Originally posted behind HE Plus firewall on 11.21.18: Sometime in ’75 or ’76 a dispute about character and responsibility arose between myself and cartoonist-musician Chance Browne. It stemmed from an accident that happened on a wooded hilly area near the Wilton reservoir. Here’s an account that I believe to be honest and reasonably thorough:

Chance, myself and a likable, somewhat eccentric fellow named Mike Connors (currently living in Madison, Wisconsin) were hiking around the reservoir for some reason. Early fall, pleasant weather. Our nature-tripping motive may have had something to do with Chance having recently bought (or been gifted with) an expensive pair of big binoculars, or nothing to do with this — I can’t recall. But he definitely had them looped around his neck.

I distinctly recall singing Jimmy Cliff‘s “The Harder They Fall” as we strolled around, and Connors joining me at one point. A nice settled vibe.

We eventually rested on a fairly steep hillside. Surrounded by pine trees, pine needles covering the ground. Chance was lying directly in front of me, and Connors was off to my right, occupying roughly the same lattitude. Chance appeared to be napping, but I knew he was just resting his eyes.

The binoculars were resting on Chance’s chest, but the strap wasn’t around his neck. Being the perverse type, I saw an opportunity. I grabbed a longish stick (a sturdy, not overly brittle portion of a tree branch) and leaned over and very carefully hooked the binocular strap with the stick and slowly lifted the binoculars off Chance’s chest.

Connors was watching with amusement. Chance had opened his eyes and was definitely aware of this — he was intrigued with how I’d managed to hook the strap extra gently and just so, and was now about to take possession.

Snap! The stick broke and the binoculars tumbled off Chance’s person and rolled down the hill, which was angled at a good 45 degrees. They rolled and dropped out of sight so quickly we barely had time to react. “There goes $200 fucking dollars!” Chance cried out. We all got up just in time to see his prized possession crashing into a ticket of vines and leaves and fallen branches below, and for all we knew further down the hill and into the water.

Chance angrily told me to retrieve the binocs. For some reason Connors joined me. Chance was yelling at both of us. I naturally felt guilty but not entirely since Chance had gone along with my looping the binocular strap, etc. Connors and I ass-crawled down the hill (it was too steep to stand up) and searched high and low. Alas, to no avail. We looked and looked and looked, but the abyss had swallowed the binocs whole.

Chance told me a while later that he could tell Connors and I were laughing as we scrambled down the hill. I was sorry but I couldn’t help it. Chance had told us how expensive they were so how could we not? Naturally I was doing everything I could to suppress my mirth, not wanting to anger Chance further. I certainly made no sound.

“How could you tell we were laughing?”, I asked. “I could see your shoulder blades moving,” he said.

The next day Chance insisted that I replace the binoculars. I said I felt guilty but that it was half his fault because he didn’t stop me. I added that it wasn’t my intention to send the binocs down the hillside, and that the stick, which again was not dry and brittle but greenish, had snapped of its own accord.

My basic response was that the incident was “an act of God.” I told Chance I was willing to go halfsies ($100) but I didn’t feel wholly responsible. We argued about it but I held my ground, and eventually he dropped it.

One of the most interesting insights into John F. Kennedy‘s insatiable sexual appetite was conveyed by historian Margaret Coit, whom JFK once tried to seduce in the spring of ’53. Coit’s account appeared in Thomas Maier‘s “When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys,” and was excerpted in an 11.2.14 Salon piece:

“After meeting in his office, Coit and Kennedy walked through the empty corridors of the Senate Office Building and got into Jack’s open convertible with its faded blue paint and fair share of dents. They drove wildly through the Washington streets until they reached the rooming house where Coit was staying. She invited him in, thinking he might want to rest for a moment.

“Inside, Jack collapsed on the living room sofa, and then tried to drag Coit down beside him. ‘Don’t be so grabby,’ she said, moving away. ‘This is only our first date. We have plenty of time.’

“Kennedy lifted his head and, for a moment, stared at her with his penetrating gray eyes. ‘But I can’t wait,’ Kennedy insisted. “You see, I haven’t any time.’”

A note that Coit later wrote to Kennedy said the following: “I believe you do have the drive to be President — and the dignity, on occasion — and the brains, and these will provide the mømentum. But who knows where the wild horse will run? There is more in luck and fate than we think, and we can do no more than turn it loose.”

JFK’s attitude was explored and elaborated upon in Thurston Clarke‘s “JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President.” Four passages [the final three are after the jump] are about as good as it gets in this realm:

In a Vulture interview with Rachel Handler, actress Alia Skawkat, known for her heavily freckled face, bee-stung nose and short curly hair, has welcomely dismissed speculation that she and Brad Pitt, whom she’s been randomly photographed with for several months, are doing the hunka-chunka. They are, she says, nothing more than pally-wallies.

Handler #1: “The publicity resulting from the Pitt photos was annoying for Shawkat, [although] the whole thing was ultimately positive from an image perspective, the sort of publicity many a celebrity has quite literally paid for. But the second round of public attention — a video of her with heavy stakes — was painful, especially for a queer woman of color (Shawkat is half-Iraqi).”

Handler #2: “The stories that [pushed] the dating narrative seemed perplexed by the whole thing — the word quirky was used more than once to describe Shawkat. ‘To them it’s like, ‘We don’t get it! This girl is weird! She’s so different! Why are they hanging out?’, [Shawkat] says about the tabloids, laughing. ‘You get too close to the prom king, and all of a sudden, everyone’s like, ‘Well, who is this bitch?’”

Here’s that explanatory prelude to Gone With The Wind if you watch it on HBO Max. The speaker is TCM host and film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, a University of Chicago professor of cinema studies and director of the nonprofit arts organization, Black Cinema House.

Stewart covers all the appropriate and relevant bases except one — the fact that WASP film sophistos have long understood that portions of Gone with the Wind are rife with antiquated racist sentiments, and have therefore ignored this or, if you will, put these aspects into a box and closed the lid shut and stored it in the attic.

Passage that would have made Stewart’s explanation sound even wiser: “X-factor film buffs have been way ahead of the ‘Gone With The Wind is racist’ conversation for decades. For they primarily regard this 1939 epic not as a portrait of the Old South or Antebellum slavery or even a Civil War drama, but as a parable about the deprivations of the Great Depression.

“This cinematic fraternity has long argued out that Margaret Mitchell’s 1937 novel is fundamentally about how life separates the survivors from the victims when the chips are down, and about the necessity of scrappy, hand-to-mouth survival under the cruelest and most miserable of conditions…it basically says ‘only the strongest and the most determined survive.'”

Originally posted on 7.5.09: The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell has listed his ten favorite road movies. Here’s his list coupled with my critiques/reactions, followed by my own top ten:

Howell: 1. It Happened One Night (Wells reaction: Moderately appealing but Frank Capra is thoroughly over by any reasonable 21st Century standard); 2. One Week (Wells reaction: What?); 3. Two-Lane Blacktop (Wells reaction: I bought the Criterion DVD only to realize what a meandering and enervated thing it is, and seriously lacking in visual intrigue); 4. Y tu mama tambien (Wells reaction: perhaps not a top-tenner but a very fine film); 5. Thelma & Louise (Wells reaction: Driving your car over a cliff is a romantic-nihilist-crap finale, but if you’re going to use this don’t gussy it up with slow-mo photography and a personality clip reel); 6. Easy Rider (Wells reaction: definitely a top-tenner); 7. The Sure Thing (Wells reaction: A likable tits-and-zits ’80s movie, nothing more); 8. The Motorcycle Diaries (Wells reaction: 100% agreement); 9. Duel (Wells reaction: Not sprawling or meditative enough to qualify as real road movie); 10. The Cannonball Run (Wells reaction: pure garbage — a choice that insults and degrades the genre).

From Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries.

Wells: 1. The Grapes of Wrath (first because of the compassion and humanity and assertive political current); 2. The Wizard of Oz (the great grandfather of all road movies); 3. Sideways (“I’m not drinkin’ fuckin’ Merlot!” — the kind of line that the Cannonball Run creators didn’t have the creative edge to even consider using); 4. Badlands (“This is the last time I get together with the hell-bent type”); 5. The Last Detail (again — compassion for sympathetic trapped characters + humor + melancholy resolution); 6. Apocalypse Now (a river is a road and vice versa). 7. Little Miss Sunshine (greatest 21st Century road movie thus far); 8. Easy Rider; 9. The Motorcycle Diaires. 10. Rain Man. Honorable Mentions: Planes Trains and Automobiles, Midnight Run, Five Easy Pieces, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Y tu mama tambien, Road Trip, The Straight Story, Fandango.

The generic road-movie definition calls them stories that happen over the course of a journey. As Howell writes, “The characters in transit have to experience some change to their attitudes and outlook, or else the trip is wasted. They have to not just go somewhere, but more importantly, they have to arrive.” Agreed.

Howell’s kicker — “And if they can do it with a smile, all the better” — is where he and I differ. To hell with smiles as ends in themselves. Remember those smiley buttons from the ’80s? The face of emotional fascism. Smirks and frowns are far more trustworthy.

Originally posted behind HE Plus firewall on 4.15.19: My father was the last guy in the world you wanted to watch a movie with. Or at least he was when I was young. He was the Ultimate Moviegoing Killjoy.

Every so often he’d take me to a film, but for some reason he so hated watching films in the usual way (i.e., from the beginning) that we’d never arrive before the film started but always around the three-fourths mark. 20 or 25 minutes before the ending. We’d watch the conclusion, wait for the next show to start, and then watch the three-fourths or four-fifths that we’d missed and then leave at the point where we came in.

In short, my dad’s primary interest was less about enjoying a film and more about not arriving and leaving with the crowd.

This, believe it or not, was what moviegoing was actually like whenever we’d catch something together. All through my toddler days and up until I was eight or nine or whatever. It was almost as if James T. Wells, Jr. was trying to suppress any real feelings of absorption or enjoyment I might have felt or developed.

It was only when I started going to Saturday matinees with friends that I began to appreciate what it was like to see a film from the start and then leave when it was over.

I’ll never forget the thrill of walking into a darkened theatre at age five and being fairly stunned by the titanic size of the screen. Even my father couldn’t diminish that excitement.

My dad would also ruin movie-watching at home. He always insisted on the sound being turned down so low that you couldn’t really hear anything. He had extra-sensitive hearing, my mother told me more than once, due to his WWII experience as a Marine Lieutenant. The ear-splitting sound of bombs and shells exploding nearby as he went up against the Japanese on Guam and Iwo Jima. Okay, sorry and due respect, but in his own way he took this trauma, transformed it and passed it along to his kids.

The vibe was so quiet when we watched a film or a TV show you could barely pay attention to the dialogue. What did that guy say? My father would repeat the line. “Why not just watch with the sound completely turned off?”, I once said in jest. The sarcasm wasn’t appreciated. An argument ensued.

As a result of this I’ve never been able to watch a film with too-low sound. All through the ’70s and even the early ’80s even I would routinely go to management and complain about the whispery dialogue and having to cup my ears, etc. Which wasn’t a neurotic thing on my part. Sound levels actually were pretty low back them, as a rule. Theatre managers figured they were saving money on sound system maintenance. It was like the Curse of Jim Wells had spread throughout the land.

The theatrical release date of Chris Nolan‘s Tenet has been bumped for a second time. Warner Bros. originally slated the time-flip thriller to open on Friday, July 17th….nope! Then it was pushed back to Friday, July 31st…ixnay! Now we’re looking at Wednesday, August 12th.

The recent coronavirus infection spike is the reason, of course. Any bets on Tenet getting bumped again into September or October?

George Szalai, the Hollywood Reporter‘s international business editor, may have faced tough questioning earlier today from #MeToo wokesters. Reports of chanting protests and picketing outside THR‘s London offices could not be confirmed, but there was no question that Szalai had given great offense for failing to mention an alarmed response to the 2020 San Sebastian Film Festival’s decision to premiere Woody Allen‘s latest, Rifkin’s Festival.

Both Variety‘s Jamie Lang and Deadline‘s Tom Grater mentioned “raised eyebrow” reactions. The anti-Woody contingent is apparently irate because Szalai wouldn’t fall in line.

The fact that the Variety and Deadline stories have not only mentioned wokester concern but have used the same term to describe it (i.e., “raised eyebrows”) has raised eyebrows. Both publications are owned by Penske Media Corporation.

A spokesperson for #DeathtoWoodyAllen sent the following statement to Hollywood Elsewhere: “The indifference that Szalai has shown about the urgent matter of Allen’s guilt or innocence in the matter of Dylan Farrow‘s alleged molestation in August 1992 is callous and irresponsible.

“The fact that only #MeToo fanatics believe there’s any truth to Farrow’s and Mia Farrow‘s charge is immaterial. The fact that Szalai and The Hollywood Reporter didn’t even allude to the 1992 allegation or Allen’s reputation in the wake of it indicates blithe disregard for #MeToo and the worldwide…okay, the national community of Allen haters. An investigation is clearly warranted.”

(l. to r.) Woody Allen, Wallace Shawn and Elena Anaya during San Sebastain filming of Rifkin’s Festival during summer of ’19.

from Jamie Lang’s 6.25 Variety story.

from Tom Grater’s 6.25 Deadline story.

HE to NYC Journo Pally: I didn’t get around to watching episode #1 of Perry Mason until a couple of nights ago. It’s an unpleasant sit. Right away I was…well, not repelled but rolling my eyes. Grubby gumshoe, down at the heels, dark vibes, rotely cynical. The writing feels lazy, cheap, second-hand…a long way from Chinatown.

Was the color palette drained or subdued? Actually that’s me — I was drained and subdued. But the images are…I dunno, dim and mucky.

Odious, ugly, distasteful characters being boring, speaking throwaway dialogue (written by series creators Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald), and occasionally bringing pain (or enduring it) in ugly, thoughtless ways.

Inwardly I was moaning “lemme outta here…I can’t watch an hour of this, much less eight episodes’ worth.” But I stuck it out because suffering is part of my job.

This is a period miniseries (set in 1931 Los Angeles) determined to cover you in a noirish atmosphere that emphasizes non-hygienic gunk. Perry Mason, an alcoholic private investigator who’s way too sloppy and stumbling to work as an assistant to J.J. Gittes, is…well, I’ve said it. Living in a fog, a poor judge of character and temperament, separated from his wife and son, a traumatized World War I veteran blah blah.

The story kicks off when grubby Mason is hired by a rich LA businessman to investigate the kidnapping of Charlie Dodson, a baby who turned up dead with his eyes stitched open blah blah.

I really don’t care for Matthew Rhys and that dour, doleful vibe of his, which was a problem in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and is even more of one here. Those dark beady eyes and that small-shouldered frame, those dishrag T-shirts he wears, that tight curly hair and especially that ridiculous two-week beard stubble. Only rummies and hobos walked around with a prominent beard stubble in the 1930s. It’s completely nonsensical that a detective looking to maintain a certain professional appearance would look like that.

Random beefs include (a) Mason taking sex snaps of an obese actor who pays to see his own films in a public theatre?, (b) occasionally sadistic violence, (c) Why is Mason in an odd sexual relationship with that overweight, middle-aged Hispanic woman (Veronica Falcon)? And why would she want to have sex with him? And why does she want to buy his home for $6K? Why would he want to sell?, (d) Mason’s home is next to a small private airport (one of only two elements I liked atmosphere-wise — possibly Van Nuys Airport in SF Valley?) and apparently owns a pair of underfed cows, (e) I also respected the decision to show us the Bunker Hill funicular (also visible in Robert Towne’s Ask The Dust and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly).

