“I do think high school kids will relate to this movie and find this movie, but it’s very challenging, if not, dare I say it, impossible, to a sell a movie as an art house release to a high school student. We’re releasing it as an independent movie. It has a rollout and a relatively small media budget. So we’re directing our attention to our sweet spot of those 18-to-24 recent graduates who go to independent cinema.” — Paramount Vantage marketing-publicity vp Megan Colligan, speaking to L.A. Times guy Mark Olsen on how American Teen is being marketed as essentially a teen film and not a doc.

Now this is what we were looking to hear about the Josh Brolin-Jeffrey Wright arrest incident last weekend! All we heard last Saturday afternoon was “one of the W guys wouldn’t leave at closing time, the owners called the cops and they all went to jail.” Yesterday the Chicago Sun Times‘ Bill Zwecker got the real story — right-wing rednecks vs. Hollywood lefties bustin’ heads over the suspected Bush-skewering content of Oliver Stone‘s W.

“Seems a couple of good ol’ boys got wind of the fact Brolin, Wright and their crew buddies were part of Stone’s film project,” Zwecker wrote. “Some folks in conservative Shreveport — while happy to collect the bucks spent by the filmmakers during the current down economy — are not happy their town is serving as the site for a movie about a president they have enthusiastically backed in his two runs for the White House.
“According to a sober source who was in the Stray Cat, a few profanity-laced barbs about Stone, his politics and the reported anti-Bush tone of W led to harsh words from Brolin — who is known for his own short fuse. Then a few pushes (it’s unclear who started the pushing) degenerated into punches being thrown.
“A W crew member reports Wright initially tried to play peacemaker, but that changed ‘after a racial slur was yelled’ and the actor got ‘into it as well.'”
I love, love, love that Wright tried to play the pacifist Gandhi card and wound up stomping redneck ass. Remember that scene in Deal of the Century when the born-again Gregory Hines tried to turn the other check with a hostile Hispanic couple, and then finally loses it and torches their car with a flame thrower? Wright has my respect for life after this. Brolin too, of course — BurmaShave has christened him “the New Nolte.”
I want to see a short film about this incident at next January’s Sundance Film Festival, and I want Brolin — a fledgling director — to direct and star in it. Please.
Everyone knows Brolin plays George Bush in the film, right? And that Wright portrays former Secretary of State Colin Powell?
“The situation was complicated when crew member Eric Felland, Brolin, Wright and several members of their party also refused to obey bar management’s request they leave — as it was past closing time.”
Here’s some more after-the-fact reporting from KYBS News.

“About two years ago, Steve Guttenberg walked into the showbiz haunt Crustacean on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. ‘I walked in and the maitre d’ made a big deal for me,’ said Mr. Guttenberg. The Goot — as he’s known to his friends — appreciated the show. To hear him tell it, eating in public in Los Angeles is a dangerous business for an actor whose last box office hit was Three Men and a Baby in 1987.
“All of a sudden, the maitre d’ says, `Get out of the way!'” said Mr. Guttenberg. “And they literally threw me to the side and Tom Cruise came in. And he sat Tom Cruise and said, `I’m so sorry, but you know, Tom Cruise.’ And I’m like, `Holy fuck.’
“So after three decades in L.A., he bought a place on the Upper West Side. ‘I came to New York to find a better life,’ he said. Uprooting took some time. The 15-year-old golden retriever he loved dearly was old and sick; the golden died a month ago. So two weeks ago, the wavy-haired, Brooklyn-born 49-year-old actor, who describes his career as a ’32-year-overnight success,’ finally made it back to New York City.
“‘In L.A., I think about what I don’t have,’ he told me. ‘In New York, I think about what I do have. And I’m really tired of comparing myself to Tom Cruise.” — from Spencer Morgan‘s 7.15 N.Y. Observer article, “Look Out, New York Ladies — The Goot Is Loose.”

Besides the possible inclusion of Clint Eastwood’s Changeling and Ari Folman‘s Waltz With Bashir, Variety‘s Winter Miller claims that “industry insiders suggest pics on this year’s shortlist for the New York Film Festival may include Gus Van Sant‘s Milk…”if it’s finished in time.” Sounds doubtful. If it happens, though, Milk won’t play Toronto…right?

The other hot possibles, Miller says, are Steven Soderbergh‘s two-part Che (yeah, heard that); Charlie Kaufman‘s Synecdoche, New York; one of Claire Denis’ two films, 35 Rhums or White Materials; Sam Mendes‘ Revolutionary Road (really?), John Hillcoat‘s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s em>The Road; Ron Howard‘s Frost/Nixon and John Patrick Shanley‘s Doubt.
Anne Thompson chimes in also: “Neither Sam Mendes‘ Revolutionary Road nor John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt will be ready for the NYFF, as previously reported here. Gus Van Sant’s Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, will also not be finished until late October or early November, while John Hillcoat‘s film version of Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road, starring Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortenson, will not be complete until December.
“As for Che, I hear that it will only turn up at a fest willing to screen it as a 4 1/2 hour feature, as Cannes did.”

Congrats to Paramount exec marketing/publicity vp Mike Vollman for snagging the twin posts of exec vp marketing for MGM/UA and marketing president for United Artists. MGM chairperson Mary Parent did the hiring.

