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A sympathetic portrait of Oscar-winning Crash producer Cathy Schulman by Risky Business columnist Anne Thompson. Stand-out graph: “In the film community, while many respect Schulman’s taste and acumen as a producer, some question her business judgment when it comes to the men with whom she works. ‘Cathy’s emotionality makes her a good producer on-set,’ says one producer, ‘but gets her into trouble in business.'”

“Page Six” is claiming that George Clooney was the bad guy smoothie in Teri Hatcher‘s life a couple of months ago. A non-attributed source has fingered Clooney as a guy described as “a world-class Don Juan” and a “Mystery Man” in Leslie Bennett‘s just-out Vanity Fair interview piece with Hatcher. This guy, Bennett says, seduced and abandoned Hatcher last January, and made her feel so badly she got in touch with feelings about her uncle having abused her as a young woman, etc. I just bought the issue today, and Bennetts reports that the seducing and abandoning of Hatcher by “Mystery Man” left her so torn up that she could no longer keep from talking about her evil uncle. Clooney’s rep Stan Rosenfield told “Page Six” that “I doubt very seriously that your source is credible…I doubt Teri Hatcher is your source, and unless she is, you’re full of shit.”
Bennetts writes in the piece, “After an elaborate courtship, Hatcher opened her heart to a handsome guy who convinced her that she was entering a magical new relationship, only to have him disappear as soon as she’d let down her guard. He charmed, he conquered, he said, ‘I’ll call you,’ and — poof — he was gone.” I guess I’m mentioning this because of Jon Stewart‘s joke last Sunday that “good night, and good luck” was Clooney’s real-life closing line to women he goes out with. It was funny then, but now…? On the other hand, reader Stacey Singfleton has asked three questions: “One, does George Clooney really have to ‘seduce’ anybody? Two, who in the free world doesn’t know that Clooney has stated repeatedly for the past ten years (without any obvious hostility or rancor, mind you) that he has no intention of getting married or having kids? And three, if you’re a single mother looking for a relationship, as opposed to nice dinners and booty calls (not that there’s anything wrong with those), would you date George Clooney?”

This site says that pirated DVDs of Brokeback Mountain are floating around Turkey, and evidently the title “they’ve” gone with in Turkish — Ibne Kovboylar, or something close to that — translates into English as Faggot Cowboys. An Istanbul site called Radikal has written about this crude title and quotes a reader saying that “this hopeless and disgusting name shows my culture’s primal face…it’s really bad.” I went to three Turkish- English translation sites and tried translating Ibne Kovboylar into English, and three times I got “nothing found.” Then I tried translating “faggot cowboy” into Turkish and it didn’t work again. If “they” means Turkish bootleggers, doesn this mean that the legal distributor of the DVD will call it Ibne Kovboylar also?

Turkish DVD cover

Bilge Ebiri, a Turkish reader, says “‘ibne’ does mean ‘faggot’ in Turkish, but there’s no way the legit film release of BBM will be called that. There are pretty strict rules against curse words in advertising and movie titles in Turkey, and I think this is just a case of some bootlegger thinking he was funny and getting crude. In news coverage the film has been referred to either as Brokeback Mountain or Brokeback Dagi (i.e., ‘mountain’ in Turkish). I’m happy to bet a thousand bucks that the movie will never be legitimately released in Turkey under the title Ibne Kovboylar.”

This is nine days old and counting, but also a fascinating peek into Ann Coulter’s head when it comes to discussing Hollywood films and industry attitudes. And here’s Coulter’s 3.8 response to the show and who won, etc.

The V for Vendetta London premiere took place last night (Wednesday, 3.8) at the UCI Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, and here’s a link to some video coverage.

