In a short but brilliant essay about the undercurrents in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Notorious, Senses of Cinema‘s Lauren Carroll Harris writes that “it is far too easy to watch a film and extract its moral themes through the lens of your own ideological framework.” One and a half seconds after reading this I said to myself, “Hey, that’s what HE readers have have accused me of doing from time to time.” But not consistently, I would argue. There are many films that I’ve liked or worshipped that I don’t agree with ideologically. (Including Triumph of the Will, Rio Bravo, The Informer, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Patton, A Man For All Seasons.) The bottom line is that we all respond best to films that affirm our basic understandings of the way the world is and how it most often works. And anybody who claims they don’t generally do this is a bald-faced liar.

Which is why I responded so strongly 35 years ago to Ordinary People (I know the lonely teenaged suburban malaise territory all too well) and 25 years ago to Goodfellas and eight years ago to No Country For Old Men and five years ago to The Social Network. They affirmed and agreed with what I know to be true about certain aspects — some local, some national — of the American culture, which I grew up with and know like the back of my hand.

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Posted ten years ago with new lead paragraph: “Non-truths flood our communal atmosphere, not because we’re compulsive liars but because of our disrespect for various parties. Nobody’s 100% honest with their bosses or supervisors; ditto their wives or girlfriends. Familiarity breeds contempt, and with that a willingness to dispense occasional evasions and half-truths.

Very few parents are 100% honest with their tweener and teenaged kids. Almost no drivers are honest with traffic cops. If I truly respect and fully trust you, I’ll be as honest as the day is long. But we live in a universe full of short days.

“This goes double or triple from a celebrity’s perspective. Pretty much every famous person lies through his or her teeth when it comes to public statements. Not blatantly but in a mild, sideways fashion. But that’s okay because they’re well motivated. They’re lying because they despise the gossip-driven media and feel that dealing with a corrupt and disreputable entity means all bets are off.

“And I think I understand the ethical system they’re embracing because it was explained in a couple of respected ’60s westerns.

“Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch is one of them. I’m thinking of a scene in which William Holden’s Pike Bishop expresses moral support for Robert Ryan’s Deke Thornton because he gave his ‘word’ to a bunch of ‘damned railroad men,’ and Ernest Borgnine’s Dutch Engstrom defiantly argues, ‘That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to.’

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Last night I listened to Hillary Clinton’s “four fights” speech — her first yeah-yeah, a “launch,” no more “listening,” beat the drum. Highly substantive, detailed (I love the goal of bringing U.S. broadband speeds up to the levels of Spain, Finland, Denmark and South Korea) and yet curiously non-invigorating. She reportedly wrote the speech herself and gave it hell delivery-wise, but she never left the ground. The musical-levitational gifts that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are able to harness and finesse in front of a lecturn will always exceed her grasp. And that badgering ex-wife/schoolmarm voice…yeesh. But I believe that she believes. I believe in her feistiness and determination to push for what she feels is right. For all her needling or dislikable qualities, she’ll be much, much better for the country as a whole than Scott Walker or Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio…please. I’ll never be in love with Hillary, but I can live with her. Money line: “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States.”

Yesterday Fox Searchlight opened Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a big hit at last January’s Sundance Film Festival. Pic costars the dour-faced Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, Ronald Cyler II, Jon Bernthal and the proverbially beefy, beer-gutty Nick Offerman. Reactions of any kind? Is it strictly a 20something-and-younger deal or is it reachier than that? What did the room feel like as people were leaving?

My initial reaction: “There’s something about dying way too young from some cruel force or circumstance (cancer, car crash, suicide, a Hunger Game) that just floors teen and 20something audiences, and to some extent authors and filmmakers. I don’t know how many YA novels have used this plot element, but movie-wise we’ve had If I Stay and The Fault In Our Stars…what else? Cancer-wise you could go all the way back to Arthur Hiller and Eric Segal‘s crushingly maudlin Love Story.

“And now we have Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Lukemia, to be specific. But this time the material is finagled in a much hipper, somewhat dryer, less maudlin, Wes Anderson-like form, and it’s not half bad. It’s definitely the smartest and coolest and arty-doodliest film about a cancer-afflicted teen that I’ve ever seen.” — from 1.28.15 review called “Eternity’s Embrace.”

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A memorial luncheon for the late Nancy Wells will happen today at the historic Cobbs Mill Inn on Saturday at 1 pm. 8 or 10 people, maybe more, maybe less. Most of her friends are gone. On the patio overlooking the waterfall. And then a select few will join me in spreading her ashes in a special hallowed place.

Cobbs Mill Inn patio.

The famed Wilton Playshop, for which my mother directed Plain and Fancy and costarred in Toys in The Attic, My Fair Lady.

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For the last four or five hours I’ve been filling out forms and sifting through my mom’s effects and taking care of wills and probate and remaining debts in the Southbury/Woodbury area of Southwestern Connecticut — her stomping grounds since ’94. This after arriving at JFK this morning at 7:30 am followed by two hour-long train trips. A nice sunny (actually fairly hot) day mitigates the mood. You can’t ignore the sadness but neither can you submit to it. Too much to write down, fill out, put in boxes, question, double check. I have this odd feeling that I’m being watched by my mom or my late father or sister or brother…maybe the whole gang en masse. Any way you slice it I’m the last of the brood. Me and the boys, I should say, along with Zak and Aura. Exhausted, of course, but doing what every sole beneficiary has to do.

Bill Murray as another burnt-out, scuzzed-out case a la St. Vincent — in this instance a client-less music manager stranded in Afghanistan — discovering a gifted female singer (Omar‘s Leem Lubany) in the approximate vein of Mark Ruffalo‘s music manager in Begin Again. Directed by Barry Levinson, written by Mitch Glazer and costarring Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride, Scott Caan and Bruce Willis.

Born-on-the-Bayou guy: “My Jurassic World screening was crowded, but audience didn’t clap or cheer much. A few laughs here and there for Chris Pratt, who is decent. The ending got mild applause, but I was bored throughout most of it. Just another hide-and-seek with monsters and humans…except it cost $150 million dollars. Been there, seen that, got the shirt, gave it away. And Indominus Rex wasn’t all that impressive.

“Bryce Dallas Howard reminded me too much of Kate Capshaw, all that talking on the phones with BD Wong and Vincent D’Onofrio and the ‘secret meeting’ with Wong and Irfan Kahn leading you to think this was some weird 70’s paranoid thriller…went nowhere.

“Seems like they took some of the best or better parts of the other films and made a Jurassic Gumbo with mixed results.

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A Deadly Adoption, a Lifetime movie costarring Will Ferrell, Kristin Wiig and Jessica Lowndes, is some kind of comedic put-on deal. Directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg and written by Andrew Steele, pic will air on 6.20. Story deals with an affluent couple (Ferrell, Wiig) housing and caring for a pregnant woman (Lowndes) with the hopes of adopting her unborn child. On 4.1 The Hollywood Reporter‘s Lesley Goldberg described the two-hour TV flick as “campy and fun and a contemporary wink at the [Lifetime] genre.” From the Wiki page: A day after the project was reported about on 4.1.15 Ferrell issued a statement saying that “we are deeply disappointed that our planned top-secret project was made public” and “therefore Kristen and I have decided it is in the best interest for everyone to forgo the project entirely, and we thank Lifetime and all the people who were ready to help us make this film.” Obviously bullshit. I don’t know what it is but it’s definitely airing.

Last night I was listening to “One Way Out,” the old Allman Brothers song, and recalling that I went through something almost exactly like the situation described in the lyrics: “Ain’t but one way out baby, Lord I just can’t go out the door…ain’t but one way out baby, Lord I just can’t go out the door…’Cause there’s a man down there, might be your old man, I don’t know.”

It happened in the Boston area in the ’70s. A guy I was friendly with (not a friend-friend but we hung with the same group and partied together) had gotten married to a fetching but slightly older woman less than a year earlier, and their betrothal seemed to some like a curious, perhaps unwise union. It wasn’t long before things began to go south, mainly due to his immaturity. He would bop around and get high with his friends (i.e., me and the guys) while she mostly stayed home, or so I understood. I’ll be honest — I felt badly about their marriage being shaky only months after the ceremony, but I also saw an opportunity. I was a dog back then…sorry.

So I visited her one day under the pretext that I was looking for her husband. I wound up hanging out in her kitchen and sipping coffee and her serving me an omelette or a sandwich or something. Then I called and suggested a dinner or a movie or a visit to a bar (I forget which) and we did that a day or two later, me asking about the marriage and her saying “well, it’s not going very well.” The third visit is when I made a very gentle move and she reciprocated, etc. It was actually pretty intense. A lot of pent-up energy on her part.

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I was reading Kyle Smith‘s N.Y. Post piece about how most women are constitutionally incapable of understanding Goodfellas (except for Thelma Schoonmaker, he meant to say) and how it’s basically made for guys and so on. True, the basic attitude and personality of Goodfellas is guy-centric but it’s really goombah-centric. On top of which the piece reminded me about how I, Jeffrey Wells, would have trouble fitting into that realm in real life. During that famous Joe Pesci “how am I funny?” scene, I wouldn’t just keep repeating “you’re just funny, the way you tell the story and everything” like Ray Liotta does. I would look Pesci in the eye and say, “No, Tommy, you’re not a clown — you’re a kind of artist. Telling a story the right way is an art. Take the basic facts of any story and there are probably 35 or maybe 50 ways to tell it in a way that nobody will laugh at. It’s a gift to know how to tell it just so. Ask Billy Wilder or Henny Youngman or any guy who knows how to connect with an audience.  You have to pick and choose the right way. Timing, tone, attitude, emphasis…it’s no different than the way Frank Sinatra sings a Cole Porter song or a really gifted pianist plays Peter Tchaikovsky.” I realize, of course, that saying something like this to Pesci would get me shot on the spot but that’s how I think and talk. I’m not one of those guinea greaseball types with the .38 snub nose and the patent leather shoes and starched white shirts with the pointy collars. And I come from New Jersey, mind.