I had this horrible idea for a movie this evening…horrible but oddly unshakable. Nobody would ever have the courage to push this with anyone else, but it’s basically Oliver Stone’s 9/11 movie meets Wedding Crashers. Remember Will Ferrell’s character telling Owen Wilson’s character that funerals are better than weddings for scoring? Okay…now remember that brief phenomenon that happened in New York City right after 9/11 called “terror-fucking,” which was about a lot of guys (fireman in particular) going home with a lot of women because everyone wanted to obliterate the horror of what had happened with sex…almost any kind of available sex they could get their hands on? This movie would start with a couple of horndogs (good-time guys like Wilson and Vince Vaughn’s characters) who start to realize two or three days after 9/11 there are some phenomenal opportunities out there, etc. Clearly, the idea of guys trying to exploit the heartbreak of 9/11 by trying to get laid is a ghastly reaction to human suffering, but as long as we’re going to see at least a couple of 9/11 movies in ’06, why not go all the way and try for a twisted 9/11 sex comedy? You know…really push the envelope? I think we’re ready for it.

Lynn Hirschberg’s Jim Jarmusch profile in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is awfully well-written…it gets Jarmusch like an arrow through the heart. His latest film, Broken Flowers (Focus Features, 8.5), “moves beyond hipster cool to something more like maturity, but the film still maintains Jarmusch’s outsider stance: it is stripped down, closely observed, with an almost dreamlike aura,” Hirschberg remarks early on. “”It’s all so…independent,” Jarmusch comments. ‘I’m so sick of that word. I reach for my revolver when I hear the word ‘quirky.’ Or ‘edgy.’ Those words are now becoming labels that are slapped on products to sell them. Anyone who makes a film that is the film they want to make, and it is not defined by marketing analysis or a commercial enterprise, is independent. My movies are kind of made by hand. They’re not polished — they’re sort of built in the garage. It’s more like being an artisan in some way.'”

Everyone knew Rob Cohen’s Stealth would crap out on opening weekend, and now it’s more or less done that with a $5 million take on Friday. Wedding Crashers topped the $100 million mark while finally beating out Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, $6 million to $5.2 million. And exhibitors saw John Singleton’s Four Brothers (Paramount, 8.12) a few days ago and are said to be high on it because “it’s commercial.” That’s a code term for “it’s not going to win any Oscars but it’ll probably sell tickets.”

My beloved news ticker has been up and running for a few days now, but it needs to be rewritten in a Flash format. Flash, I’ve been told, isn’t as laborious or cumbersome to load and read on an average slightly-older computer. I don’t know jack about any of this, but if anybody out there is a Flash-head and could lend some insight…