The increasingly bizarre saga of John Mark Karr is going to be at least a low-budget movie one day. It’s a movie if he ‘s lying about having murdered Jon Benet Ramsey, and it’s a movie if he’s not lying. Especially given his alleged interest in having taken steps in Thailand to have a sex-change operation.

Producers of dark crime dramas are always attracted to real-life creepy killers, and while nobody knows anything it does seem as if Karr fits the general profile. He’s building up a resume that may lead to his becoming the next superstar monster. If his guilt is proven he’ll have joined the pantheon of famous fiend-murderers like Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, Richard Speck, etc. If he turns out to be delusional he’s still a world-class creep wo’s been after little girls for a long time. A loathsome creature, yes, but also the kind of diseased boogeyman that Hollywood wants.
If producers don’t make a movie of Karr’s exact history they’ll almost certainly make one that’s been inspired or suggested by his history. You know it, I know it. Karr’s saga, depending on how it plays, could be the basis of the next The Silence of the Lambs. Or maybe a kind of twisted-perverted Girls Don’t Cry with an unsympathetic lead character instead of a sympathetic one.
I realize that Hilary Swank, say, would never consider playing a guy again, much less Karr, but the way to cast Karr, I’m certain, would be to get a woman to portray him. That would make the movie even freakier. Look at his photo…it’s obvious. Question is (and I realize how creepy this sounds), what actress could they get to play him? What actresses are the right age, which ones are good or brave enough?
Oh, my God — T.H. Ung has just suggested Naomi Watts and she’s right. Watts would be dead perfect. (Somebody needs to take her face and photoshop Karr’s hairline and prison uniform on…anyone?)

Two live diamondback rattlesnakes were set loose inside the AMC Desert Ridge theatre in a northern area of Pheonix, Arizona, during a recent showing of Snakes on a Plane, according to a Local 6 News video report. (Click here.) Apparently a couple fo young guys (teens, I’m guessing) snuck the rattlers into the theatre in their backpacks and let them slither out onto the floor while the New Line thriller was playing.
The Local 6 report says the two snakes “caused a panic in the dark theater.” Well, naturally, but for that to happen someone had to get up and yell “live snakes in the theatre!” If the theatre was even half-filled the panic would have been terrible. I wonder how crazy it was in there. If I were in the theatre I would have stepped from one row of seats to the next — my feet would have never touched the floor.
Somebody should do some shoe-leather reporting. This Local 6 report has no details, no emotion — a poor job. Who discovered the snakes and how? Was it an usher or a moviegoer? Who sounded the warning?
There’s a herpetological association rep named Tom Whiting who’s quoted as saying that the idea of live snakes in the theatre “is very scary…I would hate to be watching a movie about snakes and have a rattlesnake bite me.” My God…did this man take sound-bite lessons from Exhibitor Relations spokesperson Paul Dergarabedian? That quote captures the Dergarabedian style to a T. Could it be that the Dergarabedian method — keep your quotes plain and obvious and a little simple — be influencing others?
Wranglers were called in to collect the snakes, the report says. No one was bitten and the culprits haven’t been caught.

Toronto Finals

The final tally of Toronto Film Festival titles has been released, and along with that comes HE’s initial checklist (must-sees, should-sees). This usually includes about 50 or 55 films, which always has to be whittled down to a more realistic 25 or 30.
My first run-through has resulted in 49 titles, give or take. I’m posting this list in hopes of hearing from the usual know-it-alls in hopes of pruning it down or getting wise to films that aren’t on my list but should be.

Abbie Cornish, Heath Ledger in Neil Armfield’s’s Candy (ThinkFilm, 11.17.)

The only high profile head-turner in this morning’s official list is the inclusion of Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10). For whatever reason I hadn’t heard this was definitely going there.
Here are most of the categories reprinted with HE’s priority titles in boldface (and the ones I’m already seen in bold italic). If anyone knows anything good, hard and solid about any films I haven’t boldfaced — positive or negative — please advise and I’ll work them into the schedule. Obviously I don’t need to see the italicized bold titles again and there are all kinds of additions to come, and I can keep updating and modifying as I go along:
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The only high profile head-turner in this morning’s official list is the inclusion of Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10). For whatever reason I hadn’t heard this was definitely going to be up there.
Here are most of the categories reprinted with my priority titles in boldface (and the ones I’m already seen in bold italic). If anyone knows anything good, hard and solid about any films I haven’t boldfaced — positive or negative — please advise and I’ll work them into the schedule. Obviously I don’t need to see the italicized bold titles again and there are all kinds of additions to come, and I can keep updating and modifying as I go along:

Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10)

Opening night gala: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Closing night gala: Amazing Grace.
Gala Presentations (10): After the Wedding, All The King’s Men, Away From Her, Babel, Banquet, Black Book, Bobby, Bonneville, Breaking and Entering, Dixie Chicks — Shut Up and Sing, For Your Consideration, A Good Year, Infamous, Mon Meilleur Ami, Never Say Goodbye, Penelope, Volver.
Special Presentations (13): 10 Items or Less, A Chairy Tale, Alatriste, Begone Dull Care, Blinkity Blank, Brand upon the Brain!, Bubble, Cantante, Catch a Fire, Congorama, Crime, Dog Problem, Exiled, Fall, Fay Grim, The Fountain, Golden Door, HANA, Hen Hop, Homme de sa Vie, Horizontal Lines, Jindabyne, Kabul Express, Last King of Scotland, The Last Kiss, Little Children, Lives of Others, Love and Other Disasters, The Magic Flute (ought to see it, don’t want to).
Plus: Manufactured Landscapes, Merle, Mon Colonel, Namesake, Neighbours, Nue Propriete, Opening Speech, Pan’s Labyrinth, Paris, Je T’aime, Pas de Deux, Pleasure of Your Company, Post-Modern Life of My Aunt, Quelques Jours en Septembre, Seraphim Falls, Snow Cake, Stars and Stripes, Stranger than Fiction, Synchromy, This Is England, Venus, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights, Woman on the Beach.

Jude Law, Juliette Binoche in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering (Weinstein Co., December…maybe)

Contemporary World Cinema (6): 12:08 East of Bucharest, Abeni, Antonia, Beauty in Trouble, Bella, Bet Collector, Born and Bred, Bothersome Man, Candy, Chronicle of an Escaped Citizen Duane, Confetti, Copying Beethoven, Diggers, Dimanche √É∆í√Ǭ† Kigali, Dog Pound, Falling, A Few Days Later…, Fiction, Four Minutes, Grbavica, Hula Girls, Indigenes, Italian, Last Winter, Mainline, Monkey Warfare, Nouvelle Chance, Offside, Outsourced, Palimpsest, Prague, Rain Dogs, Red Road, Requiem, Retrieval, Silence, Sleeping Dogs, Slumming, Starter For Ten, Suely in the Sky, Summer ’04, Summer Palace, Sweet MudTimes and Winds, To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die, Tourneuse de Pages, Twilight Dancers, Unnatural and Accidental, Violin, Waiter, Wake, The Way I Spent the End of the World, White Palms, Winter Journey.
Discovery (0): 7 ans, Art of Crying, As the Shadow, Bliss, Cashback, DarkBlueAlmostBlack, Falkenberg Farewell, Family Ties, Glue, Grave-Keeper’s Tale, Griffin & Phoenix, King and the Clown, Out of the Blue, Reprise, Silly Age, Thicker than Water, True North, Vanaja.

Dustin Hoffman, Will Ferrell in Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction (Columbia, 11.10)

Masters (3): Caiman, Coeurs, EMPz 4 Life, I Am the Other Woman, Untouchable, Lights in the Dusk, Missing Star, Optimists, Rescue Dawn, STRIKE, Voyage en Armenie, When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts (seeing this on HBO), The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
Mavericks (2): “An Evening with Michael Moore“, “Making of a Bollywood Blockbuster: Karan Johar, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherji”, “Vanguard Cinema: John Waters in conversation with John Cameron Mitchell“.
Midnight Madness (3): Abandoned, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Black Sheep, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Host, Princess, Severance, Sheitan, Trapped Ashes.
Real to Reel (8): …So Goes the Nation, American Hardcore, Blindsight, Cry in the Dark, Deliver Us From Evil, Dong, Esprit des lieux, Ghosts of Cite Soleil, Iran: Une Revolution Cinematographique, Killer Within, Kurt Cobain About A Son, Lake of Fire, Made in Jamaica, My Life as a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein, Office Tigers, Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Primo Levi’s Journey, Prisoner or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, Radiant City, Remembering Arthur, Sari’s Mother, Session Is Open, Shame, Sharkwater, Shot in the Dark, Sugar Curtain, Summercamp!, Tales of the Rat Fink, Tanju Miah, These Girls, This Filthy World, Toi, Waguih, U.S. vs. John Lennon, Very Nice, Very Nice, Yokohama Mary.

Werner Herzog, Steve Zahn, Christian Bale during filming of Rescue Dawn (Weinstein Co.)

Vanguard (5): 2:37, Bunny Chow, Chacun sa nuit, Drama/Mex, Election, Election 2, Hottest State, Jade Warrior, Macbeth, Renaissance, Shortbus, Sleeping Dogs Lie, Suburban Mayhem.
Visions (1): August Days, Bamako, Belle toujours, Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, Blessed are the Dreams of Men, Book of Revelation, Bugmaster, Building a Broken Mousetrap, Cages, Climates, Colossal Youth, D.O.A.P., Dans les villes, Day Night Day Night, Day on Fire, Fantasma, Flandres, Gathering the Scattered Cousins, In Between Days, Invisible Waves, Island, Khadak, Kinshasa Palace, No Place Like Home, NYC Weights and Measures, Sistagod, Takva – A Man’s Fear of God, Taxidermia, Ten Canoes, Time, Zidane: Un Portait du XXIeme Si√É∆í√Ǭ®cle.

Summer Palace

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia (daughter of Gregory) Peck‘s Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, a doc about the political storm ignited by singer Natalie Maines’ statement against George Bush at a 2003 London concert, has been picked up for worldwide distribution by the Weinstein Co. The film, scheduled to screen at the Toronto Film Festival, is apparently set for a mid-fall release.
I love this Gregg Goldstein-authored paragraph in his Hollywood Reporter story: “Asked why [Kopple and Peck] chose to go with the Weinstein Co., Peck said, “They made a great offer,” though no figures were disclosed. Such companies as Focus Features and Picturehouse expressed interest in the docu a few months ago.” Translation: why would these two women want to get in bed with Harvey Scissorhands when they could cut a deal with Bob Berney or James Schamus?

Three weeks and two days ago Endeavor partner Ari Emanuel wrote on the Huffington Post that Mel Gibson should be shunned for his anti-Semitic statements uttered a couple of days previously. And two days ago — Sunday, 8.20 — an L.A. Times editorial said pretty much the same thing. “Shun Mel Gibson,” it was titled, the subhead asserting that “obscurity, not public service announcements, should be the consequence for Gibson’s transgressions.”
The question is not about the rightness or wrongness of calling for a shunning — the question is what the hell took the Times so long to grow a pair and speak their mind? My first thought after reading this was what timid chickenshits these people are. They can’t summon the cojones or discipline to call for Gibson’s shunning on 7.30 — that would have required thinking and acting quickly. They couldn’t run their editorial on Monday, 7.31 or Tuesday, 8.1, when the Gibson story was running hot and heavy all over. No — they waited three weeks, long after the story cooled down.
This is one of the saddest and wimpiest things the L.A. Times has ever done. Can anyone imagine the N.Y. Times or the Washington Post dithering and delaying on writing an editorial about some issue that reflected and affected the culture right in their own backyard? I can’t. The L.A. Times would have been better off running no editorial at all. Either stand up and speak your mind when an issue is aflame, or forever hold your peace.

Thanks to everyone who wrote yesterday with get-well-soon messages. And thanks also to David Poland for saying this in person, although his posted get-well-soon is flecked with urine. It’s a character-revealing note, this. Not in my darkest delusional imaginings would I suggest or wish for Poland’s exit from entertainment journalism. It seems tantamount to life itself — the thing that keeps him breathing. It’s how I feel about what I do. But for as long as I’ve known him Rabbi Dave has always spoken from time to time of the desirability of this or that journalist going away…banished, shunned, fired…forcibly expelled into the desert with a measure of bread and water (like Yul Brynner ‘s Ramses did to Charlton Heston ‘s Moses). He’s kind an absolutist in an ancient Middle Eastern sense. A greater part of him wants the sinful to die or have their hands cut off rather than repent or be saved. Such thoughts have never once fluttered into my head. Like any writer worth a damn I speak with passion and even anger at times, but I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm.

As I said once last week, I’ve changed to a dedicated server. I wasn’t aware until last Thursday that I had to register the domain name with the new server designation, blah, blah. Then the hand-infection thing happened and the server thing kinda slipped my mind. Anyway, I got it all straightened out today, so anyone who’s been having trouble clicking on the site won’t have any more trouble after, say, Wednesday noon, and perhaps sooner.

If you want to read a well-written article that indirectly tells you what’s profoundly unsatisfying about Sofia Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette (Columbia, 10.20), read this Vogue/Style.com piece by the respected writer and journalism professor Kennedy Fraser.

It’s been edited down from a longer version that appears in the pages on the September issue of Vogue, and I can’t imagine that Fraser would be very happy with it. It’s 21 paragraphs long — two introductory graphs about Coppola and her thoughts about what she focused in the film, and then, dropping all pretense of being any kind of behind-the-curtain piece, it turns into a mini-biography of the Austrian queen (Kirsten Dunst).
Here’s the thing: graphs #3 through #15 cover the story told in the film, the fourteenth graph tells what most likely happened when an angry crowd stormed the Versailles palace in 1789 (Fraser and Coppola differ significantly in their respctive tellings), and the last five graphs cover Antoninette’s life from late 1789 until her death by guillotine in October 1793.
Read the piece (or better yet, read this Wikipedia biography) and tell me the last four years of Marie-Antoinette’s life weren’t far more intriguing than the previous 33. Coppola’s film ignores ’89 to ’93, of course. She brings her film to a close just as things are starting to get interesting.
The odd part is that Fraser’s piece doesn’t mention that Coppola’s fillm focuses on the earlier, fluffier, less character-defining aspects of her life — that she’s made, as I put it last May, “arguably the shallowest and dullest historical biopic of all time.”

