comment #1

Malone says ...

FRED CLAUS was superbad.

I went with my wife and 8-year-old son and another family with kids and we all left the theater shell-shocked.

Miserable. Horrible. Miscalculation.

Giamatti was as much to blame as anyone.

comment #2

lazespud says ...

Fred Claus made just shy of 100 Million dollars. I know that this is almost certainly less than the film's production budget, but especially if you account for the generous holiday sales to TV etc that it will be sure to enjoy for years to come, I don't necessarily think we should call it a failure.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=fredclaus.htm

Pluto Nash? Now THAT was a failure. Fred Claus was a dissapointment.

(Unless you meant artistic failure... I'm totally with you on that.

comment #3

Mr. Muckle says ...

"I don't give a damn about any of this."

That line sounds familiar . . . oh, it's jasonvang. "I just want to date girls." Is gruver1 secretly promoting comeonamyhouse.c om or something like that under another name? Ha ha.

comment #4

scooterzz says ...

no story here...i think finke was trying to make something out of him doing the dismissal on the phone.....very much a yawn.....with no strike going on, finke is pretty desperate......

comment #5

Terry McCarty says ...

Guessing that New Line-post Shaye needs hit product and maybe Vince might be a bit more eager to commit to WEDDING CRASHERS 2.

comment #6

MilkMan says ...

Wasn't Vince Vaughn supposed to do a movie with David O. Russell? Wha' happened? And can one of you Hollywood Insiders explain to me how someone as talented as David. O. has only made one movie in the last nine years? Is he being blacklisted or something because of his bad attitude? BTW: Vince Vaughn is the laziest movie star I have ever seen. He makes Chevy Chase look like a dynamo. And I'm not talking about the volume of work, I'm talking about the quality of work. The guy refuses to swing at anything outside of his strike zone. I guess he can milk his locquacious hipster shtick for as long as he wants, but I'm getting pretty bored with it. Every movie I see him in it seems as if he just got done eating a sandwiich and playing poker in his trailer and then strolled onto the set without knowing his lines, because why should he, he's Vince Vaughn, everyone just sit back and let him riff. I bet that's what the directors tell the other actors. Hey, Vince is just going to like, do his thing, so try and keep up, and if you can't, just stand there and kind of smile, or laugh, because Vince likes to know when he's being funny. I've always considered Vince Vaughn more of a "personality" than an actor, and I'm sure he could give a shit what anyone thinks, but there's only so much "personality" one can take before it stops being fresh and turns stale. I think Vince is getting close to his expiration date.

P.S. There are naked pictures of Audrina from the Hills floating around the net. She took then when she was 19 and when I say naked I mean naked, as in full boobage. She looks foxy.

comment #7

CinemaPhreek says ...

Just has a good laugh. In one of the comments (and you know I just got up and am bored to read this post, much less follow the link) section for Finke's post, someone claimed Vaughn was a Republican.

Wanting to confirm the CW that while the Dems have actors who can actually speak intelligently about their political views (Garofalo, Affleck, Baldwin), the right gets stuck with the likes of Bo Derek, Britney Spears and now it would seem Vaughn, so I went to Wikipedia.

No mention of Republicanism, but there was a rather prominent one of being a bedwetter until a late age - with a source. So I check the source. It's from an Interview piece he did with Jon Faveau back in 2000. I'll let those who are older than 25 see the joke whomever posted in the wiki article missed:

JON FAVREAU: What was the most triumphant moment of your childhood?

VINCE VAUGHN: The first time I woke up dry.

FAVREAU:: [laughs] You were a bedwetter?

VAUGHN: I was a bedwetter till very late, Favs. My mom used to hang my sheets out the window to dry, and I'd have to run home from school in order to beat the other kids to my house so they wouldn't see them.

comment #8

Aris P says ...

As someone who was, shall we say, in the close vicinity of Vaughn's management, my OPINION is that Vince's inability to ever CHOOSE a project led to Gold's increasing difficulty in being able to give his client guidance. This led to second-guessing in both camps and, ultimately, a few unwise choices. I couldn't care less about any of this, but I gotta say for what it's worth, that of all the "bigger" industry people i have worked for, and with, Gold was always civil and polite with an underling like me. In that massive ego-nest, that aspect always stood out for me.

comment #9

Spicer says ...

