Of all the scores of war movies I’ve seen over the decades, not one has had a scene in which combat troops pass a bottle around before the shooting starts. To punch up their courage. You’d think at least one war film would attempt a scene in this vein, but nope. Martin Sheen drinks in his Saigon hotel room at the beginning of ApocalypseNow but not during the journey upriver. Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe get ripped on pot in Platoon, but not just prior to battle.
In ‘04 James Wells, a Marine lieutenant who fought Japanese troops during the battles of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, was interviewed at Rutgers University, his alma mater, about…well, his whole life but mainly his college and wartime experiences.
A day or two ago Jett found a transcript of the interview. Here’s one of my dad’s recollections. It happened just before his division was about to land on the beaches of Iwo Jima:
Despite my gender, I believe that I’m a kind of West Hollywood version of a Suburban Facebook Empathy Mom. I grew up in suburbia (New Jersey, Connecticut) so I get that whole thing. I poke around Facebook on a daily basis so that’s covered. I know what it is to empathize with anyone going through a difficult time, as no one feels the pain and sorrow of existence in a cold and barren universe more deeply than myself. And I know what it’s like to be a “mom” in a certain sense because I loved my dear and departed mother (Nancy Wells), I’m a father of two lads (Jett and Dylan), I’m currently a kind of mother to two cats and I’ve been called a motherfucker from time to time.
Influential YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann was born on 4.15.88, or less than two months before Jett came along on 6.4.88. It’s fine that Stuckmann had the smarts and character to post this 12 Angry Men tribute in January ’18, but it’s striking to hear him say “if you’ve never watched a black-and-white film, start with this one.” In other words, Stuckmann has reason to believe that among his 1.5 million Millennial subscribers, watching a black-and-white film is considered an exotic event, to put it mildly. Or perhaps something that a significant majority of his subscribers have never, ever done. Think about that.
“I went to sleep dreaming life was beauty — I woke up knowing life is duty.” — written by David Mamet for a Hill Street Blues episode called “Wasted Weekend.”
I heard this line once during the original broadcast of this episode on 1.13.87. The guy who said the line was Dennis Franz‘s Det. Sal Benedetto, and I’ve never forgotten it. 31 and 1/2 years ago. I was watching Steven Bochco‘s fabled series on a 21″ cable-connected color TV. I was living in a cool little pre-war studio on High Tower Drive, a few hundred yards from the Hollywood Bowl and just down the street from Elliott Gould‘s deco-moderne, elevator-accessible Long Goodbye apartment. Reanimator‘s Jeffrey Coombs lived in the same complex.
I was working for Cannon Films publicity at the time, writing press kits. My future wife Maggie and I had either just returned from Paris or were planning a trip there. We got married the following October, and Jett came along the following June. [Originally posted on 11.14.09.]
Jeffrey Wells writes a daily stream-of-Hollywood-consciousness column for Hollywood Elsewhere, which he’s been running on his own since August 2004. Well, the editorial part at least. Sean Jacobs handles HE’s advertising.
Wells’ online adventure began with a twice-weekly online Hollywood column for Mr. Showbiz in October 1998. He wrote the same column for Reel.com from ’99 to ’02, and then for Kevin Smith (www.moviepoopshoot.com) from ’02 to ’04.
Wells reported and trend-pieced regularly for Entertainment Weekly from ’91 to ’96, for People from ’96 to ’98 and wrote a weekly Hollywood column for the L.A. Times Syndicate from ’94 to ’99. He also wrote a weekly N.Y. Daily News column in ’93-’94. he’s also written for the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, Newsday, Washington Post, Men’s Journal, etc.
He was born and raised in New Jersey. High school years happened in N.J. and Connecticut. A few years of aimless wandering followed in Connecticut, Boston and Los Angeles. He got into journalism in 1977 with a movie/TV column for the Fairfield County Morning News, began freelancing in Manhattan in ’78. Managing editor for the Film Journal from April ’81 to June ’83; editor at the Hollywood Reporter from ’83 to ’84, three or four years of publicity and development, back to journalism in ’89.
Two sons (Jett, Dylan), two cats (Anya, Yanna). Drives a motorcycle. Loves Paris, Hanoi, Munich, Prague, Rome, et. al.
A re-design is underway of Hollywood Elsewhere. The idea is to make it look and feel more 21st Century (the design mentality of the current site is 13 years old — it actually looks like it could have been designed in the late ’90s), and to load faster and be more ad-friendly and so on.
I’m down with this, but my concern all along has been to make sure the new site conveys a distinct “things haven’t changed that much” feeling — an assurance that HE’s identity and attitude is alive, intact and continuing within this new design. The new site should say “sure, this look significantly different in some ways, but it’s still very much the site that I’ve built, poured my heart into and self-branded over the last 12 and 1/2 years.”
A fresh, here-and-now design is essential but, as I’ve told the designers, Hollywood Elsewhere is nothing if not about my personal brand — my views, attitude, personality, passion, errors, shortcomings, gushings, travels, tenacity, aspect ratios, experience, arguments, prejudices…all of it. The new design needs to recognize this and embrace continuity.
Please look at the test site as it now stands. Keep in mind that it’s a very early stab. I’m not hugely unhappy with the mobile version but the classic HE identity, I feel, has been all but erased. The initial idea was to take a generic uptown design, which looks like a Paris fashion magazine and which I thought was half-decent, and merge it with HE’s style and personality.
The small, almost-postage-stamp-sized HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE logo in the top left says it all. The designers of this test site seem to be interested in obscuring if not erasing the entire identity of Hollywood Elsewhere, which has been running since August ’04. (HE has actually been punching it for 18 and 1/2 years if you count my Mr. Showbiz, Reel.com and Movie Poop Shoot incarnations between October ’98 and July of ’04.)
It’s a mistake, for starters, to jettison the HE Hollywood sign logo, to not use my photo for identity purposes, to not use the same copy and headline fonts. Continuity is vital.
Pretty much everyone these days has bought into the idea that weddings have to be costly, and that a marriage that doesn’t begin on a fairly lavish scale probably won’t last. Prospective brides in particular believe that a modest and simple ceremony (i.e., a dawn wedding in Monument Valley, let’s say) would be an omen of a problematic marriage. The wedding racket gets an average of $27K per wedding. Prospective brides want romantic splendor and an exorbitant send-off, and that’s that. All to say that the October 1987 wedding between my ex (the robust Maggie Wells, the mother of Jett and Dylan) and myself, which happened in Paris, cost maybe $5K, all in. Round-trip air fare from Los Angeles plus hotels and whatnot, a ceremony at St. Julien le Pauvre, a reception at Les Deux Magots plus a honeymoon in Communist Eastern Europe (East Germany, Czechoslovakia). We did it “big” in a sense and certainly in a “special” way, but outside the reach of the wedding industry.
A Charlie Rose Show-type setting. A large, round, polished oak table. Bottles of Fiji water, the usual dark background. The host is myself, and the guests are the late William Wyler, Jack Hawkins and Gore Vidal, all of whom helped create the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, along with original Ben-Hur author General Lew Wallace, still bearded and uniformed.
jack Hawkins as Quintus Arrius in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler.
Jeffrey Wells: First of all, thank you all for coming. None of you are living, of course, but we appreciate your time nonetheless. Today’s topic, somewhat painful or at least uncomfortable to discuss, I realize, is the decision by the remakers of Ben-Hur — director Timur Bekmambetov, screenwriters Keith Clarke and John Ridley — to jettison the character of Quintus Arrius, the Roman general and nobleman who rescues Judah Ben-Hur from living death as an oar slave.
Wyler: For the sake of running time.
Vidal: The Arrius portions added up to roughly 30, 35 minutes. Which is one reason why our version, Willy, ran 212 minutes. The 1925 version ran…what was it, two and a half hours?
James Schamus‘s Indignation (Summit/Roadside, 7.29) is a respectable, adult-friendly, nicely refined period drama (i.e., early ’50s) about values, academia, obstinacy, surprisingly good sex, Jews (in particular a tough Jewish mom) and — this is key — brutally cruel fates. The ending alienated me to no end, and I can’t explain why unless I discuss (or at least allude to) the last 15 minutes. So that’s what I’m going to do.
If you’re planning on seeing Indignation this weekend (which I’m recommending by the way — any film that riles or angers is usually up to something interesting), you might want to do that before reading this.
If for no other reason Indignation is worth the price for a 16-minute interrogation scene that happens in Act Two. It’s between a Winesburg College freshman named Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman, once again projecting that deer-in-the-headlights quality that I can’t stand about him) and Hawes Caldwell, an overbearing college dean (Tracy Letts). Hawes senses that Messner is too fickle, too much unto himself, not social enough. And he wants to know why Messner doesn’t mix it up more. But Messner is who he is — stand-offish, bright, obstinate, something of a Jewish mama’s boy. And so he stiffens and lets Caldwell have it right back.
