Apparently one thing they like is posting pictures of themselves and their “credentials,” whatever those credentials are, and since I’m hardly above that kind of pandering, why not, right?…and I will say I am indulging in a kind of pride, because the head shot on the press pass was taken in the spring of 2000, and I now actually look like that guy again, after many years of having looked like Raymond Burr, fat Laird Cregar, and, by N.P. Thompson’s lights, William Frigging Conrad. I’m also proud because, and you can’t see it because of the crop, today I’m wearing the same Armani Exchange jacket that I was wearing at the head shot photo session, and if anything, it fits better now than it did back then. So I’m all excited and shit.
I’m at this Starbucks on 60th and Broadway catching up on e‑mail and stuff and I was waiting at the pickup station for my coffee and marveling at all the Fashion Week spillover people on line to use the bathroom. “You guys actually defecate?” I stage-whispered, probably a little too loudly. Two nice fashionista ladies overheard me, or rather overheard and misunderstood me, because they were just like, “So are you here for Fashion Week?” “Not me,” I said. “I’m here for Unemployment Year.” It took them a sec to get that, but they did, and laughed. “But I look good,” I said, as has become a rather obnoxious habit recently. “You do,” one of the ladies agreed, which made me feel lovely. “You look very relaxed.” Indeed; starting with that demolition job last month, I’d been getting a terrific if largely inadvertent tan. Then we commiserated on how things were tough all over, and so on, and one of them said, “We’re all in it together,” and while I usually bristle at such sentiments, I had to shrug and say, “In a sense.” Or was it “After a fashion?”
After you’ve seen BLACK SWAN, which I can only assume will be playing NYFF, steal a copy and send it to me. Thx!
Sincerely,
Bill
This is going to be a stupid question, and I wanted to ask Wells this last week during the latest round of everyone mocking his vintage Drake Hogestyn-from-Days of Our Lives headshot:
How do you get a pass that has a photo of your own choosing in it? It looks like these would have to be made by a pro, so I would assume they’d snap a pic of you on the spot and whip it up there. Do you send them a pic well in advance, do you (or Jeff) just carry around stacks of headshots, or do the festival runners DO THE RESEARCH and pre-make the passes with whatever photo of you they can find on the net?
No Aronofsky at NYFF this year, alas. I think I can handle the longing until it gets a general release.
Not that I’m competing with anyone…blogging…here… erm… but I’ve been hitting the gym pretty hard myself this year and I’m proud to say, the jeans I stashed in my closet a few years ago, because I couldn’t even come close to buttoning them, are now too big for me to wear. It’s a good feeling, no?
@Lex – you have to submit your own picture, either by email or a print.
Great pickup line. “You guys actually defecate?” I gotta give that one a try.
@ Stephen Bowie: Not everything posted here—particularly under the “self-indulgence” category—is necessarily meant to be taken at 100% face value.
Yes, one does generally submit one’s own head shot. With some folks who I will not name here, it amounts to a form of denial. Of course that was the case with me for a while; I submitted the above several times when I was a 300-pound bag of bloat, with a big more-white-than-black beard, too, at that. Sad. I shot the shot it to the NYFF people this year as an experiment, sort of, which I’m happy to note kind of worked out.
Now, of course, you should switch to the William Conrad pic.
The badge pic bears a resemblance to Luc Sante.
@Evelyn Roak – I was going to venture a resemblance to John Lurie. Like, not quite an angry John Lurie, but more John Lurie tellin’ it like it is to someone.
I’m just going to stop now.
The photo of you holding the badge shows you now resemble Gene Siskel.
So much depends upon…the pose. The particular facial expression on the press badge is something I’d be hard pressed to reproduce and “hold” on demand; the photographer, the great Svend Lindbaek, had me stand in front of some seamless and tell dirty stories, or vent about some jerk, or some combination thereof, and snapped away. His preferred shot, as above, shows me delivering the final tell-off, or something. Whereas my pose holding the press pass is more “whaddya-gonna-do” faux avuncular in the Siskel publicity-shots-for-“At The Movies” mode.
What’s the nicest, most gentle way to say “You look like a Nazi guard in that badge photo”?
Because it’s sorta meant as a compliment…?
Digging a hole am I.
N. P. Thompson once said I looked like a redneck constantly toasted on moonshine, and that was when we were still speaking.
Wells hates people knowing that he’s over the age of 60.
Just sayin’.
Our horror film (THE VIOLENT KIND) recently got into Austin’s Fantastic Fest and for their badge, they require you shake your face back and forth as hard as possible and have someone snap a pic. The photos are freeking hilarious.…they look like “you” after you’ve been slapped around the head or stuck in a wind tunnel.
So, the models were quoting De Niro in Brazil, right?
i think the two pictures support the fashionista’s comment, the intense, seemingly pissed off, furrowed brow vs the chill, what’sup brow furrowed. Either way revel in the ‘looking good’ comments cause you do! and you earned the right to feel good about! you go bro!