But the idea of sitting through seven more episodes of this sordid series…God!

NYC Journo Pally to HE: “Stay with it. I agree that the first episode is just dumping a can of paint on the floor. But the colors take shape in one of the best second episode turnarounds in recent memory. From there the dense plotting and Chinatown light vibe sinks in. Stay on the case.”

Yes, Joe Biden is several points higher than Hillary Clinton was in June 2016, and it obviously looks good for him. But I’ll never forget that feeling of election-night betrayal when I realized Clinton (whom I voted for but never liked all that much) was going to lose. Over and over during the ’16 campaign pollsters said she was safely ahead of Trump. The projections of Steve Bannon aside, even Trump campaign staffers believed that he’d probably lose. He did wind up losing the popular vote, of course, but he won the electoral college tallies. Which was entirely Hillary’s fault.

I’m not saying Biden isn’t in excellent shape, but he needs to stand up to the statue-topplers. The non-Confederates, I mean.

On 6.20 (only five days ago!) Paul Schrader wrote on Facebook that he’s “troubled by the double standard. We encourage multiracial casting — black Romeos with white Juliets, a female Lear, etc. Yet when a non-Jew plays Shylock or a white plays Othello, this is considered outre and unacceptable.”

HE reply: “Whites may no longer portray non-whites” is fuck-you payback for all the decades (early to mid 20th Century) when whites portrayed other tribes and races with impugnity in films. No one mentions Marlon Brando as Sakini, a native Okinawan, in Teahouse of the August Moon, or Katharine Hepburn as Jade in Dragon Seed, but whitewashing was once par for the course.

Not out of inherently venal reasons, but banal ones. Because Hollywood producers believed that non-white actors would, in many circumstances, diminish box-office returns and that white actors would enhance them.

Don’t forget, however, that as recently as ’07 Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl, a French-born woman of Afro-Cuban descent, in A Mighty Heart, and nobody said boo.

How was this different than Mickey Rooney‘s Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Alec Guinness‘ Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia, Ricardo Montalban‘s Japanese Kabuki actor in Sayonara, Natalie Wood‘s Maria in West Side Story, Kurt Jurgens‘ “Captain Lin Nan” in Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Jennifer Jones‘ half-Native American in Duel in the Sun? Should wokesters retroactively cancel Jolie? Should they at least take her to task on Twitter?

In a tribal sense, whites are regarded as deeply flawed and generally problematic. Certainly by the standards of cancel-culture and BLM wokesters. Perhaps not the root of all evil, but the N.Y. Times‘ “1619 Project” made a case that European-descended white-person culture represents a profoundly diseased and guilty heritage, certainly as far as African Americans and Native Americans are concerned.

White actors can therefore not play persons of color for this reason. They must sit on the sidelines and meditate on their basic nature, and perhaps eventually evolve into something better down the road.

Given the alleged racism on the part of John Wayne, the ultimate conservative swaggering white man, I wouldn’t be surprised if Wayne’s horse-riding statue (at the corner of Wilshire and La Cienega) is someday pulled down or defaced by demonstrators. I’m serious — in a world in which a statue of George Washington was defaced and statues of Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key have been toppled, Wayne should be easy pickings.

This morning SoCal Edison shut the power off (not just my building but others in the immediate region) in order to install a new telephone pole. I asked a friend if I could use his rear pool house, which has all the comforts — good wifi, a nice TV, a serious bathroom, air-conditioning, etc. “No problem, come on over.”

I was immediately taken by the huge pink flamingo in the pool and the Helmut Newton-ish wooden sculpture. And then I was invited into the kitchen for some interesting chatter and a nice chicken-and-camembert sandwich. The bottom line is that it’s very nice here, but I haven’t gotten much work done.