If you live in L.A. and have masochist-adventurist leanings, get over to the American Cinematheque Aero Theatre on Saturday, April 1st, for a 7:30 pm screening of a restored and uncut print of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which clocks in at faucet-dripping 219 minutes. This version has been on DVD for a long while, but this is one of those appalling creations you have to experience in a theatre on the big screen to fully appreciate. I was there, you see….at the evening press screening of this bloated, turgid western at Manhattan’s Cinema 1 theatre nearly 25 years and eight months ago. And I remmember very clearly how it played with the crowd I saw it with, and no amount of F.X. Feeney reimaginings are going to change that. Seeing Heaven’s Gate that night was like death from asphyxiation…it was oxygen being sucked out of the room….like being buried alive in the lower chamber of an Egyptian pyramid. And yet…and yet…it had something. A display of monumental indulgence that I’d never felt before that fateful night, and haven’t since. “When it was released, many critics reacted to the hoopla and negative hype, instead of the actual content of the film,” the program notes say…which, trust me, is revisionist horseshit. The notes are partly accurate, however, in saying that Heaven’s Gate “has undergone significant re-appraisal and its considerable virtues are now widely recognized,” except for the word “widely.” People have bought into the Feeney view of this film, although I can’t remember which contrarian film critics have signed aboard. The restored print will be introduced at the Aero screening by Sony film preservationist John Kirk and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and I am strangely attracted to the idea of coming and watching it again. What does that mean?

There’s a guy I spoke to last night who complained that I’ve spoiled his enjoyment of the first episode of the new Sopranos season by saying something heavy happens in this episode (debuting Sunday, 3.12, on HBO). I provided no details at all…not the slightest dandelion-fuzz of a hint…but for Mr. Bitch-and-Moaner just knowing something or other will happen is a serious problem. Well, he also needs to call Variety‘s Brian Lowry and let him have it. Lowry’s review of the first four episodes, posted late yesterday (Wednesday, 3.8), gives almost nothing away but it does say “there is a genuine surprise in the premiere.” And USA Today‘s Robert Bianco has referred to a “shocking and yet completely in-character twist that propels Sunday’s premiere” in a 3.9.06 review. And the Paul Brownfield has written that “Sunday night’s debut ends in stunning fashion.”

I’ve asked a lot of well-connected guys if the can help me get a copy of the shooting script of The DaVinci Code, and they all said it’s too much of a lockdown thing…can’t happen. Does anyone anywhere have a copy? In the meantime, I just received the illustrated version of Dan Brown‘s best-seller by messenger.

“You’ve probably heard this from others, but supposedly there just isn’t that much extra footage to add back to that director’s cut of Crash [due April 4th on DVD]. I was at a screening several months back where Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco spoke for about an hour after it ended. They mentioned the low cost and speed at which they had to shoot it, saying that basically most of what they shot is on the screen and that’s that. Who knows how honest they were being with the Creative Screenwriting crowd, but this may be the answer to your question.” — Josh Roessler.

“Though it needs to be cut drastically, George Gittoes‘ Rampage is a power-packed documentary with lots of potential,” Screen Daily‘s Peter Brunette wrote out of Berlin on 3.7. “Set mostly in one of the worst black ghettoes in Miami, the film, which was shot over the course of several years by the Australian-based Gittoes, is lively, insightful and even shocking. Festival programmers and buyers of docs for television, who may think there’s nothing new to be seen or said about black American ghetto life, should give this film a serious look. Once its two-hour running time is shortened to a punchier and less repetitive 90 minutes, it may even manage to snag theatrical distribution in the US and elsewhere.” Does anyone know of any upcoming U.S. festival screenings?

Brokeback Mountain not winning the Best Picture Oscar hit the film’s director Ang Lee in a soft spot, and it left some kind of bruise. He said in a TV interview that aired yesterday (Wednesday, 3.8) that promoting the film was “an arduous process” and that losing to Crash was a disappointment-and-a-half. “We’ve won every award since September, but missed out on the last one, the biggest one,” Lee said. But feeling disappointed “is human nature. And it wasn’t for myself. I led a whole team of people.”

Sales of the old Crash DVD (i.e., the one that went on sale last September, and not the “special edition” coming out 4.4) soared after the Paul Haggis film won the Best Picture Oscar Sunday night. In one day (aaah but which day?…Monday, 3.6 or Tuesday, 3.7?) Lionsgate sold 17,500 copies.