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I don’t know if this is any kind of approved one-sheet from Summit Entertainment, but it’s a strong, simple conveyance of the tension vibe that permeates Kathryn Bigelow‘s film through. A marketing friend told me he doesn’t think it’ll make much money. “Whaddaya mean?,” I said. “It’s a high-anxiety thriller…it’s Aliens.” It doesn’t matter, he said — people still won’t go to an Iraq movie. The same reason Body of Lies is going to commercially disappoint, he added. I got pissed at that point. “But…but…but…but.”

Freddie Jones‘ famous line from Juggernaut, fans will recall, is “cut the blue wire.” He says this to Richard Harris, waits, and then says it again. But Harris smells a rat and cuts the red wire instead. It’s the right choice. Whew.

I’m told that the deal is sealed for Josh Brolin to star in Jonah Hex, based on the graphic novel and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Game) and to be funded and released by Warner Bros. Brolin’s rep is not only denying this but claiming Brolin is “not attached,” but a voice is telling me to consider the word of a friend who tells me the deal was locked down last night.

Josh Brolin; Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex is a western comic book anti-hero created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga and published by DC Comics. DC Comics is producing along with Mad Chance.
The movie, I’m told, is going to be some kind of sci-fi western with CG up the wazoo. There’s nothing sci-fi-ish about the Hex comic book that’s explained on the Wikipedia.page, but there’s always the creative option. Hex is a middle-aged bounty hunter and gunslinger (born in 1838, dies in 1904) with a heavily scarred face whose quest in the film is tracking down a voodoo practitioner and…I don’t know anything more. But it sounds like another stab at launching another Warner Bros. franchise, and most definitely a fat paycheck gig for Brolin.

Cedric B. Glover, Mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, has responded to Josh Brolin‘s account of the famous altercation that happened at the Stray Cat bar in Shrevesport last July.
I ran Brolin’s statement yesterday in a piece that came out of an interview at the W. junket. Glover read it and sent his response by e-mail to Shrevesport Times reporter Alexandyr Kent. Here it is:
“There is an interesting presumption of privilege in Mr. Brolin’s comments. He appears to be blurring the line between reality and his on-screen persona. As Southerners we inherently go out of our way to make our guests and visitors feel welcome and at home. However, the expectation that legitimate charges would be summarily dismissed by me, the Chief of Police or the City Attorney is not in line with the way this administration is leading the city of Shreveport.
“At every level, from City Hall, to our faith community, to our neighborhoods, we are working diligently to make all of Shreveport safer and better. Crucial to that effort is the equal and consistent application of the law.
“But make no mistake, we treasure and value all that the film industry has brought to our community. We will continue to pursue every opportunity available to bring this industry to our region. And we will continue to make all those who come feel wanted, appreciated and welcomed.” — Cedric B. Glover, Mayor of Shreveport.”

The heat is obviously on for W. right now with the big junket last weekend, the ads everywhere and Lionsgate opening it on something close to 2000 screens on 10.17. But Portland critics aren’t feeling it because Lionsgate won’t be screening the Oliver Stone biopic for them. In Seattle, yes, but not Portland. And Oregonian critic Shawn Levy , understandably put off, is declaring that he won’t run a wire-service review and neither will Portland’s two alternative weeklies, Willamette Week and the Portland Mercury.
Lionsgate “blew off three lead stories [in these papers] by not screening it here,” Levy says. So we’re talking a real Mexican standoff with little W. in the middle. Will the Portland box-office suffer from local critics giving it the Big Chill? Or will TV and print ads suffice as far as Lionsgate’s interests are concerned?
The W. Portland-critic blowoff is about numbers and hardball strategy, of course. Portland’s market ranking is somewhere beyond 20th place — not a minor market but not a huge one either. And yet I’ve always thought of Portland as one of the five major Pacific coast towns that matter culturally. (Along with Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.) Levy argues that Portland is a liberal-minded burgh that supports movies it likes with a passion, and that an Oliver Stone film that reveals the tragedy of George W. Bush is right up its political alley. He also points out that Lionsgate recently screened Religulous, which plays to more or less the same market, for Portland critics.
Sidenote: W. was screened for Portland exhibitors two days ago (Tuesday) at the Fox Tower 10 cinemas. “It’s not unusual for exhibitors to get screenings and then press be denied but the lack of W. in Portland press for it’s release is quite perplexing,” a local projectionist writes. “Shawn Levy’s description of the city is quite apt. The film would have an audience in our city. George Bush Sr. even referred to our fine town as Little Beirut in response to protesters.”

