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Three Stories About Joan, which was to have been the directing debut of Bruce Willis, has recently experienced big financial woes, I’m told. A recent confrontation between Willis, who’s also one of the film’s producers, and producers Mark Damon and Moshe Diamant led to Willis walking off the film, according to a source in New Orleans who heard rumblings about the Shreveport-based production a week ago.

Bruce Willis

Willis could always come back and finish the job, of course. This could be just an interlude.

The film is reportedly a $20 million psychological thriller about three stories affecting the fate of a woman named Joan (Camilla Belle) that Willis was to have costarred in along with Owen Wilson (according to an IMDB casting rumor) and Keiran Culkin. The screenplay is by Christopher Alexander and Sam Applebaum.

A Louisiana tax credit guy confided to a source that local investors recently decided to “back out of the Bruce Willis film because it scared us. I don’t think the money was all there.”

Willis had the same concerns, he says, and things got to a point in which he allegedly told Damon, “Okay this is a $20 milion movie, but where’s the money? I’m supposed to get $5 million, but all I want right now to make sure things are okay is to see $100 thousand in my bank account tomorrow. Make that happen and I’ll believe you.”

The next day there was no money so Willis got on a plane and said, “See ya.”

Camilla Belle

The rumor is that Damon is suing. Naturally. Anyone in his position would to the same. Better to suggest that the real trouble is an uncooperative director-actor than admit that one’s finances aren’t entirely in order.

The IMDB says Three Stories About Joan was supposed to be in pre-production as of 9.23.

Willis co-produced with his brother David Willis and Stephen J,. Eads under the banner of his recently launched production company, Willis Bros. Films. Damon’s production company is called Foresight Unlimited.

Spoiler Whiners Beware: An 11.10 Herald Sun article is reporting that with a little more than two weeks before the big opening, Australia director Baz Luhrman — get ready, here it comes — “has bowed to studio pressure for a happy ending” by letting Hugh Jackman‘s character live instead of die.

“Luhrman’s initial cut, which ran for more than three hours, ended with Jackman’s character, The Drover, dying in the final scenes,” the unbylined story reads.

“After disastrous reviews from test screenings, 20th Century Fox executives decided [that] the film’s final moments should be more uplifting. Or rather, “After intense discussions with studio executives, Luhrmann was persuaded last week to go for a more uplifting ending.”

“One test-screening audience member described the film as ‘an action-filled tragedy‘ and urged Luhrmann to change the ending.

“‘If they can tastefully tie this movie up into a solid story, with a nice pace, Baz will have a winner here,’ one reviewer wrote. ‘And there is no reason to kill off Wolvie (Jackman) in this one, come on.’

“Those who’ve seen the film say the performances are terrific but it is Jackman who steals the show.”

I’m also looking forward to seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road, but this 11.7 video conversation between Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz about how they might fare in the Oscar race, and especially Schwartz’s comments about same, gave me some pause. The words that came to mind were “yuck,” “unctuous,” “toadyish” and “overly invested.”

What is it with Schwartz’s giddy delight in the likelihood of a huge Oscar telecast audience if Brangelina shows up as dual nominees? “If [Benjamin Button] meets everybody’s expectations and Brad gets a nomination,” she says, “that’ll be a huge ratings boon for the Academy, having Brangelina both there, assuming [Angelina Jolie] also gets nominated.”

And which expected Best Actress nominee is Schwartz rooting for the most? Doubt‘s Meryl Streep or Revolutionary Road and The Reader‘s Kate Winslet? Streep, she says, “deserves to win as many times as she is nominated…I mean, she is Meryl Streep.” She also says, “I just want Kate to win already…she’s been nominated five times and has not won yet…it’s just criminal!”

Does Schwartz feel no particular allegiance, rooting interest or emotional investment in Kirstin Scott Thomas winning for I’ve Loved You So Long? I sure do. Not because she’s better than anyone else (what do I know at this stage?), but because she’s truly great in the part. That aside, I don’t think any Oscar handicapper should care one way or the other about Oscar telecast ratings. What will be will be.

