There is nothing in the least bit inappropriate or off-putting in the way Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody has promoted herself. She’s not doing anything Quentin Tarantino didn’t do (or try to do) 13, 14, 15 years ago. “I’m not just a writer but a smart-ass character/celebrity who knows about getting attention and working the town every which way”…no big deal & totally par for the course by 21st Century hype standards. You have to synch with the ongoing scale and velocity of things as they are, not as you might want them to be.

It therefore seems to me as if L.A. Times columnist Mark Olsen is exaggerating by saying Juno‘s rep may be in jeopardy because of the Cody hype “overwhelming its very genuine strengths.” He’s also noted that “more than one internet wag has wondered if Cody’s new gig as roving columnist for Entertainment Weekly will be her Norbit-style Waterloo.” Bullshit…the analogy isn’t there.
That said, if you’re taping a talk show it’s impolite not to turn your cell phone off. I’m not saying any more than this.

Scriptland columnist Jay Fernandez has passed along one of the best explanations or theories about why there’s so little understanding and commnication between WGA negotiators and those repping the studios and producers. The latter, he’s saying, are basically a “different race” who have nothing in common with the creative community because they’re basically corporate pod people.
In other words, Fernandez has drawn posted an interesting analogy between the mentality of producer/suit strike negotiators and the “condescending paternalism of the Bush administration…a business and political culture that increasingly seeks to disenfranchise [writers] from having a say in huge decisions about their industry’s future, and thus a measure of control over their own professional identities and livelihoods.
“‘Trust us,’ the companies seem to be saying in a dismissive echo of Bush policy, ‘we know what’s best for you.’
“As one producer with a studio deal joked, Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn famously treated the writers like bothersome children too, but at least they were children from the same family. These days, vertical integration has forced a mercenary corporate culture down through the very human ranks of studios and networks that used to be filled with actual movie and TV lovers.
“Now it’s as if the top executive ranks are a different race — brutal bean counters, not simpatico cinema dreamers — who don’t even know how to speak to their creative personnel, let alone make decisions based on their sense of fairness.”

The reaction to 16 year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney’s younger sister and star of Nickleodoen’s Zoey 101, announcing she’s pregnant and keeping the baby can be summed up as “what…?” (As if it was possible to be appalled by Spears family shenanigans.) But this is the third major entertainment-industry indicator that 16 year-old pregnancies aren’t that weird, which obviously telegraphs to teenage girls that it’s at least…you know, an option.

There’s Juno, of course — the Jason Reitman/Diablo Cody dramedy about a 16 year-old (Ellen Page) who can’t go ahead with an abortion after getting pregnant. Speaking for the filmmakers, Page’s Juno realizes from the get-go that she’s way too young to try and raise the child so she finds a yuppie couple looking to adopt. But the film is obliquely saying it’s not altogether terrible for a 16 year-old to go through 40 weeks of child-carrying. Juno matures, gets in touch with her identity and emotions. It’s not a good or advisable thing, Reitman and Cody are saying, but not 100% bad either.
And of course, Whale Rider star and Oscar nominee Keisha Castle Hughes got pregnant last year at age 16. Her daughter was born last April.
The 16 year-old Spears has told OK magazine that the father is Casey Aldridge, who she has been dating for some time and first met at church.

The Set List, edited by Variety associate editor Phil Gallo, announced yesterday that Apple has posted the first trailer for Martin Scorsese‘s Shine a Light (Paramount, 4.8.08), the delayed Rolling Stones concert doc. This trailer was up last August, guys. I posted an item about it on 8.25.

Jeff Sneider, the AICN/Variety guy, took a group of friends to see Control at “the decrepit” Regency Fairfax on Beverly Blvd. last Sunday night, and was treated to a projection nightmare of classic proportions. Here’s his story:

“We get through the commercials and trailers but then I don’t see The Weinstein Company logo (newly changed to TWC at Monday night’s Great Debaters screening) or the funky Northsee logo. The movie starts snd the credits roll, and it’s suddenly apparent that the black-and-white Control has been upgraded to color and that Paul Schrader is the new director. In short, the projectionist had begun to show The Walker.
“So I ran out, convinced it was my mistake for walking into the wrong theater and desperate not to miss the opening minutes of Control. I check the other two theaters at that venue and by the time I storm back up the ramp to yell at management, the entire theater full of angry Joy Division fans in the original theatre had filed out. Management comes out to apologize. It’s not the end of the world, they say, but then they can’t just put the movie back on immediately.
“So we have to sit through another 20 minutes of commercials and trailers including that dreadful ad for the National Guard featuring a 3 Doors Down song that’s so bad, the only thing I can do to keep my ears from bleeding is to keep reminding myself that soon enough, we’ll be listening to Bowie, the Sex Pistols and Joy Division for two hours.
“So we sit through the same trailers more or less (is TWC really banking on their acquisition of Under the Same Moon?) before the film starts. All my friends are miserable at this point. We get out of the 9:40 pm screening around 12:15 am. And here’s the kicker. All four of them (all white, aged 22-25, in the industry and of the high thread-count variety) hated the movie. They thought Sam Riley gave a very good performance in a terrible, drab, and worst of all, boring film. I was in absolute disbelief and I’m still shocked that they failed to see the inherit brilliance of Anton Corbjin‘s directorial debut.
“What can I say? There’s no accounting for taste.”
Wells to Sneider: Start shopping around for a more evolved class of friends. You say these guys are high thread-counters (i.e., a euphemism that alludes to refined taste) and in the industry, but they’ve obviously got a ways to go in their ability to recognize high-end filmmaking so…I don’t know, something doesn’t calculate. Control is one of the year’s absolute finest — there’s no debating that whatsoever unless you’re Robert Koehler. You certainly can’t say it sucks outright — that’s out. It sounds harsh to put it this way, but they’re probably just not perceptive enough.
You can still call these guys and meet up for drinks now and then, but the writing on the wall is saying that you need to think about hooking up with a better class of social allies who might wonder in their heart of hearts if you’re hip enough for them to hang out with. Always “relationship” in an upward or lateral direction — never downward.

