Category: Shallow

A riddle for the ages: How many screenwriters does it take to make a hit?
Apparently eight. Coming this Friday, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, written by:
1. Victoria Arch
2. Ronald Bass (writer of every movie, ever; cf. Tad Friend’s “The Two-Billion Dollar Man,” in Lost in Mongolia)
3. Jonathan Bernstein (former SPIN writer and author)
4. Mark Blackwell (former SPIN editor)
5. Pamela Gray
6. James Greer (former SPIN editor and author)
7. Christina Wayne (writer, Dominique Dunne – An American Tragedy: The E! True Hollywood Story)
8. Boaz Yakin (once promising writer/director of Fresh, more recently, director of Uptown Girls)
Can’t you just see them all in one big room, laptops networked together, ideas flying left and right? Teamwork: it’s a beautiful thing.
Of course, all of them combined couldn’t come up with a line as quotable as “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”

The New York Post‘s The Passion of The Christ Collector’s Edition Covers:

Related: Coming soon, Mad Max: Fury Road, to be produced by Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions and released by 20th Century Fox.

Brett Ratner talking about Michael Jackson’s underage accuser:

“[The boy] would sit in my director’s chair. When I told him to get up, he’d tell me to go to hell… He used to tell me, ‘Brett, I don’t like the last shot’ while he was watching us make the movie. He’s telling me how to make my movie! He’s more street smart than I was at that age. If someone tried to fondle him, he’d punch them in the face. He’s an adult. I think the jury will see that.” (From Roger Friedman’s FOX 411 column, Feb. 24, 2004)

So the kid thought Ratner couldn’t make a movie? He’s obviously a child prodigy. From this point forth, I believe everything he has to say.

Driver nabbed while watching porn movie
ALBANY, N.Y., Feb 20 (Reuters) — Andre Gainey found out the hard way that in the state of New York it’s illegal to drive while watching porn.
Police said the 35-year old man from Clifton Park, New York, was watching a adult movie called “Chocolate Foam” on Tuesday night while driving his Mercedes Benz in the town of Schenectady when he was spotted by an officer at a stop light…
[Courtesy of the brilliant Javier, who very rightly wondered why we needed to know the video’s title.]

Chris Farley and Martin Scorsese
Remember the old SNL skit where Chris Farley (R.I.P.) had his own talk show? If Chris had had a better vocabulary, it might’ve been a lot like this: The Business: Kevin Smith interviews Tom Cruise. (Arena, Feb. 2004)
[via GreenCine Daily]

“Since we know you’re wondering, let the record show that every weirdly combed follicle you see is his. Trump swoops up his bangs to prove it. “I don’t say my hair is my greatest strength in the world, but it’s not terrible,” he says, though perhaps it would look better if someone other than his girlfriend cut it,” The World According to Trump, by Keith Naughton and Marc Peyser, Newsweek, Feb. 23, 2004
Related: “The numbers are stark and staggering. In the past three years, 232,400 jobs have been lost in the city. Every employment category except health care and teaching and educational services has taken a brutal hit… And the jobs could be gone forever,” Where Have All The Jobs Gone?, by William Sherman, New York Daily News, Feb. 23, 2004.

“‘The Zippies Are Here,’ declared the Indian weekly magazine Outlook. Zippies are this huge cohort of Indian youth who are the first to come of age since India shifted away from socialism and dived headfirst into global trade, the information revolution and turning itself into the world’s service center.” — Thomas L. Friedman, Meet the Zippies, The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2004.
“What we have here is a major player in the premillennial cultural meme pool, and a loose-knit movement of folks who aim to change the world—while having the best time of their lives. Cyber-crusties, techno-hippies, post-ravers—the British media have tried pinning various compound names to its members… But one name stands out, maybe because it was designed to. And for the moment it’s sticking: zippies. It stands for Zen-inspired professional pagans…” — Zippies!, by Jules Marshall, Wired, May 1994.
Related: Zippy the Pinhead

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)… The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003)

I know what you’re thinking: How will you live without Sex and the City?
Better, probably. And with more laughs, too. But for those of you who can’t get enough of SaTC and want more than the easy to swallow (har har) half-hour doses you get on cable, you can start waiting on line now for the big screen version. (As if each episode didn’t already feel two hours long.)
In the meantime, print out these photos and place them in your wallet if you love the show so much.

Sarah Jessica Parker on Square Pegs

Cynthia Nixon in Little Darlings

Kim Cattrall in Porky’s
Not Pictured: Kristin Davis, who was born fully-grown.

Pink kicks off her European tour… Wez kicks ass in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior