…which means that in a manner of speaking or superficial speculation that the lead character in Quentin Tarantino‘s upcoming film will resemble a late ’70s version of former stand-up comedian, former HE comment-thread enfant terrible (“I want a hooker!”) and podcaster LexG (aka Mike Gilbert).
HE to Tarantino: If the Hauser casting happens, please consider giving LexG a cameo part. It would be, at the very least, poetically and historically fitting.
Think of it! All these decades of the obstinate, hugely conflicted LexG huffing and puffing and podcasting from his modest Burbank realm, and now his persona may (I say “may“) be on the final climb toward the summit of film geek mythology.
In the same sense that Jeff Dowd is widely presumed to be the real-life inspiration for Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s The Big Lebowski, it could be argued that LexG is at least a partial real-life inspiration for “Jim Sheldon,” the lead protagonist in Tarantino’s The Movie Critic, at least by way of his vague physical resemblance to Paul Walter Hauser, who has reportedly been “offered” the Sheldon role.
Jordan Ruimy: “Tarantino has described the character as ‘Travis Bickle if he were a film critic”'” — an obsessive loner and a bit of an oddball who happens to review movies for an underground porn rag called The Popstar Pages or Hollywood Press. The film is set in 1977.
Tarantino to Deadline‘s Baz Bamigboye: “The Movie Critic is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag…a porno rag that had a really interesting movie page. He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic.
“[And this] porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell. He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid 30s. He died in his late 30s. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.”
I don’t know about now but a decade ago alcoholism was seemingly one of the anvils (if not the anvil) tied around LexG’s ankle.
On 9.24.13 I wrote the following about trying to save LexG if I had the money:
From “How the Internet Created An Age of Rage,” a 7.23.11 article by The Guardian‘s Tim Adams:
