Jeff Wells

Jeff and Sasha chatted up the latest last night around dinner hour.

Three topics mostly. One, the complete toastification of Emilia Perez‘s Karla Sofía Gascón over the last few days. Two, how and why Demi Moore‘s Best Actress candidacy will probably benefit the most from Gascon’s calamity, even though the narrative she presented at last month’s Golden Globes ceremony is essentially false**. And three, the Saturday report that the third member of the deceased Blackhawk crew (and likely pilot) was 28 year-old Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, of Durham, North Carolina.

We mainly focused on Gascon’s all-but-collapsed Best Actress campaign. Which was triggered by a one-two punch. On 1.28 she contended that I’m Still Here‘s Fernanda Torres, a competing Best Actress nominee, was allied with people who had attacked Gascon online. Soon after some old, highly unfortunate Gascon tweets surfaced, persuading many that she holds bigoted views about Muslims and African Americans.

Why didn’t Netflix staffers scrub Gascon’s Twitter/X account for possibly offensive terms early on? Dereliction of duty, man.

THR‘s Scott Feinberg has described Gascon as “completely toxic…At this point, Mel Gibson is probably more popular in town.”

Worse, IndieWire‘s Ryan Lattanzio has said that he thinks Gascon “may be dragging down Emilia Perez with her.”

** Jeff and Sasha strongly contend that Anora‘s Mikey Madison should win the Best Actress Oscar, and not Demi Moore.

Posted on 1.9.25: “Over the last 40 years Moore wasn’t pushed and bullied into a mainstream megaplex career. I’ve never read or heard that she tried to prove her arthouse mettle by appearing in edgy Sundance films, and as far as I know she wasn’t kept down and put in a confining box by big, bad studio execs — she went for big, attention-getting, high-paying roles in mainstream films, and she became rich and famous and lived a very flush life. She chose this path while the choosing was good.

“She did Brat Pack roles, sexy hottie parts, romantic relationship roles, femme fatale roles…Blame It on Rio, St. Elmo’s Fire, About Last Night…, Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, Striptease, The Scarlet Letter, The Juror, G.I. Jane. True, she played a small part in the arthousey Margin Call but that was 14 years ago, after her career flame had cooled. And last year she did Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

“In short, Moore never even tried to be in a critically-approved, Cannes-worthy, outside-the-box feminist statement film, and certainly not in a body-horror film. She only took the lead in The Substance when she calculated that she’d aged out (duhhh) and a role like this was her only likely shot at prominence, just like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford signed up for hag horror in the ’60s.”

CBS News has reported that two bodies — a man and a woman — were recovered yesterday (i.e., Friday) from the wreckage of the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into a commercial airplane near Reagan Airport three days ago.

The deceased woman was the phantom co-pilot who was commanding the Blackhawk — “phantom” becauese the Army isn’t releasing her name at the request of her family. The apparent idea is to keep her identity an indefinite secret.

Why the mysterious suppression of this woman’s identity? As the unnamed woman was reportedly piloting the chopper, she was almost certainly to blame for the recent Potomac tragedy.  Her family is presumably concerned about some sort of negative blowback, but who knows?

The other body is believed to be that of Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Loyd Eaves. The body of the third member of the flight, Staff. Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, was recovered a day or two ago.

I wrestled this morning with whether or not to discuss this situation. Was there any way I could write about the phantom female pilot, I asked myself, without sounding like a MAGA asshat, which I really don’t believe myself to be?  (I’m a sensible left-centrist.) What is the soundest explanation for the family’s no-name request? I’m asking.

Variety‘s Katcy Stephan: “I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad,” Emilia Perez costar Zoe Saldana said earlier today in London. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [Gascon’s unfortunate tweets], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.

“I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part…of this film, and my interactions with inclusivity and collaboration…racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me. It saddens me that we are having to face this setback right now.”

Anyone who uses the phrase “[blank product] is taking the country by storm”…avoid these people for the rest of your life and into the next. Anyone, really, who uses the term “by storm” in any context. YouTube narrators, salespersons, copywriters…among the worst people on the planet.

In that 1.29 Hollywood Reporter profile of Babygirl‘s Harris Dickinson, Seija Rankin writes that it’s “dawning” on the 28-year-old Dickinson “that broader fame is coming for him, and he’s not sure he’s ready for it.”

HE to Dickinson: Nobody’s “ready” for anything. You obviously wanted this, and you speak with a great London street accent, and now you’ve got it so no whining. You just have to jump into your local shark-filled pond or into the heaving, big-time sea and swim as best you can. If you don’t paddle like a sonuvabitch you’ll sink like a stone, but then you knew that.

…more than people laughing uproariously or otherwise too hard, too demonstratively, giggling like idiots, rocking back and forth, slapping their thighs, covering their mouths with their right hand, going “hoo-hoo-hoo” and “yee-hee-hee”…all of this is truly horrible.

Have you ever seen any serious, heavy-cat comedians laugh like this? Woody Allen will crack an occasional grin or smirk, but never, ever has he yee-hawed in some over-the-top way. People who know what goes never laugh like this. Only shallow gladhanders do. Only the worst people.

Or at least to grin broadly with great pleasure. This scene from A History of Violence, which I’ve watched a good 10 or 12 times (twice in theatres, three or four times on Bluray, several times on YouTube) has never failed to lighten my load.

Posted eight years ago: William Hurt‘s short speech last night in Santa Barbara on behalf of Isabelle Huppert was a quiet corker. His remarks were clearly directed at the horrific political climate being generated out of the White House these days; more than a few came up to Hurt later and said “great speech!”

Hurt costarred with Huppert in Ned Benson‘s The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (’12). Plus he’s fluent in French and owns (or at least owned the last time I checked) a residence not far from Paris.