What exactly is the vampire metaphor, and why are vampire movies and TV shows so popular with under-25s (younger women in particular), gays, Anne Rice and people of that general ilk? Why hasn’t anyone tried to explain it in 250 words or less? I can’t find an explanation that I really like.

The rote explanation is that vampires can only find fulfillment after dark, so people who love vampire movies are a bit like that also. They see themselves as nocturnal adventurers — their spirits set free by the special aura of the night. For them daytime endeavor represents a kind of slavery — slumber for the dead. They don’t see themselves as dynamic go-getters who derive any kind of fulfillment from daytime productivity or anything tied to the Protestant work ethic. They’re looking for emotional salvation when and if they happen to meet the right someone at a club or party.

In short, the less you have going on in your life in the daytime, which is when most (but obviously not all) people do their best work, or the less satisfaction you get from getting up at a reasonably early hour and getting down to some kind of energetic daytime routine, and the more chronic a clubber you are, the more you’re into movies like Twilight. I could explain this more thoroughly (which I’ll get around to later this evening) but that’s the general thrust.

Variety‘s Anne Thompson and many other women out there are into the romantic whatchamacallit vampire metaphor and are totally hot for Catherine Hardwicke‘s Twilight (Summit, 11.21). Here’s a Thompson handheld-video interview with hottie Twilight star Robert Pattinson.

It would be nice to actually see Twilight, of course, so the rest of us (i.e., the guys) can get on the train. It opens 12 days from now and I haven’t, like, received an invitation to any press screenings yet. Why is that, do you think? I’m just asking. I wanna feel it, I wanna be a part of it…Twilight, Twilight!

“More than 35 years after it was released, I don’t think there’s any movie that captures the chaos and intensity of a political campaign quite as well as Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate.” — N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott in a recent (and apparently undated) video essay.

I’m not so sure this was such a good thing. For me there’s only one John Hughes movie of any lasting resonance — Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I’m sure that people who went to high school in the ’80s feel differently. Hughes is one reason I hate the ’80s. I hate the hairstyles that everyone (especially young actors) wore in Hughes’ films. I hated the shoulder pads in early to mid ’80s sports jackets that were sometimes worn in Hughes comedies. I could go on and on.

I was trying to console a friend the other day who’d just lost his job. Everybody gets laid off or fired, I told him. Happens to the best of us. To put him in a slightly better mood I told him a story about getting canned by a chain-link fence company in Fairfield, Connecticut, that I worked for in my early 20s. It’s a good story because I wasn’t just “fired” but angrily jettisoned due to an error of classic proportions. A lulu.

I worked with two other guys for the company. Every day we loaded big coiled-up bundles of chain-link fence and schlepped them around to this and that job site. We would dig holes and insert a series of metal poles sunk in cement, and then return to the job a couple of days later to put up the fence, unspooling it yard by yard and fastening each length to the poles with hard metal coils or “ties.”

It was torturous trying to move the chain-link rolls off the flatbed truck and then lift them up with sheer brawn every time a section had to be unspooled. Especially in the godawful winter with the cold metal freezing your fingers and the tips of the fences making scratches and cuts on your hands every time you manhandled them. My job attitude was half-hearted at best.

I was the guy who would back the truck up and get it into position before the fence rolls were unloaded in front of the poles. One time we were putting up a fence near a large dirt lot. The road was a couple of hundred feet away from the location of the poles, and for whatever reason it was decided not to park the company’s flatbed truck right next to the poles but up near the road.

In any event it was finally 4:30 pm one day and time to get the truck and bring it back to where the un-mounted fence sections were lying on the ground. The rear of the truck was facing the far side of the road. The obvious plan was to back it into the road and then whip it leftward and drive across the lot.

I started the truck and checked the two rearview mirrors. The coast seemed clear although there was a bit of a blind spot. My coworkers were collecting tools and whatnot, so it was just me and my wits.

The truck was parked on an incline, however, and there was a lot of mud under the tires and I couldn’t get any traction when I hit the gas. So I tried rocking it back and forth — no luck. I then decided to put a couple of pieces of scrap lumber under the rear tires for traction. I once again put it in reverse, hit the gas and finally the truck lurched backwards.

The palm trees don’t fit, but this is what the lot and the fence looked like.

