I'd like to have a very serious conversation with you regarding a problem facing the world today so monumental, there should be a Constitutional Amendment banning it: 1.85 Fascism. I'm not entirely certain what it is, but it must be pretty bad. I think--and anyone who knows better can correct me if I'm wrong--that it involves Studio Heads, Home Video Distributors, and various other people working in the Entertainment Industry wearing brown shirts with arms band with odd shaped film reels giving a Nazi type salute to their Mad Dictator Bob Furmanek as he commits unconscionable genocide on the tops and bottoms of all movies made after 1952. I know the seriousness of this issue because Jeffrey Wells has said so repeatedly on his blog.
Wait. Jeffrey Wells said so? Oh. That explains quite a lot. Strike that first paragraph. Move along. Nothing to see here.
By now, an unfortunate number of people have heard of Mr. Wells and his insane blog Hollywood-Elsewhere. Part of this, of course, is because of the blog itself. Part of it is the sheer number of people who have devoted countless energies to writing about the blog. Nico Lang at thefrisky.com opens his article on Wells by stating "To say Jeffrey Wells is America's worst film critic is to do a disservice to just how truly, incredibly terrible this man is at his job." Anna Merian at jezebel.com writes of "the disemboweling of Jeffrey Wells, film critic". Those two, among others, were posted in response to a ludicrous tweet by Wells that The Revenant was not intended for women. Nikki Finke at deadline.com once famously reprinted an e-mail from Wells to James Mangold begging for nude photos of Vinessa Shaw. Eric Snider wrote angrily of Wells blowing off a panel he was supposed to do for the Oxford (MS) Film Festival in 2099 due to not being able to get good Wi-Fi. Then there's all the angry reactions to his various fat-shaming articles.
Umm, hi, guys and gals: I know I don't post to this blog as nearly often as I should (time constraints) so you're probably all going to say "who the hell is this guy to give us advice?" but can we all agree that Wells is not a film critic or a cineaste (though he claims to be) and is literally nothing more than a troll? Some have actually correctly identified him as such and yet they still howl in anger at his antics. Seriously, why? Why is anyone paying any attention to him at this stage of the game? Oh sure, here I am writing about him saying that we should stop writing about him, which may or may not be self-defeating.
But of course he's a troll. Consider his tactics. He writes some lunacy that he knows will piss people off. When it inevitably does, someone inevitably writes about the lunacy. Other people, not believing that anyone could ever say that, goes to see if it was actually said. Once they see it, they comment or write about it. Rinse and repeat. The man gets views and in this business, views mean money due to advertising. Any schmuck can pull that trick and more than one has. He's just one of the more successful ones due to his infamy.
"Hey," Jeff Wells says, "if I post that Amy Schumer is fat and unattractive, the internet will blow up and people will come reading my blog". Of course the internet blows up with righteous indignation. Meantime, absolutely nobody bothers to take a look at the guy posting that comment and thinks that if him and Amy Schumer walked into a bar to pick people up, only one of them would have a major problem with that. If you need help figuring out who, it ain't Amy Schumer. Let's just say that I personally wouldn't throw Schumer out of bed for eating crackers.
Of course, Schumer isn't the only woman Wells has found unattractive. He's made similar comments about Melissa McCarthy, Lena Dunham, and even insulted Cameron Diaz for--gasp and horrors--aging! And while Diaz does have the unmitigated gall to be 43, like Schumer, I wouldn't say no to her. Of course, I can't imagine the woman that would say yes to Wells. I'm not a particularly good looking guy but somebody broke the ugly stick while beating Wells with it.
I'm sorry. Was that a childish thing to say? Sure it was. But don't lie. At least some of you thought it was funny.
In fairness, Wells also obsesses on the weight of male actors like Vince Vaughn. He especially likes discussing their man-boobs for some strange reason. Personally, I don't pay that much attention to topless men in the movies I'm watching, but that's just me. Sorry Chris Hemsworth, your various shirtless scenes do nothing for me. But hey, if Jeff's all about that, go for it says I.
Some of you may have gotten the idea that I'm a little more flippant than some of the other people who have written about him. Though I will admit that I'd totally buy Anna Merian a drink for her article on him. But I'm flippant because I can't possibly take a thing he says seriously. Nobody who calls themselves a cineaste would write and say and do the things that have been attributed to him. Seriously, this is a man who, in a podcast with Jack Theakston (http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/column/dance13/jackdebate.mp3) actually at 42 minutes in says "Who cares what they wanted? That includes the Directors". Who cares what the Director wanted or intended? A so-called film buff says that with a straight face and expects people to ever value his opinions?
The final clue to the fact that he's not any sort of film buff or critic is the fact that anyone and everyone who disagrees with him is obviously a fascist. All those women who take umbrage at his various sexist and fat shaming remarks? Fascists. Clearly fascists. Bob Furmanek is a fascist for wanting movies to be seen the way they were originally meant to be seen. Imagine that! Wanting to see movies the way they were intended! What's next? Purists being against Colorization? The outrage of it all!
Anyone who has read this blog in the past knows that I've mentioned Mr. Furmanek on occasion for his work through the 3-D Film Archive. What the man has done for the preservation of our 3-D movie history alone gets him sainthood in my book. However, he has also done a ton of research on the widescreen era, carefully documenting not only what was shown in widescreen but what was supposed to be shown that way. In other words, he doesn't just argue for things to be released "cleavered" (as Wells puts it). One of his most famous anti-widescreen arguments involved the 3 Stooges short Goof on the Roof. He pointed out that though the short was released widescreen, it was clearly shot for 1.37 and should have been put on DVD that way. Sony didn't listen to him and released it in widescreen anyhow, but that's not his fault.
Wells's argument is that he's watched these 1.85 films in 1.37 for decades on TV. Yes, well, that's how CinemaScope movies were shown on TV for decades, too. Should we watch Jaws or Star Wars only in Pan and Scan since that's how they were shown on TV? Should we miss out on 2/3 of the picture because "boxy is beautiful"? How about 3-D? Since House of Wax and Creature From the Black Lagoon were shown for decades in a 2-D image on TV,is that how we should watch them now? For that matter, movies were shown with commercials every ten minutes for decades on TV. Should we watch them that way now, too?
Seriously, what "cineaste" claims that movies should be put on video they way they were shown on TV for years, even when that clearly isn't the way they were meant to be seen? No one who is a serious film critic, that's for sure. That and the fact that he just freely throws around the word Fascist ("That word? I don't think it means what you think it means", Jeff) prove the pure troll aspect. We're all being played and sadly, the man is making money off our being played. So yeah, can we come to some agreement that his opinions have all the importance of a five year old donkey turd and move on?
For the record, if by chance he is serious with his "boxy is beautiful" and "this is the way I watched these thing for years" arguments, I have a little message for him:
It's okay, Jeff. The 70s are over now. Disco is dead, all the TVs are color now, and LSD is no longer the cool drug. They even gave women the right to vote. We made it into the 21st Century and Y2K didn't blow us all up. You don't need to stick to the Castle Digest Super 8 anymore, Jeff. They have things now that let you watch the whole movie. They call them Blu Rays and DVDs. Technology is a wonderful thing. It's okay to come into 2016 and be part of the real world.
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