True story: In early ’75 I was working for a Los Angeles tree-trimming outfit. (This was right at the end of my “secret genius” period.) We needed the owner to unlock a large gate to the back yard. I rang the front-door bell a couple of times…nothing. We went over to a screened-in patio area on the side and knocked on the screen door. A high-pitched woman’s voice said “come in!” I explained who we were, etc. “Come in!” I’d begun to suspect a Mynah bird, but just to be polite I repeated that the gate had to be unlocked. “Come in!”
The bird also did a great wolf whistle.
The name of the company was A. Kelley Tree Service. The owner was Bob Kelley, a muscular, dark-haired Irishman with a temper problem. He stuck the “A” in front of his last name so the company would be listed first in the Yellow Pages. Bob could be a charmer when he turned it on, but his anger would always pop through under stress. A co-worker named Nick explained to me once that “when Bob gets angry, it’s mainly because he’s angry at himself.” Bob was married but had a girlfriend on the side. He also had a suspicious or disapproving attitude about non-Anglos.
“I distinctly remember feeling tear-struck in 1986 when I learned of the death of Cary Grant, whom I’d always regarded as a beloved debonair uncle of sorts. I didn’t feel anything close to that when I heard the same news about my dad. The truth is the truth.” — from “Nobody’s Perfect,” an obit for my father, James Wells, who died on 6.19.08.
Grant, John Lennon, Marlon Brando and JFK — these are the only famous guys in my entire lifetime whose passing brought tears to my eyes.
In Los Angeles the news hit sometime around 10 pm on the evening of Saturday, 11.29.86. I was living in my Hightower Drive bungalow. I recall stepping outside and sitting down on my little front porch and meditating on finality as a general concept. The weepy moment came the following day. In a sense Grant had been a close companion almost my entire time on the planet, or at least from my teenage days onward, when I began watching some of his old films on the tube.
It was only a week or two later when I went down to Al’s Bar with a friend, and it was there that I ran into my future wife Maggie, who was hanging out with two girlfriends. We flew to Paris the following January, during a fairly brutal cold snap. We moved into the upstairs portion of 8682 Franklin Ave. the following August or thereabouts, and got married in Paris the following October.
A tale of a risky affair between a high-school teacher (Lindsay Burdge) and a teenaged student (Will Brittain), Hannah Fidell‘s A Teacher was a buzzy title at Sundance ’13. (Here’s my review.) The following year HBO announced a plan to turn the film into a limited series with Fidell again directing. Now it’s an FX project with Kate Mara in the Burdge role, and Nick Robinson as her 16-year-old lover. (Okay, maybe 17.)
May I ask something? When it comes to affairs between scampy teachers and male students (in real life as well as dramas), why do things always have to end in shame and prosecution? Why can’t they fall in love like French president Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron did when he was a 15 year-old student and she was a 39-year-old teacher? Or what about a story about an inappropriate relationship that just comes to a gradual, no-big-deal end without the cops and the school principal getting involved?
My mother warned me once or twice about predatory women when I turned…oh, 15 or 16. I used to pray I’d get hit on. If I’d been lucky enough to connect with one of my attractive teachers when I was that age…well, my God! I would have dropped to my knees and given thanks to God the Father Almighty.
Frank Pierson‘s “My Battles With Barbra And Jon” is/was a New West article that was published just after the 12.19.76 opening of Pierson, Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters‘ A Star Is Born.
Last night I found the Pierson piece on the Wayback Machine. It’s a longish read.
Key passage: “For us, the picture cost $6 million and a year of our lives. For the audience it’s $3.50 and an evening out. If it’s a bum evening, it doesn’t make me any better or worse as a person. But if you think the film is you, if it is your effort to transform your lover into a producer worthy of a superstar [and] if you think it is a home movie about your love and your hope and your deepest feelings, if it’s your life that you laid out for the folks and they don’t smile back, that’s death.”
I’ve pasted it forthwith:
In the summer when school is out, Instamatics and flashcubes at the ready, they wait outside the homes of the stars. Hoping for a glimpse of Paul, or Clint, or Steve, or Barbra. A glimpse of a radiant life, full of wealth and fame and sex and happiness.
Pursuing in their lemming way this fantasy of stardom, they have driven Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters, her ex-hairdresser, now her partner in life’s adventure, as far as they can retreat, up a narrow country road, overhung with great oaks and eucalyptus, to a rustic ranch house buried in the Malibu mountains.
But the fans are already there, lurking outside the gate, glaring at visitors. Jon is not dismayed. He roars with exuberant laughter — “We’re training the dog to attack.”