During the after-party we spoke about LSD, Altered States (i.e., Paddy Chayefsky vs. Ken Russell), Buddhism (a few years ago Hurt took a Columbia course in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and computer science), Hank Paulson (whom Hurt played in 2011’s Too Big To Fail), etc.

I need a new hate angle on Disney’s Snow White. Critical Drinker‘s new video rant is fine but I can’t parrot his opinion. Rachel Zegler‘s trashing of Donald Trump happened last November. It’s now early February….what’s a new way into this horror?

All I can think of is that the march of time and the turning of the cultural wheel have passed Snow White by. It was hatched in the woke orgy of early 20s militant feminism, and now it’s out of style and out of synch.

Go away Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot…go away, dwarves…everyone hates you. Bob Iger stated in December’23 that the woke Disney thing is over and done with, and now here we are 14 months later. The blade is about to drop.

Snow White is going to be impaled on a pitchfork when it opens in mid March. It’s going to be swallowed and spun around by a hate tornado, and I for one can’t wait for this to happen.

Wiki excerpt about Zegler’s Palestinian allegiance: “In October 2024, Zegler said, ‘We’re nearing one year since the horrendous attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, but I’ve been following this conflict for so many years. Like so many people, I’m so heartbroken by the loss of life that we’re seeing with these insane death tolls coming out of both regions.”

[MAGA-related]: “Zegler criticized those who voted to re-elect former U.S. president Donald Trump following the 2024 United States presidential election, and made an obscene reference to the president-elect. Zegler later issued a public apology in response, saying that she meant no harm with her message while offering a call for peace: ‘I let my emotions get the best of me. Hatred and anger have caused us to move further and further away from peace and understanding, and I am sorry I contributed to the negative discourse. This week has been emotional for so many of us, but I firmly believe that everyone has the right to their opinion, even when it differs from my own. I am committed to contributing positively towards a better tomorrow.”

Let’s raise a glass to under-spoken, less-is-more performances — to the mystique of characters who say relatively little and are all the more intriguing for their absence of verbosity. Or at least the mystique of backing away from blabber-mouth conversing unless a character really has something to say. Make it count.

We all know that Steve McQueen specialized in this kind of performance, especially in The Sand Pebbles (’66). It’s also recognized that young Warren Beatty tried to deliver this kind of thing in Robert Rossen‘s Lilith (’64) and Arthur Penn‘s Mickey One (’65).

What other actors or performances have conveyed this man-of-few-words, heavy-cat aesthetic? Over the last 40 or 45 years, I mean.

I’m sure I’m forgotting several examples, but for some reason all I can think of right now is Géza Röhrig, the Hungarian actor who plays Jesus of Nazareth in Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind, in László Nemes‘ Son of Saul (’15).

We all know you can very easily get into trouble with kneejerk wokesters for saying the “wrong” thing or for using the “wrong” term.

If you know how wokesters think, you know they’re not only unable to consider context but are intensely opposed to it. All they care about is whether or not an alleged verbal offender has used a trigger word or not.

Four and a half years ago Emilia Perez star and Best Actress nominee Karla Sofia Gascon tweeted a comment about the late George Floyd, and in so doing alluded to racist attitudes about people of color by citing “those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights.”

She was lamenting the fact that some people harbor such attitudes, but kneejerk wokesters, as noted, don’t care about context. In their brilliant deductive minds, any Oscar nominee who uses a derisive term like “monkeys” in a sentence that alludes to people of color is flat-out finished…end of story, over and done with, stick a fork in it.

On top of which Gascon referred to Floyd as “a drug addict and a hustler” — a statement that defied a blanket edict in progressive liberal circles that no one is allowed to speak of Floyd as anything but a noble, tragic martyr…a blameless victim of beat-cop racism who was murdered for the foulest of reasons.

“I truly believe that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict and a hustler,” she tweeted, “but his death has served to highlight once again that there are those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and those who consider the police to be murderers. All wrong.”

Gascon will not win the Best Actress Oscar on Sunday, March 2nd…trust me. I don’t think it’s fair because she meant well in that tweet by stating that people who subscribe to simple-minded prejudice are “all wrong“, but she’s history all the same.

Because you can’t say “monkeys”…it’s one of those words that mark you as a dead man (or dead trans person) if it passes your lips. Just as much as certain other racial colloquialisms are verboten.

President Donald Trump nominated Kash Patel to be the new FBI Director for one reason primarily — he wants a vengeful, anti-woke, anti-lefty, prosecutorial attack dog.

From HE commenter Fabio Silva (posted today):

“While doing press in Brazil Karla Sofía Gascón accused the “Fernanda Torres team” (i.e., those representing Walter Salles‘ I’m Still Here, in which Torres stars) and “those around her” (her words) of talking badly about her and Emilia Pérez in social media, adding that this “says more about them and their picture than about herself (Karla)”.

“While Oscar campaigns are known to be dirty, and I certainly wouldn’t put my hand in the fire for Sony Pictures in this occasion, this is the first time that I can remember in which a major nominee has accused a fellow nominee by name [of playing dirty pool].

“This is a violation of Academy rules.

“Waldemar Dalenogare is a Brazilian journalist and member of the Critic’s Choice Association.”

Essa entrevista aqui é lamentável. Já tinha avisado desde o começo de janeiro: Netflix usa a Karla na linha de frente da campanha para criar uma narrativa que as críticas ao filme não são orgânicas. E aos poucos vão tentando colar isso nos brasileiros. https://t.co/0JvFqaYtRz

— Waldemar Dalenogare (@DalenogareW) January 29, 2025