Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere is a film blogger who uses his blog to give his opinions on a variety of topics including politics. Sometimes he’s interesting, mostly he’s self-involved and occasionally he shows his true misogynistic tendencies. He seems to have a pretty big following, must get lots of page views because he has lots of advertising for films on his site and seems to be one of the only film people making a living at blogging.
I don’t see what the post he wrote titled “Just Hot Enough” about rating women on looks has to do with film. It doesn’t. It’s just one of his misogynistic rants and really doesn’t belong on a film site. Of course, he is able to write anything he wants because its his site, but I hope people take a long hard look at what they are supporting. It is really unacceptable behavior from an adult.
It’s ironic that the Broadway show Reasons to be Pretty ignited this post because the author of the play Neil Labute is already in my asshat book for many of his previous films. I read about a month ago that the show got some guy inthe audience so wound up that he actually called an actress in the show (Marin Ireland) a bitch from his seat.
But this is how it goes in the business. Neil Labute movies get made and his show gets to be on Broadway, and Jeff Wells get paid for writing nasty shit about women. Sexist shit is par for the course.
Kim Voynar and Jezebel also weigh in. If you want to see what he wrote you’ll have to click on his site. I have no desire to give him any more attention except to say, Jeff you’re an ass. Have some respect.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
yeah, he’s a jerk, but to be honest, I really wasn’t that offended. i read his blog everyday so I wasn’t surprised when he wrote that post.
Like you, Melissa, Jezebel’s weekend editor got pretty angry at Saturday’s “Just Hot Enough” piece and went after me pretty savagely in a piece posted yesterday. I posted a reply on Jezebel, but I’ve since modified and augmented it (slightly).
For one thing I forgot to address the “dogs” comment. This is just a variation on the old line that reads “if you want a friend get a dog.” We all know what this means. Hetero relationships are always being reassessed and renegotiated. Your stock goes up or down with your wife/girlfriend depending on various evolving factors. People fall out of love in relationships. (And sometimes back in love.) Ardor fades. People get fat, lose jobs, lose their love of life and sometimes turn to drink. Expectations are unmet and disappointment ensues. Nothing new in this.
The point is that dogs are cool with you no matter what. What’s so godawful in dreaming about unmuddled loyalty and unmitigated affection from a mate? Everyone does this, however unrealistic.
Anyway, here’s what I wrote this morning:
Jeffrey Wells to Hortense:
I think you’re being somewhat strident here. You’re flying off the handle and you’re not being fair. The proof is that you’re selectively quoting from my piece. You’re posting only the pizazz lines without considering the modifiers. And that’s not cool or professional.
Is it really that sexist or crazy to say that life or biology is unfair or unequal according to certain tastes and standards? We all know that it is. Some of us are generally considered more attractive than others. Most if not all of us would agree that, say, the young Helen Thomas isn’t/wasn’t as conventionally alluring or fetching as, let’s say, Michelle Obama or Angelina Jolie or whomever. You know what I mean.
All I said was that many of us refer to certain measurings and gradations of allure and attractiveness, obviously based on our own standards. That’s shocking to you? Are you going tell me that women don’t rate guys according to looks (among other attributes)? Please!
A person who fails to look within and beyond what a person looks like is truly walking around blind and polluting the world with their short-sightedness. I learned this when I was seven years old, and it’s really quite unfair and malicious of you to try and paint me with this brush.
I would ask that you not only read what I wrote more carefully, but quote from the piece more fairly.
What I wrote was inspired by having seen Neil LaBute’s “reasons to be pretty”…a great play. (Have you seen it? Something tells me that Jezebel readers are persuaded that a LaBute is a ferocious woman hater and that his plays are therefore off-limits.) I won’t get into the whole LaBute thing but you really should see the play.
My piece was basically a sympathetic rationale for the lead male character in the play having called his longtime girlfriend “normal.” I don’t believe that he used the word “normal” in a malicious way and I was trying to cut him a break or at least explain how how it might not have been meant as a hurtful remark.
You didn’t quote a key line in the piece which acknowledged that “most of us think of ‘normal’ as one step up from homely — obviously a hurtful thing to say about anyone.” That’s a fairly central and fundamental statement to make in such a piece, wouldn’t you say? That it’s wrong and cruel to hurt people’s feelings, and we all should refrain from it? But you left this out.
What I wrote, to repeat, was basically a positive spin on that “normal” remark, saying or rationalizing that “calling a woman a B-type can be, in a manner of speaking, a kind of compliment.”
