Day: June 9, 2013

The above title is an actual quote from a 1974 Norman Mailer essay about Last Tango In Paris. A week or two ago a Rolling Stone interviewer was looking to correct this ignorance by asking the cast of This is The End how they unload, so to speak.

If I was an End costar and had been asked this question, I would have said “my response, which I could elaborate upon big-time, is too important to be trusted to someone like yourself, no offense. In fact, there are dozens of subjects that I won’t discuss with you. It’s not personal. It’s just a strategic decision I’ve made.”

Talk about your farts with your friends, family, co-workers, parents, next-door neighbors and your local police but never, ever with a journalist and certainly never during a press junket round-table.

Jonah Hill’s response — “I’m not answering that dumb question! I’m not that kind of person! Being in a funny movie doesn’t make me have to answer dumb questions. It has nothing to do with who I am” — isn’t as good as mine, but it’s pretty good. I agree with it 110%.

Two months ago I noted that Filth looks very much like “a Scottish Bad Lieutenant only a lot crazier, crossed with the sensibilities of Trainspotting‘s Irvine Welsh by way of direction and a script adaptation by Jon S. Baird and a lead performance by James McAvoy. Will the film include the dog scene in Welsh’s book?” Nothing whatsoever has changed except that a new trailer has popped up. Pic will be at Toronto, I’m guessing.

Listen to the tone of the questions Mike Wallace throws at Twilight Zone maestro Rod Serling in this 1959 interview. He all but accuses him of whoring out by making a commercial TV series, of not trying hard enough as a writer, of running away from conflict with nervous advertisers, of going for the dough. Over and over he says to Serling: “You made your bones as an award-calibre writer on live dramatic TV in the ’50s, and now you’re writing below your potential because there’s big money in a network series…how big is your swimming pool?” And Serling was on the brink of becoming a legend.

Scott Walker‘s The Frozen Ground (Lionsgate, 8.23) is based on the real-life hunt for serial killer Robert Hansen (John Cusack) during the ’80s. Nic Cage (is it possible for him to play “normal” any more?) plays real-life Alaskan detective Glenn Flothe (but called St. Jack Holcombe in the film) Hansen “murdered between 17 and 21 young women, kidnapping them and taking them out to the Alaskan wilderness where he shot and buried them,” it says here. Pic costars Vanessa Hudgens, Katherine LaNasa, Radha Mitchell and 50 Cent, who also produced.

Read more

Five and a half weeks between a theatrical release (7.12.13) and the DVD/Bluray street date (8.20)…hmmm. Plus the hand of director Mark Steven Johnson (Grumpy Old Men, Simon Birch, Daredevil, When in Rome, the two Ghost Rider pics)…yeah. Plus a title that SCREAMS American Film Market lowlifes hustlin’ ’round Santa Monica in their alligator shoes. Plus Robert DeNiro, the King of Paycheck Performers**, in the lead. I’ll see it nonetheless because it has John Travolta playing a hell-bent Bosnian madman. The more foam-in-the-mouth, the better.

Read more