Barbra is not happy. Her brow is furrowed and her eyes are full of hurt. “What do they want from me?” she asks. And yet they’re the paying customers whose unending eagerness to pay $3.50 and up to see Barbra show emotion is making all this possible.
All this is a golden forest, where Barbra and Jon are at play like children of the gods. The ranch house is all earth tones and artfully aged wood, peopled with Art Deco statuary, every corner filled with antiques, pictures, elegant rugs and throws and shawls, lamps, plants, objets d’art of every description, none of it going together, in such profusion only an impression of magnificence is generated. For some reason it doesn’t seem cluttered, which is perhaps part of Barbra’s secret. It is like a magical attic, in which every trunk and old discarded hat rack or moose head has a sentimental history, printed on a card. Nooks and crannies abound, a great house for hide and seek. It is completely satisfactory; I believe Barbra Streisand lives here.
A new garden is being started today, during my first visit. It arrives on a truck, and the entire thing is planted before lunch, with everything in bloom. It reminds me of an old Hollywood joke about Cecil B. De Mille and his extravagant film vision of the Bible: “This is what God would do, if he had the money.”
15 and 1/4 years ago I caught Tommy Lee Jones‘ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in Cannes. I was an instant admirer. Directed by and starring Jones and based on a script by Guillermo Arriaga, it’s a tautly absorbing, well-crafted morality (i.e., anti-racism) tale. I decided this morning that re-watching it might be a good idea. It’s now on my Amazon watchlist.
Here are some impressions about the film and a press session that the producers staged in the hills above Cannes. Filed on 5.19.05, the piece was called “Respecting a Dead Guy.”
“I’ve pledged not to wade into The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada until later this evening, but it’s fair to repeat what other journos are saying, which is that it’s highly respectable. Some (like the Toronto Sun‘s Bruce Kirkland) expressed surprise at how smartly composed and compassionate and thematically rich it is. Surprised because you never know what to expect from a first-time-out director. It could have been indulgent or precious or half-baked.
“It’s also fair to report that I attended an American Pavilion interview late Wednesday afternoon between Jones and Roger Ebert. Ebert made it clear he’d had a positive reaction to the film. He also asked if anyone in the audience had seen it, and when I raised my hand he asked me what I thought and I offered a thumbs-up gesture.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada producer Michael Fitzgerald (left), director-producer-star Tommy Lee Jones (center) and Toronto Sun critic-reporter Bruce Kirkland at Thursday’s press gathering at a wonderfully picturesque and soul-soothing villa in the hills above Cannes — 5.19.05, 12:35 pm.
View of Cannes and the Med from EuropaCorp-rented villa.
“The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a modern-day tale set in western Texas and northern Chihuahua, Mexico. It deals with a ranch foreman (Jones), a border patrolman (Barry Pepper) and an illegal immigrant named Melquiades Estrada who works for Jones. The second half is a horseback-journey film about redemption and seeing through prejudices and embedded attitudes.
“It’s a film with a great deal of compassion and soul and a generally humanistic view of things. If you want your literary influences, check out Flannery O’Connor’s work and William Faulkner’s ‘As I Lay Dying.’
“In the press kit, Arriaga says he wanted “to make a study in social contrast between the land that’s south of the Rio Grande river and the land that’s north of it. About what ironies, injustices, glory, beauty and redemption you can find in this area that has its own character…something that cannot be imposed, something that has grown and evolved…something that cannot be controlled.”
“Just before 11 am today myself and a few other journos (Kirkland, Stephen Schaefer, Desson Thomson, Harlan Jacobson, Shari Roman, etc.) were driven in a minivan from the Gray d’Albion hotel near the Croisette into the hills above Cannes, and eventually (the driver got lost) to a beautiful hilltop villa.
“The purpose was to allow for a brief schmooze with Jones, Arriaga, Pepper, young co-star January Jones and producer Michael Fitzgerald (whose other ventures include Colour Me Kubrick and Sean Penn’s The Pledge).
Pepper said that Jones “has a very deep passion for strong visual composition and the poetry of words.” He read some passages from his on-set journal, and on one page he described Jones as “a Southern badass with a ruthless work ethic and a heart the size of the Copper Canyon.”
“He mentioned two things that Jones told him before shooting a couple of scenes — ‘Keep it stupid simple’ and ‘don’t do somethin’, just stand there.’
Late yesterday afternoon we did a modest 75-minute hike. Huffing and puffing up Kirkwood (35 degree uphill incline), and then a hard right on Appian Way. Pretty much the highest point in the hills. Clean air, blue sky, nice feeling.
Peter Medak‘s The Ghost of Peter Sellers (currently streaming) is a fascinating documentary about the disastrous making of his own Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a 1973 Peter Sellers pirate comedy that turned out so badly it was never released theatrically.
It was, however, issued on VHS in ’85, and on a Region 2 DVD in 2016 — $7.98 to buy, $3.99 to ship.
The 36 year-old Medak, coming off the success d’estime ofThe Ruling Class (’72), agreed to direct Noonday Sun in order to work with Sellers, regarded worldwide as a comic genius who was worth his weight in gold. If, that is, the script was first-rate and everything else was in its proper place.
Alas, the Noonday script was allegedly shoddy and shooting at sea (off the coast of Cyprus) was sure to be technically difficult. But the torpedo that destroyed the movie (and which damaged Medak’s career) was the erratic, instinctual madness of his lead actor, who could be extremely skittish and difficult to work with.
Sellers often said that he couldn’t abide mediocrity. Apparently he inhaled a good whiff of the stuff (or so he believed) almost immediately upon arriving in Cyprus. And so he tried to escape by bringing hell.
The best disaster docs of this kind are George Hickenlooper, Fax Bahr and Eleanor Coppola‘s Hearts of Darkness (’91), Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe‘s Lost in La Mancha (’02), about the calamitous undoing of Terry Gilliam’s first attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and Les Blank‘s Burden of Dreams (’82), about the arduous making of Werner Herzog‘s Fitzcarraldo (also ’82).
The Ghost of Peter Sellers is just as good and as necessary as these three. You really do have to watch it.
I was going to write about Medak’s film earlier this week, but I was depressed about being late to the party. I could have seen it at the 2018TellurideFilmFestival but I didn’t. I could have obtained a press screener earlier than I did. Bummed, man. Couldn’t get it up. I finally got going today.
A week-old discussion with a colleague:
HE: “Sellers was obviously the lunatic villain in this bizarre saga. Yes, they shouldn’t have made the damn film. Yes, it was a bad idea with a script that allegedly blew chunks. The only thing that was ready was the money. But Sellers was a crazy man.”
Colleague: “Sellers was crazy at times, but I honestly don’t think it was his behavior that ruined the film. And if that’s the case, why is he the villain?”
HE: “A producer says in the doc, ‘We all knew Peter was crazy, but we didn’t know how crazy.’
“Sellers was miserable during the shoot, but he was the powerhouse. He knew the difference between a good script and a bad or weak one. He wanted to have fun and do The Goon Show with Spike Milligan. But he had to know that the whole thing had a basic dubiousness and fragility.
“Yes, Medak saw that also, but he trusted in Sellers’ genius. Which was absurd, of course — if it’s not on the page it isn’t worth doing. Sellers played the innocent when he met Medak later on. ‘It was you and me vs. them,’ he recalled. Medak replied, ‘No, Peter. It was you.’
Two days ago I posted a riff on Jan de Bont‘s Twister. It just, like, came to me out of the blue. I was thinking about the one and only time I saw the 1996 release (at an all-media screening in Westwood), and flirted with idea of watching it again for laughs.
Early this afternoon Variety‘s Justin Krollreported that Universal Pictures is looking to reboot Twister, and is in negotiations with Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski to direct. Frank Marshall will produce, Kroll said. Uni is “currently meeting with writers to pen the script,” etc.
HE to readership: We all know how this works. I’ll sound like an egotistical blowhard if I demand an associate producer credit, but at the same time it’s a very curious coincidence. I for one suspect that some highly placed Universal hotshot read my piece two days ago and a 75-watt lightbulb went on. In short order Kosinki’s agent was contacted, a deal memo was hastily emailed, discussions with potential screenwriters immediately commenced, etc.
Is it a coincidence that Kroll’s story popped two days after mine? Of course it is! Universal reps, if pressed, will almost certainly claim this, and what could I say? It’s their company, their alleged initiative.
All I know is that the timing of the Kroll story sure seems fishy.
I’ve read a little less than half of Woody Allen‘s “Apropos of Nothing.” I’ve gotten as far as the launch of Play It Again, Sam, his 1969 stage comedy that costarred himself, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts and Jerry Lacy. This was also when his romantic relationship with Keaton began.
I’m loving the book completely, but I have to say that the portions dealing with Allen’s fascinating if occasionally bewildering childhood and early adolescence in Brooklyn (roughly his first 15 or 16 years) make for richer reading than the portions that cover how his career began — first as a kid who submitted jokes to Manhattan newspaper columnists, then an in-house joke writer, then as a comedy contributor to The Colgate Hour and Caesar’s Hour, then his beginnings as a stand-up comic in the early ’60s, etc.
