Month: November 2017

I know very little about what it takes to be a good stand-up comedian, but I suspect it might be a little bit like writing or working out. You can’t avoid it for 25 years and expect to just jump back in the saddle and be able to perform as well as you did in ’92. It’s not like riding a bicycle. It takes a long while to get your muscles back in shape. If I were to stop writing for a week, I would probably have a hard time getting back into it. If I were to stop for a year, I would have a horrible time resuming. But 25 years? Forget it.

That said, I admire Judd Apatow‘s willingness to jump back in.

Yesterday’s Deadline statement from Get Out director Jordan Peele was apparently a backpedal of some kind. It was apparently released because of what Peele actually said to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn on the fly when Peele and Kohn spoke earlier this week.

An educated guess would be that Peele got into trouble for what he said to Kohn, and so the statement given to Deadline reads like a mea culpa to the Golden Globes. Peele clearly didn’t realize that Get Out was submitted in the comedy category. It would appear that Universal did that without telling him.

From Kohn’s piece: “At a lunch event for [Get Out] at New York’s Lincoln Ristorante, Peele elaborated on his reservations. ‘The problem is, it’s not a movie that can really be put into a genre box,’ he said in an interview prior to the lunch. ‘Originally, I set out to make a horror movie. I ended up showing it to people and hearing, you know, it doesn’t even feel like horror. It’s in this thriller world. So it was a social thriller.’

“While Universal submitted Get Out as a comedy to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Peele clearly had no input into that decision. ‘I don’t think it worked like that,’ he said. ‘I think it was just submitted.’ In fact, submissions are made to individual categories, but the HFPA makes the final decision about which categories each film falls into.

“A rep for Peele did not respond to a request to clarify whether the movie had been submitted as a comedy without his input.”
…

Some guy tried to punk me last night by sending a PDF of what he claimed was the first 55 pages of Quentin Tarantino‘s 1969 “not Manson” script. “Couldn’t get the whole thing,” he wrote. “My source only had a brief moment with it, hoping to get the rest next week.” What he sent was the first episode of John McNamara‘s Aquarius, a two-year-old, semi-fictional NBC series, initially set in Los Angeles of late 1967, about a tough L.A. detective (David Duchovny) searching for the teenaged daughter of an ex-girlfriend, and which portrayed Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony) as the cause of her disappearance.

If I was a bigger watcher of network TV I might’ve spotted it right away, but instead I read it. I was initially intrigued by the big “9” on the cover page (the forthcoming project will be Tarantino’s ninth feature that he’s directed and written on his own) and an early scene in which a character orders “a slice of key lime to go” (Tarantino likes pie), but it was obvious early on that it wasn’t a Tarantino script. None of the characters had any of that swagger attitude. No gabbing, no soliloquies, no trademark loquaciousness. Plus the story’s too densely-packed with incident, and Tarantino isn’t big on punch-punch plotting. He’s basically a playwright who works in film.

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“I was very shaken. He did a bad thing. What he doesn’t deserve is to be lumped in with Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey or Harvey Weinstein. Or Donald Trump. I know the difference between a man who once acted like a dick and a man who is a dick. I know the difference between someone who behaved like a high-schooler and someone who targeted high-schoolers.”

And by the way…

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Earlier today Deadline‘s Mike Fleming asked Get Out director Jordan Peele to explain why Get Out has been submitted for consideration in the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy category for the Golden Globe awards. A little while ago Fleming posted a statement from Peele about this:

“When I originally heard the idea of placing it in the comedy category it didn’t register to me as an issue. I missed it. There’s no category for social thriller. So what? I moved on.

“I made this movie for the loyal black horror fans who have been underrepresented for years. When people began standing up for my voice, it meant a lot. Get Out doesn’t just belong to me any more — now it belongs to everyone.”

The following Peele passage is quite a standout: “The reason for the visceral response to this movie being called a comedy is that we are still living in a time in which African American cries for justice aren’t being taken seriously.” (Wells response: “Agreed, but what does this have to do with trying to pass off a Stepford Wives-like horror film about racial-divide issues as a comedy? Lil Rel Howery is funny in it, but the movie doesn’t seem to be. Okay, except for that ‘I would have voted for Obama three times’ joke.”)

Peele: “It’s important to acknowledge that though there are funny moments, the systemic racism that the movie is about is very real. More than anything, it shows me that film can be a force for change.”

