Prostitutes who know how to sail

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• Max says:

  March 15, 2009 at 12:24 pm

  Am I the only one reminded of that scene in 25^th Hour when Brian Cox out­lines what Ed Norton could do if he went on the lam?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 15, 2009 at 1:32 pm

  Exactly. Only as re-imagined by Peter Lawford.

• DVA188 says:

  March 15, 2009 at 3:34 pm

  I can only say… why no booze?

• Tom Russell says:

  March 15, 2009 at 3:43 pm

  “I think this post should earn Jeff Wells the Nobel Prize for Literature. Seriously.”
  Seconded. Too bad the Nobel people have their heads so deep up their own asses: http://www.slate.com/id/2201447

• Campaspe says:

  March 15, 2009 at 5:08 pm

  I am in love with the first com­ment: “Or just sign with my agent… you’d dis­ap­pear instantly.”

• bemo says:

  March 15, 2009 at 8:01 pm

  GK, you have awe­some taste.

• dogandpony says:

  March 16, 2009 at 1:35 am

  Ever hear Camper Van Beethoven’s “When I Win the Lottery”?

• bill says:

  March 16, 2009 at 9:47 am

  Wells should then have his Nobel taken away for his weasely, arrog­ant “obit” of Ron Silver.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 16, 2009 at 10:41 am

  @bill: Seconded. But did you expect any less?

• bill says:

  March 16, 2009 at 10:52 am

  No, not really. But I remain disgusted.

• Dan Coyle says:

  March 16, 2009 at 3:37 pm

  If his­tory’s going to judge Ron Silver harshly for any­thing, it’s gonna be that hideous Crossing Jordan epis­ode he did, quite pos­sibly one of the worst hours of tele­vi­sion I’ve ever seen.
  And his cameo in Spike Lee’s Girl 6.

• Dan Coyle says:

  March 16, 2009 at 3:58 pm

  Actually, let me amend that: EVERYONE who was involved in Girl 6 will be judged harshly by history.

• Max says:

  March 16, 2009 at 6:07 pm

  Are there no depths that Welles won’t sink to? It’s clear he only wrote that Silver piece to cri­ti­cize the man. How edgy he is, cri­ti­ciz­ing not only a dead man but also GEORGE BUSH. And all that appre­ci­ation of Silver rings so false. Shameless.

• bill says:

  March 16, 2009 at 7:32 pm

  Max, you know what I love most about Wells’s Ron Silver post? The title: “Sorry About Silver”. I mean, Jesus Christ. Go fuck your­self, Wells. Sorry, Glenn, if I’m bring­ing some­thing here that you don’t want, but this really made me angry.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 16, 2009 at 8:42 pm

  No apo­lo­gies neces­sary, Bill. I’m not down with Wells’ post about SIlver either, and I’m not down with the fact that were a left­ist act­or were to drop dead tomor­row before his/her prime, the obits prob­ably would­n’t get into his or her polit­ic­al lean­ings in any detail until the fifth graf or so.
  Now, the con­ser­vat­ives who want to embrace Silver as their own are guilty of some­thing sim­il­ar, in a way—see the “one of us!” gush­ings from Goldberg, Lopez and Podhoretz—but for Wells to sniff about his inab­il­ity to “for­give” SIlver is, really, imper­i­ous bull­shit of the highest order. Let’s stop watch­ing Ginger Rogers movies while we’re at it, and ban Adolph Menjou and Eugene Pallete from the can­ons. Or, on the oth­er hand, con­demn the works of Dashiell Hammett. That we’re even hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion is a sad meas­ure of how pois­on­ously divis­ive things have become in this coun­try. I STRONGLY dis­agree with the views Silver held after his 9/11 road to Damascus moment, but I like to think I would defend to the death his right to hold them. And in any case, none of that ever interfered with what the man brought to his work on screen. He did­n’t thor­oughly rock my cine­mat­ic world, except in “Enemies” (the best thing Roger SImon’s ever had his name attached to, incid­ent­ally) and “Reversal of Fortune,” but he was a con­sist­ently power­ful and com­mit­ted per­former all the same, and to releg­ate him to some per­son­al gulag because you did­n’t care for his polit­ics is to give in to a nar­ciss­ist­ic myopia bey­ond all reckoning.