Then something prevented me from moving again. The engine was revving but I stayed put, as if something was obstructing. But I glanced at the left rearview and saw nothing. In my haste and frustration I hit the gas even harder. The truck moved only by a foot or so. I couldn’t figure what was wrong. I tried again and again.

The revving engine was fairly loud so at first I didn’t hear the shouting of my coworkers. In fact they were screaming. I looked in the mirror and saw them running in my direction, waving their arms. I put the truck in park and jumped out. What I saw behind the truck was so outrageous that after a minute or two I was dealing with suppressed laughter. I managed to restrain myself by frowning and looking at the ground and thinking about dead pets and cesspools.

I had backed the metal flatbed part of the truck right through the window and roof of a passenger car that had just happened along. The car was sitting there with the window shattered and split open and the roof bent and sheared all to hell. The driver — a mousey-looking middle-aged guy in a white shirt, tie and maroon sports jacket — was sitting motionless and white-faced behind the wheel. He was apparently so traumatized that he’d gone into some kind of shock.

Just as I was finally succeeding at backing out of the mud this Willy Loman-ish jerk had driven his car — a mid-sized four-door coupe — right behind me and for some reason come to a dead stop. I never talked to the guy, but I guess the truck lurched at just the right moment and the flatbed had smashed through his right-rear window and pinned him down.

Obviously it was my fault but I couldn’t get over the absurd timing of this. And, you know, it would have helped if one of my two co-workers had run across the mud field to help and then guide me out when it was clear I was having trouble getting traction. No matter — I was fired when we got back to the office.

Every time I think of this episode I laugh. It was horrible for me because I needed the money and was partly ashamed and furious at myself. But we all know the rule about hilarity being perched on the edge of darkness.

Cherry Jones‘ opinion of Meryl Streep‘s performance in Doubt differs from that of Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, which was a fairly sharp diss. A Tony Award winner for playing the same role on the Broadway stage, Jones recently told The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil she “was impressed by how Streep underplayed the nun’s villainy, giving the character more emotional vulnerability.

“To illustrate the difference in their two performances, Jones cited a scene in which Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) fiercely confronts the nun who accuses him of molesting a school boy. Glowering at her, he asks, ‘Have you ever sinned?’

“‘On stage, I stood my ground,’ Jones said. ‘I held my resolve and I fought Father Flynn right back. I didn’t let him break her. This is the play’s big confrontation scene and we played it for maximum dramatic conflict.

“‘But I was fascinated to see that’s not what Meryl Streep does,’ she added. ‘She lets Sister Aloysius crack. She decides to break with the moment. Suddenly, she caves, she’s vulnerable. You think these two might actually come together, that all will be understood and forgiven, but, no. They go right back to fighting. On stage we decided to drive the scene right through.’

Jones, says O’Neil, “doesn’t think one approach is better than the other, just different and in a ‘fascinating’ way. Both performances have one key thing in common, though, she added: ‘There is no question that this nun is intense and doing her duty to protect people she loves.'”

McCarthy felt that Streep’s performance is “disconcerting and unsatisfying” in the way she “overdoes the melodrama, thereby turning Sister Aloysius into more of a stock figure than she ultimately seemed onstage…every little tic, gesture and facial mannerism seems maximized by the effort expended to minimalize them, to diminished returns in the cause of creating a three-dimensional character.”

My view, posted two days ago, was one of admiration for the fact that Streep is “expert at letting you know precisely what’s going on in her hard and damning head is, for me, a trip. She’s almost Mommie Dearest, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. I don’t mean she tries for comedy. The genius of Streep’s performance is that you can take her work as dead straight drama or a hoot, depending on your mood or attitude. What counts is that you can sit there and read her each and every second. There’s never any doubt what she’s thinking, intuiting, suspecting.”

Daily Beast editor Tina Brown asked last Wednesday morning if “we can please not risk any more catastrophes by letting [the Bush] administration stick around? Just scrap the transition and let President Obama clean house right away like the Brits do at Number 10 Downing Street?” A few hours later David Letterman said the exact same thing in his monologue: “I think I speak for most Americans [in saying]…does anybody mind if he starts a little early? Would that be a problem?”