The New York “Vulture” guys were right, of course, in reporting yesterday that the first reactions to Oliver Stone‘s W. — the reviews by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy and the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt — weren’t so hot. But the reaction among junket journalists I spoke to yesterday was mostly approving. Really.
They weren’t exactly Redbull-ed by it, but then neither was I. My reaction was one of intrigue, engagement and finally sadness, having been moved by the tragic aura around this poor dope. The film is brisk and mordantly funny as it rushes along, but it’s finally a sad story about an unhappy man. It’s not a firecracker madball thing as much as a smartly designed, souped-up Corvette with a purring engine that you almost need to see twice get the full boost. I saw it again yesterday morning and there was no diminishment. I felt just as stimulated, tickled and satisfied as I did the first time, and just as affected by the ending.

Ruffled feathers at Fox News over an unflattering photo of Sarah Palin on the cover of the current Newsweek. If they were so inclined, could the Newsweek guys have run a more flattering shot of the Republican vp candidate? Certainly. Did they go with this one because certain parties at Newsweek (along with every blue-minded voter in this country) find her despicable? Don’t know, can’t say.

John McCain is losing and knows it. He feels, in fact, that he’s trapped in a kind of jail cell — a cell of ugly rhetoric and impossible taskdom, given the his poll numbers since the economic meltdown — that he can’t escape from. How do I know this? Because earlier today in Pennsylvania McCain said, “Across this country this is the agenda I have set before, my fellow prisoners.” Maybe we’re all prisoners in a mortal existential sense, but McCain was clearly revealing the Freudian undertow.

The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report, taken from 10.5 to 10.7 (i.e., before last night’s debate) shows Barack Obama with a 52% to 41% lead over John McCain. Between McCain’s “that one” gaffe, his leaving the studio right after the event (while Barack and Michelle stayed and chatted), and the worldwide economic calamity vibe it really does feel as if the ship has sailed on the 11.4 outcome. The lead may expand a bit in the next poll, given the general consensus that Obama “won” or at least did better last night. The only thing to factor in on top of this is the Bradley effect.

Who’s keeping the definitive list of whacked movie print critics? The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Sean Means? He’s probably already added Arizona film critic Craig Outhier, but in case he hasn’t here’s the announcement. Arizona’s East Valley Tribune (which publishes affiliate local papers in Scottsdale and Tempe) will cut loose 46 editorial employees come January, Outhier included.

Whenever someone gets it like this I always think of Joe Pesci‘s death in Goodfellas. “Oh, no!”…thunk, body flop in the linoleum floor, blood spreading out and the old-guy shooter saying with finality, “That’s that.”

I love this. I certainly respect the speed factor — it was up two or three hours after the close of last night’s debate — but the art isn’t quite right, dammit. The capital “t” and “’08” don’t seem proportionately rock ‘n’ roll. Trying to figure why “amost”-level logos and style designs don’t work can drive you nuts. Someone should re-do it and get it right and then the buttons, bumper stickers and whatnot could begin to circulate. For fun, I mean. A keepsake.

Everyone remembers W. costars Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright being arrested last July at a bar in Shreveport, Louisiana, along with five other W. crew members who had worked on the just-wrapped Oliver Stone movie. Brolin was maced; Wright was tasered. [Note: Stone told me today the initial discord was due a racist attitude.] Some or all of the W. guys were taken down to the station and had to post bail.