The “starting to make it happen” stories are fine, but the childhood stuff is full of wide-eyed wonder, fevered impressions, impossible dreams.
Allen’s description of his first look at 1942 Times Square, when he was seven years old and his father had taken him along on some errand, is truly thrilling. Ditto how he loved the way women looked and smelled and felt during brief hugs when he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Plus the absolute joy of watching old-school movies every Saturday afternoon with a five-years-older female cousin at his neighborhood theatre. A lot of this material was covered in Radio Days, of course, but the writing is tart and wise and a joy to sink into.
The childhood portion, in short, is like the first 35 or 40 minutes of Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus (i.e., the first 25%) inside the gladiator school in Capua — the story tension and the personal suspense element about when and how Kirk Douglas and his bros might break out. Apropos of Nothing is similarly about young Woody’s confinement inside his family’s small apartment and the middle-class neighborhood he explored as a kid, and always the hovering question of when and how he’s going to break free.
Now that Criterion has established itself as an outfit that likes to add teal tints to highly regarded classics (Teorema, Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Sisters), I’m naturally dreading what might happen with their forthcoming Great Escape Bluray, which will street on 5.12.
Make no mistake — with four teal-tinted disasters to their credit, a Criterion Bluray of a late 20th Century color film is now something to be feared.
Even if Criterion doesn’t screw the colors up, their 4K remastering almost certainly won’t deliver a “bump” to John Sturges’ 1963 war classic. I’ve seen this film ten or twelve times, most recently a restored projected version at the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, and it just doesn’t look all that extra–level. It never did and it never will. Daniel Fapp‘s 35mm cinematography is perfectly fine but except for two or three sequences that were either shot in fog or tinted misty-gray, there’s nothing about his widescreen visuals that really stand out.
I don’t know why Criterion is even releasing a 4K digital restoration, but God forbid they”ll make it look worse than even before.
“John Sturges‘ classic World War II action drama has been remastered for a forthcoming Bluray (due May 7th) and I was assuming that the DCP version would make this 1963 film look and sound a little spiffier and brassier and more eye-filling than it did the last time I saw it in a theatre, which was sometime in the ’80s.
“Especially, you know, if the DCP guys scanned the original negative and were given the funding from MGM Home Video to do an extra nice job.
“I’m kidding, of course. MGM Home Video is renowned as a bargain-basement outfit. They don’t want to spend a dime more than they have to. If MGM Home Video ran an airline you wouldn’t want to fly with them, trust me. The result is that they probably scanned an inter-positive rather than the original Great Escape negative with an order to do the best job they could within a tight budget. I don’t know any budgetary facts but what I saw on the big Chinese screen looked like a handsomely-shot film that had been mastered by the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company.
With her husband and child in tow, a resentful screenwriting daughter (Juliette Binoche) pays a visit to her mother (Catherine Deneuve), an arrogant, legendary, self-centered actress with the usual egocentric problems and tendencies, etc.
You can tell right off the bat that Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s The Truth (IFC Films, 3.20.20) will be a mild cup of tea.
“No matter how strong the performances or how assured the direction may be, The Truth can’t shake how, on a writing level, Kore-eda is out of his element. With so many characters finding themselves questioning their own memories and versions of the past, it’s only natural to start asking questions ourselves.
“But if Kore-eda wants to dictate those questions rather than let viewers ask them on their own, that leaves a lot to be desired. According to Kore-eda, the truth is whatever he tells us it is.” — filed on 9.6.19 by The Film Stage‘s C.J. Prince.
In short, what is anyone’s memory but a highly selective accounting of what may or may not have happened?
HE to NYC journos (some at early afternoon Cats screening, two who’ve already seen it): “What’s the likely aggregate numerical opinion of Cats going to be? Straight from the shoulder….most people are likely to give it a 9, an 8.5, a 7, a 6…what?”
Journo #1 “I’ll say 45% on Rotten Tomatoes unless expectations going in are lower than expected.”
Journo #2: “Saw it last night. It won’t be a high number.”
Journo #3: “I’m here at 1 pm screening where they have real people ‘recruited ny marketing firms.’ And when I asked a prominent independent publicist, she said “I saw it last night…it’s the play.”
Journo #1: “I’m here too. Not sure why they need seat-fillers who probably will tweet about the movie while we can’t.”
Journo #4: “I guess you are all at Cats? Very good performances, but it’s an odd show. It was odd on Broadway. There is no plot, which is why Japanese audiences flock to it. They loved the music and the costumes. There is a slight plot line which makes no sense. Jennifer Hudson is amazing. Judi Dench is lovely. RT 75%.”
Journo #5: “I have a long-standing record of never having seen Cats. I don’t intend to break that now.”