I tried to explain why describing a woman as a B or a high-C can be seen as a kind of compliment — because one is saying in effect “that the woman in question probably has good internal qualities as well as looks. You’re saying that she’s probably a good person inside, good all around the track, keeper material, etc.”
I began the piece by referring to two well-known quotes. Albert Brooks’ character voiced the first in Broadcast News: “Always choose a woman who’s just hot enough to turn you on.”
Brooks could have continued by saying, “Reach a little bit higher than that and you’re flirting with trouble. Go much higher than that and you’re flat-out asking for it.”
Do you honestly think that James L. Brooks is a sexist dog also?
Do you honestly think that there is something deeply flawed and repulsive about a guy who would say this or feel there is merit in this view? Honestly — it feels like I’m in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. You guys are rabid about such matters.
The other quote is from a famous early ’60s Jimmy Soul tune that goes “if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, don’t make a pretty woman your wife.” It’s an old pop tune that people laughed at way back when because they knew there was a grain of truth in it. Or at least a grain of truth according to experience.
Drop-dead attractive women tend to get more from life and tend to expect more from it. They live, think, assess and strategize according to the laws of their own realm. Me me me me me. Condo condo condo condo. Money money money money. Better apparel, better cell phone, better vacation next year, better private school for my seven year-old etc. “A woman must have everything” — Joni Mitchell.
Women who are not quite in the A-level magazine-cover class (in a good way!) therefore tend to be less of a handful, perhaps a tad less obsessive or myopic, a tad more accommodating or down-to-earth. Not necessarily (exceptions abound!) but more often than not. That is what life has taught me.
I was only trying to point out that views of this sort have a historical cultural basis and that it’s not a totally wackjob thing to try and rephrase these views and explain where they come from.
You didn’t quote this line either: “I’m not saying you can’t be perfectly happy with a triple-A or a double-A — I’m saying that happiness odds increase when you drop down into the B and high-C categories. Every now and then you’ll get lucky and meet a lovely, spiritually attractive, good-for-the-soul A-minus woman, but the odds don’t favor it.”
I’m not talking out of some bent prejudice — I’m honestly sharing what I believe based on life experience. Bs and high Cs can be less problematic than As, and particularly AAs and AAAs.
You seem to be saying, Hortense, that it’s horrid to even think of women as AAs or high Cs or whatever — that visual impressions should be tossed out the window at the get-go and that ONLY spiritual and emotional issues and ones relating to character and intestinal fortitude be considered. Well, that would certainly be a better way of assessing people of either gender. Look beyond the flesh and bone and into their souls. I agree with this.
Thank God there are tens of millions of us who immediately try to learn who and what a person is when they meet them, and who give physical attractiveness its proper due, which is that it’s nice and pleasing to be with a physically attractive person (not to mention stimulating) but that this is hardly — shouldn’t be — any sort of final determining factor. I’m with you, Hortense. I get it. You’re right.
Except guys have always and will always be attracted to beautiful or provocative women, and once you accept this as inevitable and unstoppable it’s hardly a terrible thing to admit that most of us keep score and hand out school grades about the allure & attractiveness of various women we meet.
I think that most women know and accept this. I think that this acceptance and awareness might have something to do with the fact that women spend God knows how many billions each year on products and services that enhance and augment their natural physical beauty. What do you think…maybe?
You also didn’t quote a line that said “thank God for life’s exceptions” and another that said that “my last serious relationship was with a solid A and she was fine all around for the most part.” Uh-oh — a quote that indicates that a fair-minded and balanced mentality may be at work here! Strike it!
I also said that “people only develop emotionally and spiritually when they’ve been forced to, and a certain working familiarity with rejection among women or men obviously tends to encourage this.” I would really appreciate an explanation from you, Hortense, about how this statement is inaccurate. I’m all ears.
Oh and by the way — really nice suggestion that advertisers shouldn’t support Hollywood Elsewhere as a way of muffling voices like mine. Really classy, pure Al Capone.
This is the same guy who begged director James Mangold for topless photos of actress Vinessa Shaw. Old man Wells took a liking to what he saw and wanted some on set still photos of a topless Shaw for his private collection. When his ass was called out on it by some of his regular readers he imposed a ban on those who dared bring the subject up. I mean it he wrote he’d ban anyone from his site who questioned him. This peeps is the definition of a dirty old man who refuses to admit that he’s a dirty old man.
