LETTER FROM HE to WES ANDERSON, SENT AT 4:55 PM EASTERN:

Wes,

When filmmakers and actors have lately (i.e., since 2017) been accused of unsavory off-screen behaviors, it’s become the fashion for colleagues to throw them under the bus and run for tall grass.  Sadly, deplorably.

Example:  Timothee Chalamet‘s chickenshit response following accusations of Woody Allen‘s long-refuted issues with Mia and Dylan after starring in Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York.

I therefore genuinely admire your reply to questions about allegations of questionable behavior on the part of Bill Murray during the filming of Aziz Ansari‘s Being Mortal. Hats off, crisp salute.

Jeff

Excerpt from 6.12 IndieWire piece by Samantha Bergeson, titled “Wes Anderson Is Standing by Bill Murray Amid Sexual Misconduct Claims Against The Actor“:

“Asteroid City filmmaker and frequent Murray collaborator Anderson told IndieWire’s Eric Kohn that the allegations against Murray will in no way impact their working relationship:

“My experience with Bill is so extensive. Bill was such a great supporter of me from the very beginning. I don’t want to speak about somebody else’s experience, but he’s really part of my family. You know, he’s my daughter’s godfather. In fact, he actually baptized her. He’s the one who splashed the water.”

For the first time, you might want to listen to a drag queen. pic.twitter.com/o2r9jbbUak

— Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) June 12, 2023

A new expression entered my vocabulary yesterday — “hate-eating.” That’s when you’ve ordered something you really don’t like but you eat it anyway because it would be too much toil and trouble to send it back. That was me yesterday, sitting inside the Spicy Moon cafe and eating the worst-tasting vegetable dumplings I’ve ever had in my life. I wrote yesterday that they tasted like “hot mashed-up Brussels sprouts and filled with a kind of seaweed green gloop.”

HE commenter Zoey Rose: “Seriously Jeff, look for the things you enjoy [and] not the things you hate. Time on this planet is winding down so why not find pleasures in life instead of being the epitome of the cliched old fart complaining about kids,” blah blah.

HE to Zoey Rose: “Speak for yourself regarding the ‘winding down’ of time. Nothing’s winding down on this end, I can tell you. And what do you know of the future, by the way? About as much as anyone else does, which isn’t much except for generalities.”

If there’s one serving of advice I have consistently rejected and in fact despised all my life, it’s “invest in love rather than disdain,” “glass half full rather than half-empty,” “always look on the bright side,” etc.

Do you think Mark Twain or George Orwell or Paul Morrissey ever bought into that happy-faced crap?

I’ve always looked at things as they are or seem to be, and free of vibes of forced smiley-face happiness or rose-colored glasses or any of that jazz. Life is not Disneyland.

Yesterday’s world of the streets of the Lower East Side — warmer than warm, in some ways bland, shade-less, somewhat sticky and certainly dreary — was what it fucking was. It was certainly no cultural blessing to be there, I can tell you. The architecture mostly lacked intrigue and character, certainly compared to the nabes of Paris, Rome, Prague, Bern, Barcelona, Cefalu, San Francisco, etc.

Manhattan has always been a must-to-avoid on summer days. Stay the hell out of town until after Labor Day. They’ve all said that for decades. Nothing cranky about it — just the way it is.

I wrote about the Lower East Side yesterday with exactly the same spirit and attitude with which I wrote about Buenos Aires 18 years ago, in March 2005.

Posted on 2.3.22: “Sometime in 2009 or ’10 I was seated next to Morrissey at a Peggy Siegal luncheon in some plush Manhattan eatery. I recognized him right away, but even if I hadn’t I would’ve felt instantly at home with the sardonic attitude and the seen-it-all, slightly pained facial expressions. I love guys like this. They’ve lived long enough and have met enough people of consequence to know that much of what constitutes modern life (even in a first-class town like New York City) is distasteful or disappointing or phony. And yet they soldier on with their squinty smiles and witty asides.”

F train choker Daniel Penny didn’t exactly act heroically on 5.1.23, but he did, I think, act bravely and selflessly in deciding to restrain the belligerent Jordan Neely. What’s in dispute is whether or not the amount of force he used was needlessly excessive.

All along I’ve felt that Penny should have shown more caution in trying to restrain Neely. I don’t think he intended to kill this allegedly threatening, mentally unstable guy. I think the situation just got away from Penny, and before he knew it (five minutes — three minutes captured on video) Neely was dead.