Mike Vollman

Variety‘s Michael Fleming reported this morning that Vollman informed his Par bosses last night. Fleming adds that since Vollman “worked closely with Terry Press at DreamWorks, the hire will only accelerate speculation that she is in line for the top post, which has been the rumor for months.”
Vollman will immediately begin working with Parent and UA topper Paula Wagner on Valkyrie, Jim Sheridan’s Brothers, Perfect Getaway and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

As long as we’re on a Kubrick jag, I happened upon this while searching for the Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes installments. I’ve heard it, I think, on that Taschen audio disc that came with that Kubrick coffee-table book, but I’ve never seen it accompanied by footage. Here’s Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. I love hearing Kubrick admit that his senior class grade average was 67, which, in 1945, prevented him from getting into even the lowest-calibre college due to all the soldiers pouring into schools on the G.I. bill.

Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, Part 1 of 5. Here are the URLs for part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5. Will someone swoop in and have it taken down?

An “extremely intoxicated” Andy Dick was arrested this morning by California cops on drug and sexual battery charges, says The Smoking Gun. Dick, 42, was popped about 10 hours ago in Riverside County after he allegedly groped the breasts of a 17-year-old girl, etc. The incident occurred outside a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant. Two lessons: (a) addictions will ruin your life, and (b) don’t smile like some demonic character out of a Batman film (or like the great John Barrymore in 1920’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) when they take your mug shot.

Andy Dick, John Barrymore

Why does this review of Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, the recently-aired, British-produced doc about the legendary filmmaker’s pack-rat belongings, by thelondonpaper‘s Stuart McGurk makes no mention of the allegedly terrific behind-the-scenes footage of Kubrick working on Full Metal Jacket?

Prosthetic head of the female Vietcong sniper killed at the end of Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick allegedly shot (but of course didn’t use) footage of Adam Baldwin’s “Animal Mother” slicing it off with a machete after her death in the burned-out building.

Joncro, an HE poster from London, saw the show and posted on 7.15 at 3:34 pm that the FMS footage is “fascinating” and “hilarious, with Kubrick arguing with the English crew about how many tea breaks they are having.” He also mentioned a Lolita screen test.
Asking it before, asking again: when will this doc show in the States, when will it be marketed on a DVD, how can it be viewed online, etc.? And what about the other documentary called Citizen Kubrick, which has also been shown/screened in London? If Warner Home Video has first dibs, a voice is telling me we won’t see these docs for a long time.
Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes is a record of journalist Jon Ronson “[trawling] through the thousand-plus boxes of personal paraphernalia Kubrick left after his death in 1999.”

In this 1984 shot, Kubrick poses with a just-purchased, brand-new, hot-off-the-factory-line, state-of-the-art IBM computer.

Another guy named Bernd Eichhorn‘s also sifted through the Stanley Kubrick Estate, going through close to 1000 boxes, searched cellars and attics, collected memorabilia, photographs, objects, scripts, books and paperwork.
The contents of 977 boxes are now the basis of the Stanley Kubrick Archive, which is housed at the University of the Arts London.

Italian and English-language versions of Jack Torrance’s demented writings in The Shining — Kubrick reportedly had versions shot in every major language.

It’s a measure of Stanley Kubrick‘s exactitude that he had this New York State driver’s license made up for Tom Cruise‘s William Harford character, which might have conceivably been used for an insert shot in Eyes Wide Shot. (No such shot turned up in the final cut.) Except if Kubrick was really a detail freak, he’d have made the expiration date on the license the same year as EWS‘s expected release date (i.e., 1999) or beyond, and not October 1997.

And the fact that license says Harford’s height is 5’10” while most celebrity height sites put Cruise’s stature at around 5’7″ tells you Kubrick was not above sacrificing reality on the altar of flattery.
The Harford license is one of the hundreds of items in the currently viewable Kubrick Archives in London.

A Tom Toles cartoon in today’s Washington Post, passed along by HE reader SpinDozer:

The Playlist author[s] have come up with some reasonably on-target casting suggestions for Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards. Except for one that’s sounding less and less right plus one flat-out wrongo. They also contain one amazing suggestion, which is Werner Herzog playing Adolf Hitler. A master stroke, genius, stuff of instant legend…especially if Herzog plays Hitler with his own voice and manner and doesn’t try to be Bruno Ganz in Downfall.

Potentially the most audacious casting all of the 21st Century.

As I wrote a few days ago, I’m starting to think that Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine is a mistake. As a sage HE reader-whose-name-I’ve-forgotten pointed out, Pitt needs to play Landa, the German Colonel “Jew Hunter.” Aldo has a strong presence in the first act, but then becomes a secondary character, and Landa is the best part in the script, hands down. How hard will it be to learn to say 40 or 50 lines in convincing German? Even if Pitt can’t do it well enough to fool German-speaking natives, who cares? This is a “movie” that cares nothing for genuine realism.
The others with comments:
3. Marion Cotillard as Shosanna Dreyfus / HE comment: perfect. 4. Isaach De Bankole as Marcel, the black projectionist / HE comment: Samuel L. Jackson instread. 5. Michael Madsen as Sgt. Donny Donowitz, a.k.a. “The Bear Jew” / HE comment: Perfect casting if this was 1987, but Madsen will be 50 in September, and he’s had some very strange facial work done besides. I like Madsen as much as the next guy, but the Jews in the platoon have to at least be in their 30s…no? 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Alexandra Maria Lara as Bridget Von Hammersmark, John Hawkes as Pvt. Hirschberg, August Diehl as Frederick Zoller, Catherine Deneuve as Madame Mirieux, Tim Roth as Lt. Archie Hicox, Julie Delpy or Audrey Tatou as Francesca/ HE comment: all fine.