• bill says:

  March 16, 2009 at 9:22 pm

  “Now, the con­ser­vat­ives who want to embrace Silver as their own are guilty of some­thing sim­il­ar, in a way—see the “one of us!” gush­ings from Goldberg, Lopez and Podhoretz…”
  I won’t argue that. The entire point is that the man has died, and to pay your respects. I actu­ally haven’t read the gush­ings you cite – I read few­er and few­er polit­ic­al opin­ion blogs these days – and I don’t like the idea of Silver’s death, of ANYONE’S death – being used as a way for the writer to try and yolk them­selves to the deceased. But, you know, at least Goldberg, et al, are being NICE. Still, it’s a fair point, and I agree with you.
  You said everything say­able about the trash Wells pos­ted. If I added any­thing else, I would go off even more than I already have. On anoth­er point – you’re “pois­on­ously divis­ive” one – Richard Dreyfuss, to my under­stand­ing, is about as lefty as they come, but when Charlton Heston passed away he wrote one of the classi­est and most touch­ing obits I’ve read in a long time. That’s the kind of thing that humane and empath­et­ic people do. And I don’t see very much of it anymore.

• Campaspe says:

  March 17, 2009 at 9:37 am

  Wells’ vale­dict­ory is crabby and mean-spirited, and the really irrit­at­ing part is that it will almost cer­tainly be seized upon in cer­tain seg­ments of the Net as proof that lib­er­als have no “class.” This, des­pite the fact that if one took a vote in the lib­er­al film blo­go­sphere I doubt many of us would elect Mr. Wells to speak for any­one but himself.
  However, I can­’t get too worked up over Wells’ lack of decor­um, because Ron Silver spent a great deal of time put­ting his face on his polit­ics, from the 1990s when he sup­por­ted Clinton to his later years as a Bush fan. When an act­or – any act­or, from Clooney to that guy from the A Team who just showed up on Big Hollywood – puts his polit­ics out front for pub­lic con­sump­tion, he risks being judged on those grounds. If Silver kept his polit­ics out of his inter­views and pub­lic appear­ances, I’d say bring­ing his polit­ics into the first grafs of the obit­u­ar­ies was low. But like I kept say­ing after Heston’s death, when you speak on the hust­ings for a can­did­ate, or give the key­note at an NRA rally, or vis­it Iraq, or make a com­mer­cial con­demning stem-cell research, or invest in a fam­ously left-wing magazine, you are put­ting your­self in a pos­i­tion to be cri­ti­cized for your views. I’m sure the highly intel­li­gent and cul­tiv­ated Mr. Silver knew that very well.

• bill says:

  March 17, 2009 at 10:28 am

  Campaspe, I don’t mind people bring­ing up Silver’s polit­ics. I don’t even mind people judging him for hold­ing cer­tain views, in the long run, because every­one does that (which is unfor­tu­nate, but I don’t exclude myself from that, which is also unfor­tu­nate). I object to A) doing it right after he died, and B) tak­ing this sanc­tomoni­ous, dis­gust­ing stance of “not being able to for­give” a guy who just died after two years of suf­fer­ing from a ter­rible dis­ease, and who, in any case, nev­er presen­ted his polit­ic­al opin­ions in the form of per­son­al attacks. Neither Silver nor his fam­ily ever asked for or needed or wanted “for­give­ness” from a rat like Jeffrey Wells. No, I did­n’t know Silver, or his fam­ily, but I think that’s a safe bet.
  As for this:
  “the really irrit­at­ing part is that it will almost cer­tainly be seized upon in cer­tain seg­ments of the Net as proof that lib­er­als have no ‘class’.”
  That may hap­pen, but Ann Coulter is often judged by the left to be the spokes­per­son for the right, and I know that I nev­er voted her into that pos­i­tion, and wish people would quit telling me that’s what she is. It goes both ways, and will con­tin­ue to do so. I would advise you to “get used to it”, but since I haven’t, who am I to advise anybody?

• Campaspe says:

  March 17, 2009 at 11:12 am

  Bill, the Coulter/Wells com­par­is­on won’t fly. Wells is a crit­ic and journ­al­ist who runs a pop­u­lar blog, but whose name is known to a cer­tain seg­ment of film fan­dom and just about nobody else. Coulter is a house­hold name, the author of sev­er­al best­sellers, a nation­ally syn­dic­ated colum­nist, a fix­ture on the lec­ture cir­cuit and I can barely turn on a talk show without her defa­cing my TV set. While many con­ser­vat­ives, includ­ing you, con­sider her a blot on the land­scape, she is a far more plaus­ible can­did­ate for a spokes­per­son than a film journalist–until Wells makes the cov­er of Time.
  As for Wells’ tim­ing and tone, I am not defend­ing it, just say­ing that death does­n’t auto­mat­ic­ally place cer­tain top­ics off-limits. I think death should mean all aspects of an act­or’s life are treated with reas­on and tact, but neither qual­ity is a par­tic­u­lar hall­mark of Mr. Wells’ writ­ing style, even when he isn’t writ­ing obit­u­ar­ies for conservatives.

• MovieMan0283 says:

  March 17, 2009 at 11:37 am

  I’m not sure which I like more: that he demands his pros­ti­tutes be “highly edu­cated” or that he pivots from sail­ing with hook­ers to mov­ing to Darfur and “using his money” to “help the poor” there.

• bill says:

  March 17, 2009 at 12:13 pm

  Who cares if Coulter is a best­selling author? That does­n’t make her a spokes­per­son for any­thing. Is Michael Moore the spokes­man for the left? He won an Oscar! How does being on the cov­er of “Time” elev­ate someone to spokes­per­son? Kate Winslet was just on the cov­er. Is she the spokes­per­son for movies? If the right can­’t name the spokespeople for the left, then you can­’t name them for the right.
  And I nev­er said Silver’s polit­ics were off lim­its. What’s off lim­its is judging him for them. The man just died. Because he dis­agreed with you on one top­ic, then it’s okay to let the judg­ments fly?
  PS – Glenn, sorry if this com­ment shows up twice…

• Campaspe says:

  March 17, 2009 at 12:30 pm

  If mil­lions of people were pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to hear Kate Winslet’s views on the movies, buy her books and see her lec­tures, yeah, that would pretty much make her a spokes­per­son for at least a seg­ment of film. No one on the left made Coulter a spokes­per­son; that was the job of the people who bought what she peddles. The same is true, on the oppos­ite end, for Michael Moore.
  You are clearly get­ting more upset than I inten­ded, so I am bow­ing out here. And any­way, I see that no one is pay­ing much atten­tion to Wells, except us, so there is no need to be squab­bling over hypo­thet­ic­als. I assumed his post would get plenty of indig­nant link­age and to my genu­ine delight and relief, that has­n’t happened.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 17, 2009 at 12:46 pm

  Yeah, break it up. It simply won’t do, to have two of my favor­ite com­menters squabbling.
  In oth­er news, I trust the two of you noticed the highly sens­it­ive head­line Our Jeff put up for his piece on poor Natasha Richardson’s mis­hap: “Slam.”

• bill says:

  March 17, 2009 at 12:55 pm

  And I’m in a bad mood any­way. Finishing “The Dying Animal” on your lunch break will do that to you.

• bill says:

  March 17, 2009 at 1:06 pm

  Ack! I had anoth­er com­ment that got lost. Something about not being that upset and agree­ing to let it go and think­ing that Wells’ “Slam” head­ling might be even worse than his Silver posts and won­der­ing why I go to his site any­more. Along those lines.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 17, 2009 at 1:17 pm

  Bill, my advice to you after fin­ish­ing the Roth is to just pick up the first Wodehouse book you come across.

• Campaspe says:

  March 17, 2009 at 1:25 pm

  No hard feel­ings, Bill. I had my own con­cili­at­ory post, lost at the same time (Typepad hic­cup?) wherein I thanked Glenn and said some­thing along the lines of how the “Slam” head­line just shows that in these low­brow times, it is good to know writers like Wells are stand­ing sen­try at the portals of good taste. Something like that.

• bill says:

  March 17, 2009 at 1:44 pm

  Glenn, that’s funny, because I was just think­ing that Wodehouse would be an appro­pri­ate fol­low up. Or I just bought the first three “Fu Manchu” books… But I’ll prob­ably end up with Westlake or Goodis or Willeford instead. Oh, I don’t know. I can nev­er plan these things.
  Yeah, no hard feel­ings, Campaspe. There’s more than enough of those float­ing around as it is (not here, spe­cific­ally, but you know what I mean).

• Dan Coyle says:

  March 17, 2009 at 8:37 pm

  Now he’s changed the head­line to “Trauma”. Well, at least he did­n’t work in a “So she finally watched The Phantom Menace” joke…

• dogandpony says:

  March 18, 2009 at 2:27 am

  It was­n’t a band plug. The CVB song dir­ectly relates to the tra­gic­ally sad empty fantasy under­tone of the Wells post and to the issue of great­er rel­at­ive harm imposed by past/present/future American politi­cians. Thought it might strike a chord with you Glenn, since you have shown an interest in semi-obscure music allusions/ties.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  March 18, 2009 at 7:56 am

  @dogandpony: sorry not to get back to you on that! I do know the song, it’s typ­ic­ally acerbic and wise in the CVB tra­di­tion and does strike a nerve.…