Peele: “At the end of the day, call Get Out horror, comedy, drama, action or documentary…I don’t care. Whatever you call it, just know it’s our truth.” Wells interpretation: “We wanted to win a Golden Globe and figured we had a better shot in the Comedy-Musical category.”

Nominations for the 70th annual Golden Globes will be announced on 12.11, but will Get Out be nominated as Peele has suggested?

The Golden Globe awards will be broadcast by NBC on the evening of Sunday, January 7th.

Earlier today White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted that while Al Franken has confirmed a claim made against him by Leanne Tweeden, President Trump has denied all claims made by “more than a dozen” women that he pawed or sexually assaulted them, and that this is a plus for the President. Exact Sanders quote: “Franken has admitted wrongdoing and the President hasn’t. I think that’s a very clear distinction.” Asked to evaluate the merits of a possible ethics investigation about a single Franken incident from ’06 vs. several serious-sounding claims against Trump that have been brushed aside, Sanders said that “the American people spoke very loud and clear when they elected the president.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Trump sexual misconduct allegations: "Sen. Franken has admitted wrongdoing and the president hasn't" pic.twitter.com/pUpn6EtYfg

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 17, 2017

I’m presuming that Griselda Blanco, the real-life narco queen played by Catherine Zeta-Jones in Cocaine Godmother, was also the model for Salma Hayek‘s cartel leader Elena Sanchez in Oliver Stone‘s Savages (’12). Set to debut on Lifetime Network on 1.20.18, Cocaine Godmother was directed by cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, who collaborated with Guillermo del Toro on Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy and Pacific Rim, and written by David McKenna (American History X). There’s another biopic about Blanco called The Godmother, which is produced by Nicholas Pileggi. It began shooting two years ago in Puerto Rico, but apparently has no distribution deal. Blanco’s Wikipedia bio is fascinating. Responsible for 200 murders during her heyday in the ’70s and early ’80s, or so it says.

I’ve been steering clear of almost all superhero films for quite a while now, and it feels awfully damn good, I must say. Certainly when it comes to DC Comics off-shoots and anything remotely connected to Zack Snyder. I will make exceptions when it comes to Marvel’s Black Panther and Antman and the Wasp, but otherwise I’m going to be very careful. Why, then, am I thinking about catching a Justice League screening at Key West’s Tropic Cinema? (A 2D version will screen at 3:20 and 8:30 pm; the 3D showing is at 5:55 pm.) Because it’ll be something to write about besides the Key West Film Festival, I suppose. I have to be open to new experiences. I’ll also be catching Jeffrey Schwarz‘s The Fabulous Allan Carr, a festival selection…forget it, that’s tomorrow.

“I guess there are no good people left, so let’s just get it over with. Just tell us whatever you did, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Tom Hanks…Malala.” — Stephen Colbert during last night’s monologue.

I too was crestfallen yesterday. A blot on a good man’s reputation, and now people who aren’t paying close attention have lumped Sen. Al Franken in with all the real baddies. Franken is included, in fact, in a new N.Y. Times rogues’ gallery chart. But with every well-thought-of person presumably guilty of having behaved, however briefly or ill-advisedly, in a way that could be described as demeaning, thoughtless, clumsy, indiscrete, hurtful or ill-mannered, what is there to say? Obviously you have to differentiate. You have to qualify. The focus has to be on serial abusers, and not so much the one-timers.

Franken quickly apologized yesterday, and then apologized again in a longer form. In response to which Leann Tweeden said, “The apology? Sure, I accept it, yes. People make mistakes and of course, he knew he made a mistake. So yes, I do accept that apology. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t accept his apology.”

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“When tens of millions of dollars in worldwide marketing and distribution costs are added in, Justice League (Warner Bros., 11.17), which carries a production budget of around $250 million according to several sources, would have to bring in a lofty sum of around $600 million from ticket sales alone and additional revenue from ancillaries like pay-TV and home entertainment in order to turn a profit.

“Warner Bros. executives are already concerned that the movie’s debut this weekend — projected to be $110 million — is less than what they had hoped for. In comparison, last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opened to $166 million. The film will also face some competition over the upcoming holiday weekend from another big release, Disney/Pixar’s Coco, though the animated film skews younger. So far, early reaction to Justice League has been mixed among critics and fans. Some have panned it, while others have praised its lighter tone.” — from 11.16 Variety story by Ricardo Lopez.