Author: matt

Matthew McConaughey is hip? When did that happen?
Title: Dirty Little Secret
Log line: The lives of a hip, successful couple are overwhelmed by the arrival of their first child. Tensions build between them as they leave high society to enter the world of baby-proofers, nannies and preschool waiting lists.
Writer: Elisa Bell
Agent: William Morris Agency
Buyer: Paramount Pictures
Price: n/a
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Logged: 1/14/04
More: Loosely inspired by Julie Tilsner’s book Attack of the Toddlers!. j.k. livin’s Matthew McConaughey and Gus Gustawes and Mad Chance’s Andrew Lazar will produce. Mark Gustawes will co-produce. Damien Saccani will executive produce. Matthew McConaughey will also star.
(From Done Deal)

Sammy Davis, Jr. to Bush’s Nixon, Dennis Miller is profiled in today’s Times by Bernard Weinraub:
The Joke Is on Liberals, Says Dennis Miller, Host of His Own Show Again.
If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, what unspeakable thing happened to this man?

Joseph Kahn and Warner Bros. are betting $30 million that you are stupid.
Torque opens this friday after some minor delays. Apparently the geniuses at Warner Brothers decided that not only would no one want to see a movie about a stubbled, pretty boy biker framed for murder, but also that no one would take a movie with a name like Torque seriously. Warner Brothers had a big marketing powwow, discussed the shortcomings of the film, the challenge of selling the same tired story once again, and they decided, after interminable minutes of debate, What the fuck—let’s throw this piece of shit at 1200 screens and see if it sticks.
I predict a $20 million opening weekend.
Torque is helmed by Joseph Kahn, a director with the distinction of sharing Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham‘s music video pedigree while possessing none (not a whit) of their visual or storytelling talents. Kahn has directed clips for Eminem, U2, Moby, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Garbage, so you know he’s ready to graduate to the big time and direct some big screen, um, garbage. After all, it’s every music video director’s god-given right to tackle a major motion picture: Spike and Michel have found successful second careers on the silver screen. Earlier, David Fincher, Antoine Fuqua, F. Gary Gray, Hype Williams, and others made the leap with varying degrees of success. What do those losers have that Joseph Kahn doesn’t? (Talent for one thing.)
What Kahn has, which those guys never will, is the insane envy of his former high school classmates. Check out what someone named Cinema Lover wrote on the IMDB‘s message board:

I went to high school with Joseph Khan back in the early 1990’s. We were both at Jersey Village High School in Houston, TX back in the early 90’s.
Man Joseph must be getting some crazy p*ssy these days, what with being a reputable music video director and now a director of a major motion picture like “Torque”. He’s directed Britney, Beyonce, Jaime Pressley….DAMN! I remember he was a little goofy looking, and kinda ugly Asian dude, but we all know that Power==Hot P*ssy.
Like Tiger Woods, I imagine Joe having sex with tons of hot blonde women on a big pile of cash.
Jesus, when I think about it I feel so freakin’ small. To think this dude was in my history class, he always had a camcorder with him, and his passion for filming people obviously paid off. Though even back then he was probably getting a lot of p*ssy, just because even in the early 90’s he was directing up and coming hip hop acts in Houston while he himself was still a teenager.
Damn I feel small.

(Cinema Lover? Playa Hater is more like it!) Maybe Kahn won’t win any gold statuettes for Torque, but he already has something a whole lot better: the glare of the green eyed monster. (Oh, and all that Hot P*ssy!)
I’m betting that like its Diesel-burning older brothers The Fast and the Furious, XXX and the stinky cinematic skid marks 2 Fast 2 Furious and Biker Boyz, Torque is a visually-dazzling but completely incoherent exercise in rapid-fire editing, leaden sub-porn film acting, and relentless product placements. Boo-ya!

If that’s the case, why not go for the other Tork—Peter Tork of the Monkees— and rent Head from your friendly neighborhood indie video store this Friday. Written—between hits of the kindest California bud available in 1968—by Jack Nicholson and directed with an “ah, whatever” attitude by Bob Rafelson, it’s the antidote to the slick, Hollywood youth-oriented releases that glut multiplexes mall-over America like so many Mrs. Fields’ cookies full of arsenic.
Actually, who am I kidding? Head is a piece of shit. But it’s probably better than Torque and at least it’s been remembered 36 years years after its release. Oh, and you can be sure Bob Rafelson’s high school classmates are eating their hearts out over all the p*ssy he got in the 70s, what with being a reputable film director and all.
Damn, I feel small even pointing it out.