N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman susses the box-office disappointment that is Snakes on a Plane. It took in a moderately lousy $15.3 million dollars at 2555 theatres, which was short of the high-teens gross that Variety said would be average for a late-summer horror film.
Waxman’s piece basically says that internet heat doesn’t mean enough for a movie looking to become an across-the-board hit. To make a really big splasht you need more than just the younger hip male crowd — you have to get teenage girls (“snakes…eeeww!”), older women (ditto) and older men (“This looks stupid”), plus you have to reach into the newspaper-reader/mouth-breather demos.
I think the online Snakes heat more or less died last May or June. It was very hot and happening in the late spring, but then New Line stuck to the 8.18 date and the fans went, “Ehh…over.”
I also think it would’ve helped if it had been a better. smappier, crazier film. An HE reader suggested a couple of days ago that Samuel L. Jackson should have had gotten into a last-minute wrestling match with the big anaconda and then blown a hole in the side of the plane and the snake had gotten sucked out. The camera could have followed it all the way down and watched it splatter on the deck of a cruise ship. I suggested some other madball notions on Friday.
In short, if this movie had been truly mad, it might have taken off. But its fate was sealed when New Line’s production team decided to hire David Ellis. Their own cheeseball mentality is what did them in.

So the Sunday N.Y. Times (8.20) ran a piece about poker by director Curtis Hanson, in honor of his film Lucky You coming out “in October”, according to a brief explanation at the end of the piece. Of course, as Coming Soon and other sites (mine included) have recently noted, Lucky You< has been bumed to March '07.

Three or four hours after being released from Century City Doctors Hospital early Saturday afternoon, the swollen bear-claw hand and the red interstate highway streaks on my left arm had returned. My resources drained by my 16 hours at CCDC, I had no choice but to check into the UCLA Olive View County hospital in Sylmar. I stayed there Saturday night and all-day Sunday and am leaving today. And I think things really are cured now. My hand was actually operated on yesterday and the infection has been removed and I’ve been told I’m over the hump.
Intravenous antibiotics administered for 16 hours at CCDH on Friday and Saturday morning had merely suppressed the infection for appearance’s sake. The chumps at CCDH didn’t want to actually attend to the swollen, senstive-to-touch, pus-filled wound on my left palm (they were afraid of something going badly — private medicine procedure today is all about fear of possible malpractice lawsuits ), and by 5 pm Saturday I realized I had to go back into another hospital for Round 2.
I’d been told by a doctor at a Beverly Hills walk-in clinic a couple of days earlier that Olive View was “nicer than USC County”, so I drove up the 405 and onto 5 and into Sylmar — right up against the mountains in the northernmost area of the San Fernando Valley. I eventually found the hospital and was admitted to the Olive View emergency room by 8:30 pm.
Right away I knew I was dealing with very smart, ultra-focused doctors and nurses — professionals of a much higher order than the ones I encountered at CCDH. The Olive View doctors and nurses are straight off ER and St. Elsewhere and other TV shows of that type, by which I mean they seemed to say and do the right professional thing at all times.
A friendly, youngish, no-b.s. ER doctor named Bloomfield anesthetized, lanced and excavated the wound, and I was given more doses fo antibiotics Saturday night and all day Sunday. Another doctor and a small team performed a 15-minute operation late Saturday afternoon (I was put to sleep with a general anesthetic), and staffers gave me all kinds of pain medication and more antibiotic drips after I got out.
So I’m out of here this morning, and thank goodness for the stirring George Clooney goodness of the doctors at Olive View. Bloomfield is going to be featured on an upcoming epsode of some Discovery channel show about unusual medical experiences, or something like that. (I’ll pass along the details later.)
Do not ever go to Century City Doctors Hospital for anything, including directions. All they do is sedate and placate and get as much money as they can from you. I wouldn’t exactly call them a disgrace to their profession, but they’re contenders for that distinction. What they did for me on Friday was equivalent to a guy going to a hospital with a broken leg and the doctors saying, “Well, we’re not too sure we want to get into the leg part, but here’s some pain medication and we’ll send a therapist to your room so you can discuss your feelings.”
I’m typing this from the Olive View hospital library. The only thing good about CCDC is that they have broadband computer hookups in each private room. But that aside, forget it. They even refused to give me a copy of my medical chart so I could give it to the Olive View people. Or rather, they said I could have a copy but I’d have to come back to the hospital and fill out a form and give them $23 dollars, and then they’d fax it to me within 2 to 10 business days. I was told this by a bitchy senior nurse named Linda, who works on the 4th floor.