Budding anarchist Sterling Holloway with Ulrike Meinhof precursors Rochelle Hudson and Dorothy Coonan in WIld Boys of the Road.
Because I could not stop for death…no, actually, because I could not compose a Topics, etc. post excoriating the coverage of this year’s Cannes Film Festival that didn’t royally irritate my editor, I instead opted to concoct an analysis of William Wellman’s 1933 Wild Boys of the Road. I know, because that’s the logical alternative, right? Well, such is my character, and my character has no logic. At The Daily Notebook, as it has always been.
Will you excoriate here?
Not likely Brian, as excoriation is best applied in the heat of the moment, and the moment has passed. And in any event, it was just a bunch of universal truths, to wit: Walking out on a movie and then writing about it is still a dick move, even if you’re “only” writing about it on Twitter; complaining about how Cannes was so much more fun and interesting 40 years ago is not much more than a passive/aggressive variation on “I fought the war for your sort;” the young fresh fellows who tout themselves as the new vanguard of film criticism, if only all these old farts would get out of the way, are by and large nothing but hipster hacks who can barely carve out competent boilerplate; and making sport of Jeffrey Wells is still my best entertainment value. And there you have it.
Man, do I hate hipsters.
What? “MUBI” a morass of thin-skinned, crony-protecting cruds incapable of enduring or applying the tonic of critical reason? STOP THE PRESS! (Oh wait, then you’d have to explain to them what a press was, and what The Press was, and…)
Nevermind, I love this Wellman: is the DVD copy you have/are reviewing from the one in the FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD set, or is there yet a newer edition?
Aw, Chuck, ain’t it a little early on a Saturday to be spreading bad vibes? And aren’t we supposed to be all memorializing and shit this weekend?
But, man, ain’t that third FORBIDDEN HOLLYWOOD set great? My girlfriend and I have gone through most of it in the last year, both of us becoming huge Wellman fans in the process. (As a paramedic, she’s particularly fond of NIGHT NURSE, but that’s another box.) We’re always taken by how much he was able to cram into a single hour, not to mention the general bad-ass attitude.
Yes, Wellman’s great. I enjoyed the Shickel doc/interview with him as well, which TCM included before screening this one a few years back.
Fortunately, I have missed out on most of the hipster hack Twitter fiendds who are apparently swarming buglike over the remains of establishment criticism. Though 26, I’m still too much of a Luddite to even know what Twitter is (is it a device & an app as well as a site?) I picture a little Tomagochi-looking thing that tweets and warbles whenever you text some bon mot. Yes, I know it’s all done through the phone (right?) but I like my imaginary version better.
Ben, I eat, sleep and bowel-move bad vibrations. Why? Because, like the scorpion, it’s in my nature.
(And I’m memorializing the verities of the Press, yo!)
🙂
Chuck, if I knew your bowel movements were a chronic source of bad vibrations, I wouldn’t have been so quick to judge. That’s a sorry state of affairs, man.
On the contrary: I look good in black.
Hopper obit coming?