Just a hunch, but I think that footage of David O Russell berating Lily Tomlin on the Huckabees set probably hurt his career tremendously. As an actor, why would anybody work with that guy? After Three Kings, George Clooney said he would never work with Russell again.

comment #10

MilkMan says ...

Actors have such thin skins. They don't want to work with someone as whip-smart as Russell because he gets all excited and insulting, yet they want to work with half-wits like McG and Brett Ratner? I guess it's pretty self-explanatory, but still, Russell gets results, he makes singular films, while McG just, um, shoots. Anyway, I Russell having a career similar to Ashby. In other words, I predict an early death for Russell, followed by a massive reconsideration of his work. Vaughn, on the other hand, will continue to bloat and make wafer-thin comedies until he is old and bitter and selling-out his repartee to the Fox Network, doing his old shuck and jive routine. BTW: I nominate Vaughn's perf. in Be Cool as one of the worst of the decade. I caught a glimpse of it on Comedy Central and it stunk.

comment #11

Jay T. says ...

Makes me wonder if Vaughn read that article about him in this month's GQ... which was very complimentary, yet scathing in terms of wasting his talent.

comment #12

christian says ...

VAUGHN: I was a bedwetter till very late, Favs. My mom used to hang my sheets out the window to dry, and I'd have to run home from school in order to beat the other kids to my house so they wouldn't see them.

That's exactly a plot point in Michael Landon's tv film about a bedwetter...So I think JOKE.

comment #13

George Prager says ...

I was just about to mention the Michael Landon thing. It's even in the tv movie based on his childhood: THE LONELIEST RUNNER. No youtube clip alas...

comment #14

oakling says ...

I think we all need to start the rumor that they said someone had to pay for the failure of Fred Claus. Cmon, let's get on it!

comment #15

Richardson says ...

"Fred Claus made just shy of 100 Million dollars. ... I don't necessarily think we should call it a failure."

It failed in its attempt to recreate the success of 'Elf'.

comment #16

Richardson says ...

"And can one of you Hollywood Insiders explain to me how someone as talented as David. O. has only made one movie in the last nine years? Is he being blacklisted or something because of his bad attitude?"

If Hollywood blacklisted directors for yelling at actors, there wouldn't be any directors left.

From what I understand, Russell spent 2-3 years after 'Three Kings' working on a screenplay for Mark Wahlberg (and Wahlberg was heavily involved in the work). It got a budget, and was greenlit, and was close to shooting, when Russell decided the script was crap. It was re-written 90 to 100% and became "I Heart Huckabee's", but that re-writing took more time. So that would explain the initial five years... as for the more recent four, I'm not sure what happened beyond the failure of 'Huckabee's' coupled with his reputation for being difficult. He's got two movies listed in pre-production -- one co-written with Al Gore's daughter, the other is the one with Vince Vaughn.

"The guy refuses to swing at anything outside of his strike zone. I guess he can milk his locquacious hipster shtick for as long as he wants, but I'm getting pretty bored with it."

I don't think that's fair. Vaughn spent seven years -- the time between 'Swingers' ('96) and 'Old School ('03)' -- in which every role he took was outside of his strike zone. America rejected every one of them except for 'Lost World' -- and I doubt anybody credits that to him. Now he's sticking to the only thing he's competent at because he got a second chance by doing 'Old School' (I read an interview with the director where he said the studio didn't want Vaughn in that role at all).

He is starting to be boring, though, that I agree with.

comment #17

Jay T. says ...

About David O Russell, I think it may be this simple...

If you're an asshole but make movies that make money (Three Kings), the studios don't care.

If you're an asshole but make movies that don't make any money at all (I Heart Huckabees), the studios would rather not deal with you.

Just a guess...

comment #18

Monument says ...

MIlkMan,
Regardless of the quality of his work, there is simply no excuse for a director to behave in that way toward an actor, it is petulant and completely unprofessional. If he's being blacklisted, or actors are refusing to work with him, it's entirely his fault.