With the recent release of Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein has been coming in for some serious bashing lately. It’s easy to take shots at Harvey: if ever there was a big, slow-moving fish in a barrell, it’s Miramax’s bully-boy king.
But what about Harvey the Nice Guy? Harvey who tackles even the smallest of tasks. Harvey who relieves his overworked underlings and does things like calling to ensure that packages made it to their recipients. Harvey who just called to say “I love you.”
To find that Harvey, you have to read Sharon Waxman’s article Lobbying for Golden Globes Is a Hollywood Ritual in today’s New York Times:

Three days before the close of voting on the Golden Globe nominations last month, the phone rang at the home of a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the people who vote on the awards.
“This is Harvey Weinstein,” said the voice on the other end of the line, the member said. “I’m calling about Bad Santa. ”
The member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the caller, who was the co-executive producer of that film and the Miramax co-chairman, “Mr. Weinstein, I loved the movie.”
“Oh,” came the reply, then a click.

If you think that sounds like Bad Harvey-style intimidation, you are wrong! Very wrong. According to Amanda Lundberg, a Miramax spokesperson quoted by Waxman, Harvey was just “confirming their receipt of late-arriving cassettes, which in our case was Bad Santa. If members told him what they thought of the movie, he didn’t ask for it. It was an unsolicited comment.”
Take that, Harvey haters! He was just being polite, on-the-ball, and decent. Why would we ever expect anything less from him?

It’s revenge of the nerds night on Bravo.
How else to describe the lineup on Celebrity Poker Showdown of Willie Garson, David Cross, Richard Schiff, and Paul Rudd. (One of these things is not like others, it’s true: but despite Rudd’s good looks, his status as every indie girl’s heartthrob—he was soooooo adorable in Wet Hot American Summer!!!—makes him a nerd by proxy. They’re also playing with Nicole Sullivan late of Mad TV who’s also something of a nerd.)
Maybe the producers of Celebrity Poker Showdown were inspired by Ben Mezrich’s geeks versus card sharks bestseller, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. Or maybe they’ve run out of good-looking stars who know the rules of the game. One thing’s for sure: a lot of makeup was required to get the shine off three-fifths of the players’ pates tonight.
Tune in at 9PM EST to see which nerd triumphs and which cry all the way to the Tri-Lam house.

What is the deal with Quentin Tarantino and masturbation? Why does the musky odor of onanism hover around the Kill Bill director like the visible stink lines that emanate from Peanuts‘ Pigpen?
Last week in “The Year in Movies,” Slate‘s raucous film critic caucus, the conversation between David Edelstein, A.O. Scott, J. Hoberman, Sarah Kerr, and Manohla Dargis practically devolved into a circle jerk about whether or not Tarantino is jerking off on film.
Sarah Kerr of Vogue spanks Tarantino first in an entry headed “Quentin Tarantino’s Masturbation”:

On to Kill Bill for a moment. Jim, do you really think Tarantino is a victim of the system? I think we’re a victim of his not writing a screenplay, indulging in a quite boring obsession with his leading lady, and essentially masturbating on screen, with the gall to invite us back for a second installment. I hated Kill Bill not in a tsk-tsk, scolding way but because it induced boredom to the level of panic—a desire to flee the theater—and self-pitying rage that work required me to stay put.

David Edelstein, Slate‘s resident critic and “Year in Movies” host busts off his own critical nut graph, dense with particularly loaded imagery:

As is often the case, Sarah, you nail Kill Bill but you end up on the wrong side of the equation. You say that Tarantino is “essentially masturbating on screen, with the gall to invite us back for a second installment.” I say it’s rather entertaining to watch this guy’s masturbatory fantasies, especially when they’re epic. N.B.: This is NOT a general principle, but for some artists, masturbatory fantasies and art are very close-knit.

