaker — a man of considerable genius and relentless innovative creativity, a guy whose output has enhanced the quality and worldliness of American cinema over the last 55 years, and whose sterling reputation as a filmmaker will be remembered and cherished long after the authors and editors of these repulsive trade articles will have died and been forgotten.

“This is a man, remember, who made 15 great or near-great films over a 45-year period (starting in the mid ’70s and ending in the early 20teens) — Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris (15).

Not to mention 18 others that most of us regard as sturdy and respectable — What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Sleeper, Love and Death, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Radio Days, Another Woman, Alice, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown, Small Time Crooks, Melinda and Melinda, Irrational Man, Blue Jasmine.

Only one other world-class director has cranked out as many first-rate films over a period that lasted over half a century — Alfred Hitchcock.

How dare you dismiss this man with your implied derision and disdain? Do you understand that in the greater scheme of things Allen is a man of considerable wit and vision and artistic consequence and that you and yours, comparatively speaking, are insects?

Woody Announces Retirement From Movies

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Woody Allen has stated that his currently-lensing, Paris-based film will be his last. He told La Vanguardia, a storied Spanish publication, that we will not make any more films “in principle“, but that he plans to write his first novel.

Quote: “My idea, in principle, is not to make more movies and focus on writing these stories and, well, now I’m thinking more of a novel.” He added that he does not plan to publish more memoirs.

Smart-asses and Woody haters will say that his retirement decision was made for him years ago, and that the U.S. film industry retired or “cancelled” Allen over the Dylan thing back in the mid to late teens. That’s bullshit, of course. If he wanted to Allen could continue to make features for as long as he’s physically able.

I think having made 49 films, at least one-third of which are excellent and other third are regarded as very good to diverting to mildly approvable…that’s an extremely honorable track record, all things considered.

I’ve missed a couple but…

Allen’s Greatest (sequential order): Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris (15).

Solid Goods: What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Sleeper, Love and Death, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Radio Days, Another Woman, Alice, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown, Small Time Crooks, Melinda and Melinda, Irrational Man, Blue Jasmine. (18)

Pretty Good, Moderately Appealing, Mezzo-Mezzo: Shadows and Fog, Cassandra’s Dream, Whatever Works, Hollywood Ending, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Anything Else, To Rome with Love, Magic in the Moonligh, Café Society, Wonder Wheel. (10)

Not So Hot: Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Scoop, Rifkin’s Festival. (3)