W. star Josh Brolin (slight grin) — Tuesday, 10.8.08, 5:15 pm

There was said to be a cell-phone video of part of the incident, which I can confirm today to be absolutely the case.
I later wrote that Brolin should make a short film about this incident, but he said his hands were tied because he’d been told to shut up about it. Today, however, he opened up.
It was during an interview we did late this afternoon during the W. junket at the Four Seasons hotel. Before reading the transcript and listening to the recording, know that Brolin is looking at a court date in Shreveport in November or December to answer charges of interfering with an arrest. He and his lawyers, asserting there was no such interference, have been waiting for Shreveport authorities to drop the charge and make amends, but this has never happened.
Anyway, here — with minor edits — is a transcript. [The comments in brackets are my questions or clarifications.]
“What we were really waiting for was for them [the Shreveport authorities] to dismiss it. We were waiting for them to do the right thing. The mayor, prosecuting attorney, whomever. I don’t know everything that happened. I do know there was no fight. None. I do know that I was maced and that Jeffrey Wright was tasered. There was no defiance, no struggle. There was no fight. There was no resistance.
“I know my assistant got arrested or asking too many questions. Twelve questions. [So what the cops perceived as a lack of submission to their authority…?] I don’t know. I don’t see it. I look at the tape, which everyone will eventually see….I look at the tape and I go ‘where is the fight’? I don’t understand where the fight is. [Was it] me saying, ‘Hey, where are you taking [Jeffrey]?” because I want to get him out? After I asked for the third time.

“And they didn’t want…maybe they looked at me and said ‘you know, he’s a big boy, he’s got a bald head…heh-heh-heh! We don’t want to deal with him, [and] we don’t want him possibly getting out of hand maybe.’
“[But] none of us were drunk, we had just finished shooting three or four hours before. We were out…in the beginning, it was like [smacks hand] okay! It was time! We did it! We were so proud, what an accomplishment!…and then this fucking happens. To me it was ridiculous. I have never seen…I have never ever, ever, ever, ever seen an escalation of paranoia and abuse like that…ever. And I know a lot of cops. Everybody knows I have a checkered past and I’ve been in situations that are kind of tough. I’ve never ever been treated like that by cops. Ever.
“[A cop will normally side with the local guy, the guy he knows.] Yeah, but I don’t think that was it. I don’t know the specifics between Jeffrey [Wright] and the bartender, but he was asked to leave, and I know that was why the cops came, to say okay, it’s time to escort you out. Not because [Jeffrey] was yelling or screaming. He was just saying look, I’m here with my friends, I’m celebrating the end of our movie, and then they escorted him out, [and] we wanted to know why, and they didn’t want to tell us. They immediately resorted to violence. Which is what the police are there to try and stop and prevent. That didn’t happen. They were the violent ones.
“It was us going….you can see it on the tape…us going ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.’ There was no fight-back at all. My lawyers are befuddled right now. They do not understand and they have never experienced anything like this. The dealings with the Shreveport legal system.
“[So when’s the tape going to come out?] I don’t know, I don’t know. Probably pretty soon. Or maybe after we go to court. November, December. Something like that. [Why are you going to court?] Because charges were pressed against me. Oh, yeah. Interfering with an arrest. I got the least, I got the least. My assistant got interfering with an arrest because of the questions asked, and then she got resisting arrest because she stepped forward as they were trying to push her face into the ground.

Brolin (no grin) — Tuesday, 10.8.08, 5:16 pm

“I mean, really severe, man. Truly, truly. Not to be too maudlin or morbid. But I’ve been around the police my whole life. I have so many policeman friends and police woman friends, and I’ve never never, ever, ever seen anything like it. All the time I was in jail I could think, the whole time…okay, they’ve arrested us knowing that their economy, part of their economy is based on the film industry. Okay, that’s one…knowing this is wrong. Secondly, they know we have some leverage. With the press, with this…they know we have some rebuttal, something, some reaction. They know that.
“Then I thought every person that goes through here…they have nothing, they have nothing, they’re forgotten. So I wonder how many people have been abused by this system? So then I started researching . They had a kid who died from a taser, 21 year old kid. Almost 300 people have died in the last five years. From tasers? It’s unbelievable, man, and the fact that they resorted to that when there was no violence?
“So, I’m telling you…I’ve never told any of this to anybody, but I’m giving this to you ’cause I just talked to the lawyer yesterday. And I said you know what, it’s too long now, I’m done, I’m done being nice. What’s the worst, they’re gonna put me in jail a couple of months because I spoke out about [their] abuse?”