It’s “theatre”, this fine scene. Dialogue, dialogue, point, counter-point. It doesn’t exactly “go” anywhere but it grabs and holds.
But the story! And the mostly positive reviews (84% as we speak) which don’t even hint at how Indignation makes you feel at the end. (This is why some people hate critics. Because they too often evaluate a film without telling you what it feels like.) How did Indignation make me feel? Pissed. Taste of ashes. I wanted to take a poke at Schamus.
Indignation is mainly about a half-obsessive, half-uncertain relationship between Messner (who, like original “Indignation” author Phillip Roth, hails from Newark, New Jersey) and a beautiful blonde shiksa named Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon) who is gradually revealed to be a victim of chronic depression and at least one suicide attempt, but whose sexual openness and generosity is like manna from heaven for a pissy, slow-to-catch-on gloomhead like Messner.
Last night I caught my second glorious performance of the New York Oratorio’s Carnegie Hall performance of Handel’s “Messiah.” Jett and Cait attended also. My ex-wife Maggie Wells, part of the superb soprano chorus, provided the tickets. Special congrats to conductor Kent Tritle, the orchestra, soprano Leslie Fagan, mezzo-soprano Sara Murphy, tenor Nicholas Phan and bassy-voiced Matt Boehler. From my 12.24.13 review: “I must say that the piece itself, which ran about 2 hours and 45 minutes with intermission, felt a bit trying at times. ‘Messiah’ is an astonishingly complex work that soars and swirls and reaches for the heavens, but it is rather taken with itself. Handel was basically saying (a) ‘get down on your knees and stay there until this is over’ and (b) ‘if you’re a devout Christian, this shouldn’t be a problem.’ The lyrics, boiled down, are a pious repetition of Christian platitudes about the absolutely glorious, mind-blowing divinity and wondrousness of Jesus Christ and the Holy Father and the archangels and so on. All right already. But it’s a ‘great’ work and I let it all in. Happy for that.”
I scanned and posted a few stills from the ’70s and ’80s yesterday, and not only did the usual snark not manifest but the photos seemed to go down fairly well — only one cheap-ass comment. I scanned a few more this morning.
Sometime around ’88 or ’89.
I played the boorish hillbilly rapist Marvin Hudgens in a Westport Country Playhouse production of Dark of the Moon in the summer of ’77. Tedious play. I wasn’t too bad.
My dad Jim Wells (a ’60s Mad Men guy who worked at J. Walter Thompson, Needham Harper Steers, et., al.) sometimes around ’92 or ’93.
(l. to r.) Ex-g.f. Sophie Black, my dad & myself in Paris — July 1976.
Sometimes old songs that you haven’t listened to in a long while suddenly come into your head while you’re driving or showering or writing, and they hang around for a day or two and sometimes longer. Every now and then they’ll stay with you for four or five days or a week even, and that’s too long. It can drive you nuts. The cure is not to sing it to yourself but to download it to iTunes and just listen to it over and over until you can’t stand it any more.
This happened to me last Friday with David Bowie‘s “Five Years“. I love this song (and it’s freaking me out that it’s almost 40 years old) but it won’t leave, and I don’t want to end up hating it.
Last night I tried flushing out Bowie by listening to the other “Five Years” song, the one by Jonah and the Whale, but this made things worse because they’re one of those oodly-doodly bands, a group of oh-so-dry-and-clever musicians wrapped in a fey musical head-space attitude who create songs that are kind of precious and tweedly-deedly…songs that fiddle around with melody without really feeling it or lifting it off the ground.
You know what I mean. Bands that seem to be going “eewww, this is cool”…bands who always seem to perform with a kind of dorky, dispassionate irony…bands who seem to be saying “are we kinda kidding or do we mean it or should we turn it up or down or…? Ohh, whatever…let’s not choose.”
I’ve also described this kind of music as the product of “flutter” bands. In an 8.13.10 piece I described their music as “ethereal, dreamily feminine and generally unpunctuated…music that seems dead set against any kind of thump-crunchin’ sound or attitude [and] that seems to summon the candy-assed spirit and attitude of Michael Cera, and which the almost seems to exists in order to counteract and nullify the spirit of Lou Reed, Liz Phair, Patti Smith, Television, the Kills, the Beta Band, Nirvana…basically any band with any kind of brass musical balls.”