(Let’s assume he’s referring to Brian De Palma—a filmmaker whose very name recalls a naughty reference to masturbation—whom Edelstein has taken a number of well-deserved whacks at over the years. The fact that all those reviews contain references to math or trigonometry may bespeak the critic’s own particular fixations, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Manohla Dargis shoots her own load with her response: “I don’t want to watch anyone’s masturbatory fantasy unless I’ve specifically skulked in and out of my neighborhood video store or am watching pay-for-view in my lonely Lost in Translation-style hotel room and have nothing better to do.”
Since “The Year in Movies” ran every day last week, the Slate crew continued their critical beat-down of Tarantino’s cinematic beat-off sessions for another two days, always with the smirking, knowing tone of those who know that there’s a thin line between criticism and its pathetic cousin, wankery.
So, I ask again, what is it about Quentin Tarantino that makes dirty minds of all these high-minded folks? Certainly it’s the 10 minute sequence of Uma Thurman’s feet in Kill Bill and the fact that Tarantino is not only unabashed about his love of exploitation flicks (veritable booby parades when not displaying acting so bad it could be used as a “how-not-to” teaching tool for aspiring thespians) but celebratory to the point of ecstasy.
But maybe the real stain comes from creepy comments like the ones Tarantino made while stroking Lost in Translation at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards (here quoted by Page Six): “At some point, I got a crush on the movie… I’ve seen it five times and every time I’ve seen it I’ve had a little date with myself.”
So, Quentin, here’s some free advice if you want to avoid being seen as the film world’s answer to Alexander Portnoy: keep it in your pants, man. Maybe people won’t think you’re such a wanker.

“Ms. Silverman also confirmed that her friend [Lizz Winstead] is narcoleptic. ‘Did she tell you that?’ Ms. Silverman asked. ‘She has no problem taking pills to make her stay awake. Otherwise, she’s out by 9.’ Ms. Winstead’s condition was diagnosed about 15 years ago,” Lefty Radioheads Bite Back by Rachel Donadio, The New York Observer Jan. 7, 2004.
“[Jimmy Kimmel] did not own a jacket, and besides, he’s mostly colorblind. He is also narcoleptic, but that’s another story,” In the Land of the Insomniac, the Narcoleptic Wants to Be King by Bill Carter, The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 3, 2002.

Comedian and free-range provocateur Mort Sahl is interviewed by Stephen Thompson in this week’s Onion A.V. Club (which may or may not be a reprint of an older interview). Having recently watched the 1989 documentary Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition as part of Trio‘s “Uncensored Comedy Month,” I was expecting some great insights from the man who pioneered radical political humor fifty years ago at a time when most comics were still wearing tuxedoes on stage and asking us to please take their wives. (You can watch a Quicktime clip of him in action here.)
With his everyman uniform, relaxed posture, and ever-present newspaper under his arm, Sahl was the living embodiment of Norman Rockwell’s painting Freedom of Speech, questioning, mocking, and needling pieties of the Right and the Left. As shown in the documentary, Sahl sort of went off the rails after JFK was killed, reading lengthy excerpts from The Warren Commission Report onstage. Eventually, he retreated into a satellite-TV equipped fortress of solitude where he continues to read dozens of news magazines a month, keeping up on current events but keeping his opinions mostly to himself.
Unfortunately, The A.V. Club interview is sort of slow going and, in some passages, a bit incoherent. I’m not sure whether this was due to difficulty editing down a long interview, or if Sahl’s thoughts ricochet at such odd trajectories that following them is impossible. Also, Sahl repeatedly contradicts himself: despite Thompson’s admirable attempt to nail Sahl down on why he’s written jokes for Ronald Reagan and George Bush (it’s not specified if they’re talking about Bush 41 or Bush 43), he somehow wriggles free and never quite answers the question. (“Reagan had a pretty ready sense of humor, although they were basic jokes—anti-Communist jokes and all. So I just found it easier…”)
Reading the whole thing, though, I was able to pan a little gold. Here’s Sahl talking almost directly to his closest contemporary progeny (both in intellectual and linguistic nimbleness and political Rightward slouching), Dennis Miller:

I dare say that if most comedians today, the gifted ones, were to sit down and write, they’d learn more about their craft. But what happens is they get out there before they learn what their viewpoint is, if any. They’re all sort of pseudo-Republicans. In case they make money, they’re Republicans. In the unlikely event they’re successful. [Laughs.]

And here’s Sahl talking to Conan O’Brien, Tina Fey, and David Letterman:

You’ve got a society that not only isn’t courageous, but even the apprehension of discomfort makes them roll over. Three years later, the late-night comedians are still making fun of George W. Bush being dense, right?
[…]
When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly. A lot of the guys are invested, like that Saturday Night Live crowd, in rebellion against authority, and that makes them indiscriminate. They only hate a guy because he’s in leadership. But they don’t really pin the fact that he’s a war criminal on him.

One last thought from Mort before he disappears back into isolation: “The relentless liberalism of the comedians is awful, too. We could use one good Leftist instead of all those liberals. [Laughs.] Or one good Rightist, if he had a sense of humor. The righteousness is what kills me in a lot of these people. They’re so right about everything, and so pious. Where did the fun go?”