Previously on VanRamblings, we’d introduced you to David Poland’s The Hot Button, one of the first (if not the first) daily, web-based cinema column. Poland’s been around since 1994 on the web, in one form or another.
Today, we introduce you to Jeffrey Wells, who’s been around almost as long, doing much the same kind of work Poland does, covering cinema on the web. At the end of this item (you’ll have to click on the Continue Reading prompt a few centimetres below), you’ll find Wells’ 2004 Oscar contention ‘balloon’. This is well-worth reading, so look for it.
Both David Poland’s The Hot Button and Jeffrey Wells‘ Movie Elsewhere are available as links on the left, under the Cinema category.
Jeffrey Wells began his entertainment journalism career in Connecticut before moving to New York in 1978, where he wrote for the New York Post, along with other papers. In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles, quit journalism and went to work in the publicity department at Menahem Golan’s Cannon Pictures, then at its height. He married in 1987. In 1991, following a bitter divorce (is there any other kind?), Wells once again returned to journalism, becoming a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Throughout the early 90s, Wells earned Sony’s enmity by writing tough pieces about Sony chief Mark Canton. He also wrote about the troubled Bruce Willis movie Striking Distance in the Los Angeles Times. Wells is given credit for contributing a scathing column, employing the byline Celia Brady, to Spy magazine, which indicated that Canton had slept through a screening of Martin Scorcese’s The Age of Innocence. Brady/Wells wrote that when Canton was at Warner Brothers, he oversaw Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson. Canton reportedly asked for a plot summary.
While investigating Columbia Pictures executive Michael Nathanson, who was involved in the Heidi Fleiss scandal, Wells had his phone tapped by a private eye, the recently jailed Anthony Pellicano. Pellicano conducted a thorough background search on Wells, looking for information to discredit him, but found nothing. On June 4 1993, Wells wrote a column for the LA Times about a disastrous test screening for the bomb Last Action Hero.
Sony went nuts.

Subsequently, Wells contributed to an Entertainment Weekly story with a cover that screamed “Schwarzenegger Finishes ‘Last’!!” Canton had the offending issue pulled from the shelves of Sony’s Columbia-Tri-Star bookstore. Wells’ Last Action Hero exposé, and the angry bullying that resulted from Sony, raised his profile in LA.
For the next five years, following publication of his controversial Last Action Hero piece, Wells wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times, which was syndicated in newspapers and magazines across the globe. Wells left his employment with the LA Times in 1998 to concentrate on a new column for the now-defunct Mr. Showbiz website (owned by Disney/ABC).
Since late 1998, Wells has concentrated almost exclusively on web-based writing, which he’s said he finds more fulfilling than writing for old-style media (although, he still contributes to People magazine, and Entertainment Weekly, from time to time).
In 1999, Wells began a twice-weekly column, called Movie Confidential, for Reel.com, a column that he wrote until August, 2002. After that, Kevin Smith came calling, and since late 2002, Wells has published his twice-weekly Movie Elsewhere column on Smith’s MoviePoopShoot website.
Wells has long had a love-hate relationship with the ever prickly, fellow web-based, columnist David Poland. On June 22, 2000 Poland wrote: “I have been forced to face the end of my relationship, professional and personal, with Jeff Wells. I do not take this step blithely … I mourn the loss of Jeff’s friendship as a colleague in a very small circle of movie columnists. In fact, it’s not even a circle. It’s barely a parallelogram. He will be missed.”
Needless to say, in 2004, Wells and Poland remains friends and colleagues, and ever supportive of one another.
Update: As kindly pointed out by Jason Heiser, in the Comments section below, the biographical information on Jeffrey Wells was indeed gleaned from an article available on the Internet, written by Luke Ford. Apologies are offered for failing to cite Mr. Ford’s work.
Okay, now that you know more about Jeffrey Wells than you would care to know, here are his picks for Oscar contenders come ballot time January 1, 2005.

BEST PICTURE: Alexander (Warner Bros.); The Aviator (Warner Bros.); Closer (Columbia); I Heart Huckabee’s (Fox Searchlight); J.M. Barrie’s Neverland (Miramax); Spanglish (Columbia); An Unfinished Life (Miramax); Troy (Warner Bros.); The Brothers Grimm (MGM/Dimension); Saraband (Sony Classics).
BEST DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone (Alexander); Martin Scorsese (The Aviator); Mike Nichols (Closer); David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabee’s); Marc Forster (J.M. Barrie’s Neverland); James L. Brooks (Spanglish); Lasse Hallstrom (An Unfinished Life); Wolfgang Petersen (Troy); Terry Gilliam (The Brothers Grimm); Pedro Almodóvar (Bad Behavior), Ingmar Bergman (Saraband).
BEST ACTOR: Tom Hanks (The Terminal); Jude Law (Closer); Daniel Day Lewis (Rosa and the Snake); Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator); Anthony Hopkins (Proof); Morgan Freeman (Freedomland); Clive Owen (Closer); Liam Neeson (Kinsey).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dustin Hoffman (J.M. Barrie’s Neverland); Val Kilmer (Alexander); Tom Wilkinson (A Good Woman); Stanley Tucci (The Terminal); Clive Owen, (Closer); Don Cheadle (The Assassination of Richard Nixon).
BEST ACTRESS: Téa Leoni (Spanglish); Julia Roberts (Closer); Liv Ullman (Saraband); Helen Hunt (A Good Woman); Gwyneth Paltrow (Proof); Laura Linney (Kinsey); Anne Reid (The Mother).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Meryl Streep (The Manchurian Candidate); Hope Davis (Proof); Natalie Portman (Closer); Julie Christie (J.M. Barrie’s Neverland); Lauren Bacall (Birth).
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: James L. Brooks (Spanglish); Alexander Payne (Sideways); David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabee’s); Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind); Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (The Life Aquatic).
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Patrick Marber (Closer, adapted from his own play).
BEST DOCUMENTARIES: Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer (distributor); Ondi Timoner’s DiG! (Palm Pictures); Touching the Void … but is it actually a documentary? (IFC Films); Bukowski: Born Into This (Magnolia); Riding Giants (Sony Pictures Classics). (5)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURES: The Incredibles (Disney/ Pixar); Shark Tale (DreamWorks); Tokyo Godfathers (Samuel Goldywn). (3)
BEST FOREIGN FILM: The Motorcycle Diaries (Focus Features).
© Copyright 2002-2004 Movie Poop Shoot
The Oscar balloon will be updated from time to time, with linked reviews to Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic, as movies are released, and as Jeffrey Wells updates his Oscar balloon predictions

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

See author's posts