Day: March 28, 2010

“The only time I saw Battlefield Earth was at the premiere, which was one too many times,” writes screenwriter J.D. Shapiro in a 3.28 N.Y. Post apology piece. The inspiration was this deeply loathed John Travolta film being recently named the decade’s worst by the Razzie guys.

“Once it was decided that I would share a writing credit, I wanted to use my pseudonym, Sir Nick Knack. I was told I couldn’t do that, because if a writer gets paid over a certain amount of money, they can’t. I could have taken my name completely off the movie, but my agent and attorney talked me out of it. There was a lot of money at stake.

“Now, looking back at the movie with fresh eyes, I can’t help but be strangely proud of it. Because out of all the sucky movies, mine is the suckiest. In the end, did Scientology get me laid? What do you think? No way do you get any action by boldly going up to a woman and proclaiming, ‘I wrote Battlefield Earth!'”

A “full” trailer for Chris Morris‘ Four Lions appeared on 3.26. The film still has no U.S. distributor, and one reason (apart from the obvious primary one) may be that eternal bugaboo known as indecipherable lower-class British accents. As Film Drunk puts it, perhaps it’s “just too British. Get it, guv? It’s funny cuz da blokes is just standin’ roun’ lookin at each ovvaz ow awkward loikes, innit. An’ den da lorrie droivah fell off da lift an’ ruined da bobby’s jumpah!”

My 1.24 Sundance dispatch: “Early last evening I saw Chris Morris‘s Four Lions — an unsettling, at times off-putting, at other times genuinely amazing black political comedy about London-based Jihadists — Islamic radicalism meets the Four Stooges/Keystone Cops. It’s sometimes shocking and sometimes heh-heh funny, and occasionally hilarious.

“Morris uses a verbal helter-skelter quality reminiscent of In The Loop, and yet the subject is appalling — a team of doofuses who dream of bombing and slaughtering in order to enter heaven and taste the fruit of virgins. It’s amazing and kind of pleasing that a comedy of this sort has been made, but I don’t want to think about the reactions in Manhattan once it opens.

“At times it felt flat and frustrating (I couldn’t understand half of it due to the scruffy British accents) and at other times I felt I was watching something akin to Dr. Strangelove — ghastly subject matter leavened with wicked humor. An agent I spoke to after the screening said, “I don’t know if the American public is ready for this film.” He’s probably right, but Four Lions is an absolute original — I’ve never seen anything like it, nor have I have ever felt so torn in my reactions. I’d love to see it again, but with subtitles.”

Yesterday I wrote that “nobody even thinks about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis” these days “except for fans of Nick Tosches‘ Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams.” Which, of course, inspired a fresh attack from Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny .

Glenn wrote that I was “dying to throw a gratuitous insult at the ‘dweebs’ and ‘monks’ who value those Martin/Lewis films, but [am] also a little mindful of coming off like a closet Eloi. So [Wells] yokes the enthusiasm to the Tosches book, which he takes as some sort of signifier of cool, and posts, believing that he’s having it both ways. Insufferable, really.”

How’s that again?

I responded as follows: “I don’t know my Martin & Lewis films like I should (I like Sailor Beware and Artists & Models), but Tosches’ book — which IS an eternal signifier of cool as it continues to enjoy renown as one of the finest showbiz bios ever written — turned me on to the fabled genius of their live act when they were really hot & crackling — in the mid to late ’40s (and perhaps the very early ’50s).

“Martin & Lewis never really replicated on film what they struck with a match onstage, Tosches wrote. All I was saying in the post is that Martin & Lewis were comics of their time who aren’t, it seems, generally regarded, much less worshipped, as legendary world-class film comedians 70 years hence. (Largely because of the disparity between their nightclub act vs. films. ) Maybe the tide is turning and one day Average Joes will think of them in the same light as the Marx Brothers or Laurel & Hardy. All I was saying is that right now that regard doesn’t seem to be out there. Am I wrong?

From their Wikipedia bio: “In 1945, Dean Martin met a young comic named Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis’ official debut together occurred at Atlantic City’s 500 Club on July 24, 1946, and they were not a hit. The owner, Skinny D’Amato, warned them that if they didn’t come up with a better act for their second show later that same night, they would be fired.

“Huddling together out in the alley behind the club, Lewis and Martin agreed to go for broke, to throw out the pre-scripted gags that hadn’t worked and to basically just improvise their way through the act. Dean sang some songs, and Jerry came out dressed as a busboy, dropping plates and more or less making a shambles of both Martin’s performance and the club’s sense of decorum. They did slapstick, reeled off old vaudeville jokes, and did whatever else popped into their heads at the moment. This time, the audience doubled over in laughter.

“Their success at the 500 led to a series of well-paying engagements up and down the Eastern seaboard, culminating with a triumphant run at New York’s Copacabana. Club patrons were convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and ultimately the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible.

“The secret, they have both said, is that they essentially ignored the audience and played to one another.”

“The Catholic Church can never recover as long as its Holy Shepherd is seen as a black sheep in the ever-darkening sex abuse scandal. The nuns have historically cleaned up the messes of priests. And this is a historic mess. Benedict should go home to Bavaria. Yup, we need a Nope — a nun who is pope.” — N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd in her 3.27 Sunday column.

I’m online every day for too many hours on end, nosing around for anything/everything, and so I naturally missed the 3.24 debut of this lesson in contrasts. Which is brought down by repetition. (Alternate Boehner spews would have helped.) And which romanticizes a bill that “in lieu of a public option, delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers,” as Frank Rich notes in Sunday’s N.Y. Times.