Hey Jeff since you’re reading this tell us why you’ll rate the looks of women but still use a photo of yourself from what- 10 years ago and 30lbs lighter? on your website and on your press credentials? I mean you can’t really believe you’re fooling anyone with that shit, right?
It’s funny because I wasn’t necessarily bothered by the idea of the post, since it was based on a play, and occasionally websites veer from their usual content. And I wasn’t even necessarily bothered by the actual comments perse. But what really bugged me was the response to the Jezebel article (which was printed here). People who throw up lightning rods should expect to catch lightning. And having read both pieces, I think the Jezebel article was dead one!
Since it was asked, the main difference to me between the tone of the piece and the comment by Brooks is that Brooks seemed to be acknowledging his own flaws: namely his ugliness. The reason why Brooks needs to get someone just hot enough to turn him on, so to speak, is because anyone much hotter will not be turned on by his less than thrilling appearance.
Oh, since we’re talking about quotes, let’s look at that song. There isn’t much to it other than the chorus, but here are some of the the lines from the stanzas:
“A pretty woman makes her husband look small
And very often causes his downfall
As soon as he marries her then she starts
To do the things that will break his heart
But if you make an ugly woman your wife
you’ll be happy for the rest of your life
An ugly woman cooks meals on time
And she’ll always give you peace of mind”
Hmm, a pretty woman makes her husband look small? And an ugly woman cooks your meals on time? This is NOT something I am trying to return, as I hope many women aren’t. There is a reason this song was made when it was made.
While I don’t like the idea that people trade up or down according to what they they think they can get, this is a fact of nature that’s been shown in many sociological studies. But the implications in the blog piece (which I’m not going to repeat, since I think Jezebel does it well) are disturbing.
But I do want to open it up a little, and bring it back to you Melissa. I remember you were bugged by Jolie’s lips in Changeling. And since then I’ve been trying to listen to interviews (when I can) where Clint talks about why he chose her. And from what I could gather, he talks about her looks. In one interview he says he chose her because he reminded her of how women looked then. And Wells ends his post (I hope it’s ok if I quote that a bit) that when he interviewed Angelina he couldn’t relax or be himself, that “those lips, those eyes…the whole thing” made him “flustered, quietly stammering, trying too hard.” He “couldn’t escape a slight inner trembling.”
Really, to me that was the most illuminating part of the post. I wish we could just write it off as separate from film. But I think that is the very fault line where the gender problems occur. Men not only see this as relevant, but are evidently even physically effected by it. Telling them not to be doesn’t help. I’ve had eons of conversations with a bud about why does one feel the need to want to date a female to watch her in a film, or determine her acting chops. But it does, at least to a substantial number. How do we get past that? Do we ever get past that? I’m still not sure.
thanks.
I read Wells’ original post and his subsequent response to your post with an open-mind. And, I’m still offended by at least half of what he wrote, mainly rating women on a grading system like a stereotypical college frat boy. His post is just as superficial as his view of women.
If Jeffrey Wells learned anything from LaBute’s play (which I saw last week, and yes, I liked) too bad it wasn’t the fact that Greg (the main character) realizes the error he made. Women don’t want to be called “normal.” Ok, you might think it, but you certainly don’t say it out loud. Greg doesn’t get this until he loses the best thing he ever had because of his “asshat-ness.” But, by the end of the play he appears to be a bit of a changed man. He lets the girl he loves go because he was too much of a fool to keep her happy in the first place.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Wells and the verbal diarrhea he spews throughout his post (side note to Wells: Women also do not enjoy being likened to dogs, no matter what positive spin you try to put on it. I may love my dog, but dogs are pets and not people we share equal relationships with).
If anything, these posts sparked a lively and interesting debate. This is what theater, good or bad, should do. “Reasons To Be Pretty,” the play that Jeffrey Wells references, closes this Sunday. Before it does, go and judge it for yourself.
You guys are amazing.
Here are the gory details about the Viness Shaw incident. I bet Wells would get along with that other asshat, Mr. Skin:
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/creepiest-email-from-a-blogger-to-hollywood/
“What’s wrong with being sexy?” -Nigel Tufnel, 1984
Without even looking at Jeffrey Wells’ photograph, and employing the scale he uses for grading women’s attractiveness, I give him: a resounding F. A low F. Very, very, low.
Yuck. All his protestations and justifications and counter-attacks only reveal how incredibly shallow and vapid he is. Even if he looked like Tyrone Power, he’d still be an F minus.
Thanks for standing your ground, Melissa, and for calling out Fs like Wells when they deserve it. He’s actually a “G” – for gross.