It’s very easy to make Monday morning armchair judgments, and it’s a different thing altogether when you’re in a tough situation in the heat of the moment. Neely was, by all accounts, sounding and acting like a dangerous asshole, and if I had been in that subway car a voice is telling me I wouldn’t have had any objection to Penny holding him down.

There are people, of course, who will accuse me of coming from a racist place — me and and others holding a similar opinion. I don’t agree, of course. If you start shit by scaring people and acting like a dangerous asshole, you’re obviously asking for trouble. What happened wasn’t entirely Neely’s fault but it was mostly his.

That said, Penny should have shown more caution as Neely didn’t deserve to die. Then again it’s very easy to say whatever from the comfort of a home or an office.

Daniel Penny is a hero.pic.twitter.com/3EYtithrac

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) June 12, 2023

…are not, I would say, “impressive” in their appearance. Not by any conventional standard.

The percentage of serious standouts by average go-getter criteria —- people who seemed unusually attractive or were exceptionally cool dressers or possessed of a certain X-factor special-tude — seemed miniscule. Most of them looked like Ukrainians who’d been living through bombings. Plain, drained, unexceptional, stressed, diminished, haggard…in some instances like the ragged end of nowhere.

Very few looked like Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, Darren Aronofsky, Lady Gaga, young James Cagney, young Walter Matthau, Harvey Keitel’s “Sport” in Taxi Driver, Lou Reed, Rosario Dawson, Jim Carroll, Ben Gazzara, Sidney Lumet, Luís Guzman, Alan King, young Joe Dallesandro, Hilly Kristal, Liev Schreiber, etc.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon eyeballing people on First, Second and Third Avenues, mostly south of 12th Street and north of 4th Street, and mostly I was muttering to myself “these people don’t look like finalists or dynamic achievers or upper-echelon types…the older ones look like stooped-over schlubs and the 20somethings seem older than their (apparent) years.”

And fairly horribly dressed for the most part — dreary shorts, nothing T-shirts, sandals and slip-ons…an absence of style, normcore drab. And relatively few looked like workout Nazis…bulky, scrawny, pudgy, drinker bods.

Okay, it was warm and humid and, Sunday being Sunday, nobody was trying to look their best but still…

Mick Jagger ‘78:”To live in this town, you must be tough tough tough tough tough tough tough.” Jeffrey Wells ‘23: “Lower East Siders look creased and worn to the nub nub nub nub nub nub nuhb.”

I’m comparing Lower East Siders to rank-and-file residents of West Hollywood, where I lived for nearly 40 years, and Venice, where I lived for three years, and Westfield, where I grew up, and Wilton, where I went to high school and where I currently live. I’m sorry but the people of these towns all looked (or currently look) better — healthier, less hassled, good genes, a certain spiritual buoyancy, etc.

Sorry but these were my impressions.

I was so full of despair this afternoon, I decided to really sink into the swamp by visiting Spicy Moon, the vegetarian Asian food cafe on East 6th between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

The owner, June Kwan, is the mother of EEAAO’s co-director and co-writer Daniel Kwan.

Few films have made me feel more sick in the soul…a deeply loathed Oscar-winner that truly heralded the apocalypse. If and when the waiter hands me a paper check, I’m going to write “good food but no fan of the film!”…something like that.

Honestly? I didn’t much care for the vegetable dumplings. They tasted like hot mashed-up Brussels sprouts and were filled with a kind of seaweed green gloop. Did I leave a nice tip anyway? Yes, but…

Chris Christie is, of course, like many politicians, a transactional opportunist, but of all the declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination right now, Christie is the only one to call a spade a spade as far as Donald Trump‘s sociopathic conduct and mentality are concerned.

All the other candidates are too afraid of alienating the MAGA voters — only Christie is manning up by saying “this guy is really truly bad news.”

Steve Schmidt: “There’s a lack of appreciation about how quickly democracies, indeed our democracy, can fail….one side is completely delusional and fantastical, generating constant propaganda all the time…we’re in the middle of a backlash…we are living through a backlash…if an extremist movement took power once, it can happen again, and if it does again, our demoocracy as we’ve known it will be over.”

Two or three years old. Blown water pump, late ’60s, Bakersfield, watermelons…before cell phones…Chevron gas card…fried chicken, corn on the cob, “keep the faith,” etc.