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Jeet Heer

20 Nov, 10 tweets, 3 min read

1. There was once a boy in Texas who grew up in New Yorker worshipping household. He wanted more than anything to enter into the world of the New Yorker. And when he became a filmmaker he imposed himself on its former film critic. This is story about Wes Anderson & Pauline Kael.

2. There's a recurring Wes Anderson character, the young boy or teen or barely adult man who yearns to enter into the world of adult hood, who pushes himself into the world of adults & becomes emotionally entangled with their lives. It's hard not so see that as autobiographical

3. Rushmore (1998) was Anderson's second film but the first one with his signature style of deadpan artifice. Kael had already retired from the New Yorker when he made it, but Anderson wanted to get her stamp of approvalz; the Andersonian callow youth winning adult approval.

4. Kael was already deep into Parkinson's when Anderson called her. He mentioned Bill Murray was in Rushmore & Kael responded, ''Which Bill Murray?'' Nevertheless, Anderson pushed on. She said, send over a tape. He replied, no, I'll rent a theater to screen it for you.

5. Kael agrees. Anderson shows up to her house to take her to the screening. She surveys him and says, ''My God, you're just a kid." A scene that could almost have been in the very movie Anderson was taking her to see.

6. The screening doesn't go as Anderson hoped for. After the movie, Kael said, ''I don't know what you've got here, Wes.'' Anderson nodded. Kael: ''Did the people who gave you the money read the script?''

7. After the screening Anderson takes Kael back to her house. They talk. Kael offers him some of her books (first editions, hardcover) and signs one, ''For Wes Anderson, With affection and a few queries. Pauline Kael.''

8. This is a bittersweet story, about hero-worship and belatedness. We can never really meet our heroes because by the time we get to see them, the moment of heroism is already gone, they are different. More fundamentally, our heroes can never see us as we want to be seen.

9. I bring up the Kael story because I think it offers us a way into The French Dispatch, Anderson's latest attempt to steamroll through time itself and magically enter into the world he read about as a boy.

@DavidKlion

10. The French Dispatch is a divisive movie: the supreme example of Anderson's imperial nostalgia, his attempt by sheer artifice to undo & remake history. Depending on viewers, it's either masterful or cloying & empty. @DavidKlion & I take it up here: jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-well…

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More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

19 Nov

1. This is a photo of Geordie Greig, a big-wig in British journalism and until recently editor of the Daily Mail, propping up Ghislaine Maxwell. It's the type of scene you'd avoid using in a novel because it's too apt a metaphor.

2. I know what you're thinking. "Jeet, we know the British press is depraved and incestuous. But surely there are limits to even their moral degeneracy. Surely they wouldn't stoop to sympathy for Ghislaine Maxwell." I have bad news for you.

3. The Rachel Johnson piece about her "old chum" Ghislaine got much attention but it's important to know it's part of larger patter of stories expressing concern for Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice. Like this Daily Mail piece.

Read 4 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

17 Nov

Rachel Johnson, sister of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, writes in the Spectator, a magazine once edited by Boris Johnson, in sympathy with for a woman credibly accused on facilitating mass child rape.

There have been a few odd articles in right-wing British media expressing sympathy for Ghislaine Maxwell. One possibility is that they are sending a message: "you're still part of the club. Be a good girl and keep quiet."

"We met briefly at Oxford" is Humblebrag meets Humbert Humbert.

Read 4 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

16 Nov

1. So, one week after being announced on Bari Weiss, the "University of Austin" is turning into an epic clown show. Two prominent members of Board of Advisors (Pinker, comically, below and Robert Zimmer) are out. A third (Gordon Gee) is openly distancing himself from its mission

2. I'm reluctant to call this place "University of Austin" by the way because there already is a University of Texas at Austin (one of the world's great universities, actually!) and this new enterprise, among its other frauds, is clearly intent on brand confusion.

3. So instead of calling this place "University of Austin" it would be better to give it a more accurate name: Potemkin University: it's not so much a real school as a facade of a school designed to fool the credulous and the indoctrinated.

Read 6 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

8 Nov

1. It's a minor problem in grand scheme of things but the one store here in Regina that sells magazines is constantly shrinking its ware. No longer carrying New York Review of New Left Review. But they do carry this gem

2. You would think Hungarian Conservative is a magazine with limited audience outside of Magyar-sphere. But it has a surprisingly robust distribution, popping up all over English speaking world. A handsome journal with clear government & foundation $$ behind it.

3. Hungarian Conservative is a curious bridge journal, bringing together specialized concerns of Obran (lots of anti-EU articles) and USA right (Rod Dreher has a piece accusing Disney corporation of "anti-white racial ideology." Also: "Rommel's Hungarian Soldier"

Read 4 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

29 Oct

1. You see people saying "Dune" is a "Star Wars" rip-off and the first impulse is just to laugh b/c of course the novel Dune predates Star Wars & influenced it etc. But there's a larger thing at work, which is the shared universe of the science fiction genre.

2. One of the interesting features of science fiction is the way concepts in it are shared. Not unlike scientific discoveries, once a writer comes up with a great idea, it gets added to common storehouse of the genre & built on: robots, time travel, galactic empires.

3. The idea of the "rip off" is the language of fandom & intellectual property lawyers, within science fiction writing community, it's recognized that writers work by sharing and adding to the storehouse of ideas.

Read 8 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

28 Oct

@DavidKlion

1. In his New Republic review of Dune, @DavidKlion noted film had difficult task of needing to please both "general audiences looking for an epic sci-fi blockbuster, and fans of the classic 1965 Frank Herbert novel"; achievement of movie is it does that.

2. In my experience, Dune does in fact satisfy both those coming in fresh as well as hardcore fans. I saw it with my partner, who (unlike me) hasn't read the books or seen any of the earlier adaptions & she was impressed. It threads a very narrow needle.

3. What the movie does that's smart is take the long bits of exposition (really info-dumps) in the novel & puts them as unexplained background, foregrounding actions of characters. Exposition is turned into visual narrative to an impressive degree.

Read 4 tweets

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