Just to be clear: while the Writers Guild of America West announced Monday it has blocked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association from using guild writers on its Golden Globes award show next month, and said “no” to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences about using current and historical film clips on its Academy Awards broadcast, the Academy has for whatever reason not requested a waiver for using guild writers on the 2.24.08 Oscar show.
They should spare themselves the effort. In a 12.19 N.Y. Times story on the matter by David Carr and Michael Ceiply, it is reported that WGA chiefs directors have “already decided they [will] not grant a waiver for writers, including the prospective host Jon Stewart, to work on the show.
A guild spokesman told the Times on Tuesday that “the union planned to have picket lines around the Globes ceremony in Beverly Hills, Calif., set for broadcast on 1.13.08 on NBC, potentially leading to empty seats where there should be Hollywood royalty. He said the union had not yet decided whether to picket the Oscars.
“With those moves, Hollywood√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s most cherished movie awards shows could lose much of their star power, viewers, advertising revenue and cachet,” the Times story explains. “Suddenly, the film industry is looking at its first real damage from a six-week-old writers√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ strike that has mostly been chewing up the television schedule.
√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúWe were surprised to meet opposition at this early stage,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù said AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis. “We thought we√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢d be Switzerland.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù

Denzel Washington dropped by the Harvard University campus this evening following a screening of The Great Debaters. He did so at the invitation of Dr. S. Allen Counter, a Harvard neuroscience professor who enjoys considerable respect in both Cambridge and Stockholm circles. The event happened at the Carpenter Film Center, smack in the middle of the Harvard campus. Everyone was dressed in tuxedos and gowns except for Jett and myself. Here’s a portion of what Denzel said during the q & a, which lasted about 35 or 40 minutes.

Tuesday, 12.18, 9:35 pm

Another poll confirming very high negatives for Hillary Clinton with 42 % of third-party or independent voters and 17 % of Democrats saying they’ll vote against her no matter what. Younger male voters are “particularly cold,” the story says. “More than half of the adult men younger than 40 said they would use their vote to keep Mrs. Clinton from returning to the White House.” The candidate with the second-highest negatives is Rudy Giuliani.

“Very much in line with recognizable Oprah Winfrey mandates, The Great Debaters promotes literacy and articulateness, highlights the significant oral tradition in black storytelling, crams in as many factual details and statistics as time will allow, and depicts a society that, however impoverished and oppressed, valued knowledge and education,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy in his 12.18 review.

“Above all, pic illustrates that the civil rights movement didn’t just spring out of nowhere in the 1960s, but was preceded by nearly a century’s worth of innumerable small, brave, mostly unknown steps.
“As agenda-driven and well-scrubbed as the film may be, that’s already a lot to pack into a straightforward narrative and doesn’t even include the story’s most unexpected sidelight — the implication that the revered English teacher and intellectually incisive debate coach, the real-life Melvin B. Tolson (played by director Denzel Washington), was a radical labor organizer and possible communist.
“The first notable element for contempo audiences is how well-dressed, polite and well-spoken everyone onscreen is; the era’s profound deprivations notwithstanding, the constant supply of freshly cleaned clothes is impressive. Even more striking is how the rural students — who, when they debate, wear tuxedos — toss off Latin phrases and quotations from James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence with the casual insouciance of Oxford lads. Who knew?”

The trailer for Fool’s Gold (Warner Bros., 2.8.08), which showed before last night’s Juno screening at the Leows/AMC plex near Harvard Square, promises a coarse, idiot-level romcom in the vein of Jewel of the Nile and Romancing the Stone.

You can tell right away from Hudson’s food-throwing-on-the-yacht bit that director Andy Tennant hasn’t lost his knack for over-emphasis. I can only presume that people like myself are going to hate most if not all of this. That seems to be the general idea, at least. Matthew McConaughey, the reigning king of the empties, costars with Kate Hudson, who has made nothing of any consequence since Almost Famous.

The Alliance of Women Journalists has come up with three lists and several awards covering the ’07 moviegoing year. Among their EDA (Excellent Dynamic Activism) Special Mention Award winners: Norbit (Hall of Shame award), Hilary Swank (Actress Most In Need Of A New Agent), Margot at the Wedding (Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn’t), Viggo Mortensen‘s full frontal in Eastern Promises (Unforgettable Moment Award plus Best Depiction Of Nudity or Sexuality)…whatever.

The trailer for Drillbit Taylor (Paramount, 3.21), the Owen Wilson-playing-bodyguard-for-schoolkids comedy directed by Steven Brill, written by Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogen and produced by Judd Apatow.