The early reviews are in:
‘Jews Killed Jesus’ Sign Causing Controversy: Pastor Refuses To Remove Or Change Saying On Outdoor Marquee, ABC News, Denver
[Thanks, Krusty!]
Category: Shallow
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“Huzzah,” He Lied
How do you know a publicist is lying? His lips are moving.
Check out this hilariously deluded comment from Mel Gibson’s PR man, Alan Nierob (whom we’re told is “himself the child of Holocaust survivors”), in Sharon Waxman’s New Film May Harm Gibson’s Career (The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2004):
“I think Hollywood appreciates good art and will embrace the talent of a filmmaker.”
C’mon, Alan! Even you can’t believe that.
If you thought Lewis Black was just that overly-caffeinated, disheveled comedian who does Back in Black on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, swing on by The LA Weekly to learn about his early career as a playwright. (In Love, Pissed, by David Shulman).
Like any writer, Black’s got a little creation myth about the moment he was first prompted to put pen to paper. Like his comedy, it’s half bitter, half funny as hell:
“I’d been living with an actress… And she went over and did a major motion picture in England. We’d been together three years, and now we were in Skid Mode. So she goes over there [England], and I don’t hear from her until she calls me up and tells me she’s met the man she’s going to marry. And I’m like, Are you out of your fucking mind? Because this is a girl without a mainstream romantic bone in her body. Less than a year later, she’s marrying the guy. All my friends went to the wedding. And I didn’t… I really loved her family. We got along really well, and I heard that all the family talked about at the wedding was me, and how they couldn’t believe she was marrying this other guy. So all I did was go, Wow — what if I had shown up? And that was really what the play became about.”
His lose is the audience’s gain, I guess.
Black’s show, One Slight Hitch, is playing now at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank.
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S-I-T-C-O-M Men
Method Man and Redman: The New Face of FOX?
The mainstreaming of Method Man and Redman continues with the announcement that the rappers will star in a new sitcom for FOX. (Fox Parties with Boyz N’ the Gated Hood, Hollywood Reporter, Cynthia Littleton and Nellie Andreeva).
Setting aside for the moment the awful, dated headline, here’s the story of the show’s premise:
The untitled Method Man/Redman project, now in production in New Jersey, is one of the heat-seekers on Fox’s comedy development slate this year… The project, described as a kind of edgier take on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme, was the brainchild of Method Man, the Wu-Tang Clan member who figured that his idea for a TV series couldn’t be any worse than a lot of the stuff he has seen in primetime in recent years.
I’ll withhold my judgment until I see it, mostly because Method Man is so fucking awesome. I still listen to Tical all the time and whenever I hear Meph’s growling, blunt-smoking frogman voice on a Wu-Tang album or side project (his verse on Raekwon‘s “Ice Cream” is a classic), I marvel at just what an amazing MC he is.
Redman‘s pretty great, too: Dare Iz A Darkside is the rare CD that holds up ten years after its release. And Redman’s sense of humor is evident in some of his more playful rhymes.
I’ve never seen How High, but I know from their videos and their short-lived Right Guard commercials that Method Man and Redman have great comic chemistry. (Maybe not the best taste in material, as a series of deodorant commercials suggests, but hey, they’ve got kids and college is expensive.)
It’s also interesting to see how the mainstream uses—and is used—by edgy rappers. Snoop Dogg set the template for transforming a frightening rap persona into a cuddly pose. (Even your mom says “Fo’ Shizzle” nowadays.) Ice Cube is following suit with Barbershop and Barbershop 2: Back in Business. By this time next year, Method Man and Redman may be trading small talk with Regis and Kelly: time will only tell.
It’ll be interesting to see how this show is positioned by FOX. Can they make it into another Bernie Mac Show or will they drop the ball like they did with Cedric the Entertainer?
[via TV Tattle]
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Kael, Kael, Spin, Spin
Pauline Kael and Shane Black: The Beautiful and the Damned
Shane Black, the poster boy for overpaid Hollywood hacks, is set to write and direct his first film for producer Joel Silver. According to Done Deal, the specifics are as follows:
Title: Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang
Log line: A thief posing as an actor teams up with a tough-guy private eye and a frustrated actress. The three stumble upon a murder.
Writer: Shane Black
Agent: David Greenblatt at the Endeavor Agency
Buyer: Warner Bros. Pictures
Price: n/a
Genre: Action Comedy
Logged: 2/25/04
More: Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures will produce. Shane Black will make his feature directing debut. Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan will star.
Sounds like another classic Black film, fitting somewhere between The Last Boy Scout (a tough-guy private eye and a frustrated ex-quarterback try to solve a murder) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (a tough-broad former secret agent turned amnesiac mom and a frustrated detective try to solve the mystery of her past).
What bothers me is the title, which is boosted Pauline Kael‘s second book of movie reviews. Kael explained her title this way:
The words “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.
(From Spicy Quotes)
One of Hollywood’s highest paid, most notoriously mediocre screenwriters lifting a title from the most respected film critic of all time? Not cool. Not even a little ironic.
Also, done, done, done, and done before.
