Has anyone anywhere seen Richard Kelly‘s The Box, which opens less than a month hence? I’m not saying Warner Bros. marketing deserves credit for smothering awareness of this psychological thriller, but I just happened to think of it this morning because I’m about to talk to Box costar James Marsden.

It’s time to get dressed, go down to the lobby, meet the unit publicist and start the Straw Dogs experience. A visit to the set, interviews (of course), probably some nervous tension-lesseners (jokes and whatnot) about the violence and rape elements in the original book and the film, a discussion of the legacy and influence of Sam Peckinpah, and the difference in the social mores between now and 1971. The big rape scene was filmed two days ago, I’m told. The film has two more weeks to shoot.

Wall Street Journal contributor Eric Kohn has explained how Bill Murray‘s Zombieland cameo came to pass. (Guys like Eric Childress are probably still having puppies over this, but the awareness of this cameo is everywhere. They need to man up.)

“‘It was originally scripted for several other people,’ director Ruben Fleisher says, mentioning Sylvester Stallone and ‘six or seven other people’ who passed on the role. When another actor dropped out at the last minute, Woody Harrelson called Murray. ‘It really came down to Woody making a phone call to his buddy and saying, ‘Hey, this is a really funny role. Do you think you would be up for it?'” Fleisher says. “Literally, like 48 hours before he was on the set, he agreed to do it. It was incredibly fortuitous that we ended up with the best possible person who could get that role.’

“Since there wasn’t much time for rewrites, Murray brought his own flair to the set. ‘There was so much improv,’ Fleisher says. ‘He was totally game for it and I think he had a lot of fun doing it. As a first-time director, it was a dream come true.'”

Downtown Shreveport has a lot of big buildings, but there are relatively few people on the streets at night. The truth is that it feels like a kind of ghost town. It’s almost a little spooky. The only industries that are bringing in any money, according to a senior member of the Straw Dogs team, are the casinos and film production. I was briefly driven around town last night and saw some closed-down stores, a couple of gutted buildings, vacant lots and almost no people anywhere except for low-income guys sitting on bus-stop benches.

Okay, I stuck my head into a very hot and happening bar on Texas Street, but the Cajun food restaurant I visited nearby clearly wasn’t getting much business. I didn’t get around all that much last night so maybe I’m missing something. I didn’t even go down to the commercial district adjacent to the Red River. But the Straw Dogs guy was adamant — “this town is dead.” It certainly seemed this way to me by the street-life standards of Seattle, Prague, San Francisco, Alberquerque, New Orleans, Paris, etc.

That New York Daily News report about the severed head of Red Sox baseball legend Ted Williams‘ being used for batting practice by employees of an Alcor cryogenic storage facility is, I feel, amazing raw material for a new Will Ferrell comedy.

If Ferrell had steel cojones, I mean. Which of course he doesn’t. He makes films like Step Brothers, Blades of Glory and Land of the Lost.

In a book called “Frozen,” Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., “writes that Williams’ head, which had been severed and frozen for storage, was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williams’ frozen head with a monkey wrench.”

“Williams, the last player to hit over .400 in a season, died in 2002 at age 83 and had his remains sent to Alcor for cryogenic storage in the hope that future generations would develop the technology to revive him.”

I missed yesterday’s David Letterman shakedown episode due to travelling, walking the streets of Shreveport, eating shrimp and drinking beer. This is the tabloid world that we live in. Obviously no shortage of scumbags. Letterman going to the authorities was the right way to go, of course. And his confession was well delivered, I thought.

Most of us, I presume, are shocked, shocked that a big dog in a highly-charged showbiz workplace occasionally — frequently? — dipped into the fresh yogurt that was available in clean glass bowls on the banquet table.

We’re all human and vulnerable, but it’s not easy and actually a little strange to think of Letterman having it off in a Bernardo Bertolucci sense of the term. You don’t think “yep, there goes a sensual guy!” when you look at Letterman. He’s always seemed like a primarily cerebral being — brilliant, neurotic, fast-on-his-feet, fickle, health nut, Connecticut family guy, etc. So as sobering and (I suppose) moderately embarassing as this episode has been for him, this episode has almost been a kind of half-plus.

Because Letterman now has a certain extra dimension. He now has the very human aura of someone with the ability to risk and dive in and act foolish in order to taste the forbidden fruit. As well as a man with the cojones to say “fuck you” to an extortionist and to make a clean honest admission to his partner, his son, the authorities and the public.

Wait — how does the Polanski pitchfork crowd feel about this? Or is this being seen as less of a cut-and-dried thing? Do they feel that Letterman should, you know, do the right thing and pay for his crime, suffer for his sins, be sued and so on?

I’m suddenly reminded of a teaser-trailer for what I recall was a mid-to-late ’80s Arnold Schwarzenegger urban-revenge actioner called Raw Deal. I don’t even remember the film (does anyone?) but the teaser — or rather the ad copy, which delivered the basic punch –was beautiful.

It started out with a black screen and the following white-type words, crawlng down: “The system gave Schwarzenegger a raw deal.” Back to black…beat, beat, beat, beat…and then after at least a four- or five-second delay came the punch line: “Nobody gives Schwarzenegger a raw deal!”

I forget what came after and I don’t think it really mattered. I just remember that I laughed and said to myself, “That’s really great.”. The downside is that I may not have even seen the dang thing (probably because the reviews turned me off) but the teaser copy was a great pitch.

I missed my Houston to Shreveport flight through no fault of my own, so I’m chilling until the next flight leaves at 5:30 pm. My Newark-to-Houston flight landed at 3 pm (i.e., 20 minutes late), and it was utterly impossible to make the 3:30 pm flight to Shreveport for three good reasons. Actually, make it four.

Houston Airport Terminal A — Thursday, 10.1, 4:35 pm

One, The Shreveport departure terminal was almost a mile away from the one I arrived at from Newark. Two, to get there I had to wait for and then ride on the slowest and dinkiest airport shuttle system in North America. Three, with my flight leaving in five or six minutes and the gate about 500 yards away, I was forced to go through security scanning a second time — thank you, Houston George Bush airport! And four, the people who booked my flight cut it too close — never book a connecting flight without at least 90 minutes between flights, and two hours if you want to up your odds even more.

The same thing happened to me in Munich on my way to Cannes a couple of years ago, and that was my fault for not being more careful about the connecting times. And no, I don’t hate Houston because of this. I hated Houston for other reasons long before.

Here, at long last, is a response by Marina Zenovich, director of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, regarding David Wells‘ claim, contained in a recent Daily Beast article by Marcia Clark, that he lied to Zenovich on-camera about having goaded Judge Laurence J. Rittenband into throwing out the 1978 Roman Polanski plea deal:

“Dear Editors:

“I am perplexed by the timing of David Wells’ statement to the press that he lied in his interview with me for my Polanski documentary. Since June of 2008, the film has been quite visible on U.S. television via HBO, in theaters and on DVD, so it is odd that Wells has not brought this issue to my attention before.

“For the record, on the day I filmed Mr. Wells at the Malibu Courthouse, February 11, 2005, he gave me a one-hour interview. He signed a release like all my other interviewees, giving me permission to use his interview in the documentary worldwide. At no time did I tell him that the film would not air in the United States.

“Mr. Wells was always friendly and open with me. At no point in the four years since our interview has he ever raised any issues about its content. In fact, in a July 2008 story in The New York Times, Mr. Wells corroborated the account of events that he gave in my film.

“I am astonished that he has now changed his story. It is a sad day for documentary filmmakers when something like this happens.”