Since she was smarter than I’ll ever be, I’ll give Pauline the last word, with this sideswipe at Black and Silver’s Lethal Weapon, by way of complimenting Jonathan Demme:
“Sometimes movies which you would think would be big box-office successes just don’t attract the wide audiences, either because of the way they’re promoted or because the audience is just drawn to Terminator and Lethal Weapon and doesn’t relate to the nuances of something like Married to the Mob or The Fabulous Baker Boys.”
We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ at the Jerusalem Multiplex 16 to get their opinions on this controversial film.
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“I found it hard to watch… for obvious reasons. What did I ever do to Mel Gibson?” |
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“Um, it didn’t end that way. I came back, you know.” |
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"Me? I don’t really remember much of the film. I tried to buy a diet Coke before it started, and they were all charging $4.50, and I’m all, ‘Fuck that!’ and got this free cup of tap water instead, which I immediately turned into el vino and promptly got wasted off my ass, sitting in the back of the theater…Jerusalem in the hoooouuuuuse!" |
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"The third act…was excruciating. It was painful to watch, outright unbearable." |
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“I liked the first half hour. The rest reminded me of stuff I’d rather forget.” |
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“I hate to quibble since he got so much right. But Roman Soldier #6 wasn’t such a jerk to me. He actually gave me a stick of gum, which was nice.” |
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“Pshaw! Like I ever knew a girl as hot as Monica Bellucci!” |
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"I didn’t get to see the film…they had a ‘No Pets’ policy in the theater. They wanted me to sacrifice my lamb’s movie going experience, and I said, ‘No!…C’mon, he’s not so baaaaaaaaaaaad.’ Ha! Get it? I make jokes sometimes, you know." |
We interviewed a completely random selection of movie goers exiting the 12PM screening of The Passion of the Christ in Brooklyn to get their opinions on this controversial film.
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“I didn’t see it. I was here to see Welcome to Mooseport, which, incidentally, is a little anti-Semitic. But I still love Raymond!” |
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“If I could say just one thing to Mr. Gibson, it would be ‘Can you read my comedy script about a Hasidic Jewish crime fighter?’ What? Someone already made that movie? Well, there goes my last six months.” |
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“I’m shocked. Disgusted. This place charges $4.50 for a small Diet Coke. I brought my four young children and it cost me $85 dollars. Very offensive. Very.” |
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“You’d think with everyone in Hollywood studying the Kabbalah, they’d be a little more sensitive. Mel should spend more time with Madonna and Paris Hilton: he might learn some wisdom and compassion. Ha! I’m joking. Some of us have senses of humor, you know.” |
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“Well, it was a lot less offensive to the Jews than the last Woody Allen film. Anything Else? I called it ‘From Hunger’.” |
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“Yes, it was extremely anti-Semitic. But what movie is perfect, right?” |
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“Critics need to lay off Mel Gibson. This was just one man’s opinion. One man with $25 million to spend on production and another $25 million for promotions to tell it. Like I said, just one man and his opinion.” |
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“Loved it. Loved, loved, loved it! My name is Self-Hater I. Jewman, by the way.” |
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They Found It At the Movies
Esquire, August 1970
“In his prerelease screenings, Mr. Gibson invited mostly conservative evangelical clergy. They in turn responded by reserving huge blocks of movie tickets for their congregations. When the film opens today, expect theaters around the country to be turned into temporary churches.”
– Kenneth L. Woodward, Do You Recognize This Jesus?, The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2004
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Co-opting the Friedman
The pissing contest between FOX 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman and The New York Times‘ Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman has spilled over into Cynthia Cotts’ Press Clips column in this week’s Village Voice.
To be honest, Friedman’s doing most of the pissing, complaining that Waxman is boosting his exclusives without attribution. He complained to Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, who decided that Waxman had done nothing wrong.
Buried at the bottom of Cotts’ story is this nugget:
Sometimes Friedman gets it right. But anyone who starts crowing about inaccurate and unethical reporting will eventually have the spotlight turned on himself. Other scribes express varying degrees of affection and pity for Friedman. One calls him “marginal, with delusions of grandeur”; another says he wants “to be respected.”
[…]
The worst rap on Friedman is that he shills for Miramax, a charge he denies. He edited an Oscar supplement for Talk magazine in 2000, and Miramax backed the 2003 r&b documentary Only the Strong Survive, which Friedman co-produced. Colleagues say his column often repeats Miramax spin.
Reminds me of this passage from Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures:
“The most notorious example [of Harvey Weinstein manipulating the press] is Roger Friedman, who often uses his Internet gossip column, 411, to tout (and very occasionally knock) Miramax films. Says [former Miramax publicist Dennis] Higgins, ‘There’s no one in the pocket like Roger. It’s almost, “Whaddya want him to write?” We [even] got him to say The Shipping News is great.'” (p. 410)
Perhaps fittingly, Waxman writes today about factual inaccuracies in Capturing the Friedmans.
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Doll (Private) Parts
“With Karen’s face obscured, it became hard to tell whether she was real or not.”
Disclaimer: The link to this story is absolutely not safe for work! (Especially if you work at a toy store.)
Grant Stoddard, Nerve‘s jolly human guinea pig, makes love to a Real Doll in his “I Did it For Science” column month.
The photos are way disturbing, especially the fact that the doll looks so much like Britney Spears.
Can’t they make a doll whose eyes close when it’s horizontal, like those dolls kids play with?