I like movies about politics and Emile Hirsch (still) sucks.

I can’t really think of a script reading blog today.  I have election fever and it is blocking my brain from other activities.  But here’s something:

With a week left until the big day, I have noticed a lot of people listing movies about elections and presidential politics, but, surprisingly, i have not yet seen a list that has all five of my favorite movies on the subject.  So here they are, listed (in my opinion) from the least to the most cynical:

1.) Dave (1993)

2.) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

3.) All the President’s Men (1976)

4.) Primary Colors (1998)

5.) Bob Roberts(1992)

I am kind of embarassed to admit that if I had to pick a president from among the politicians in these movies, I would go with Dave Kovick…the everyman who knows nothing about the office.  Jack Stanton (thinly veiled Bill Clinton) of Primary Colors is my second choice and Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff Smith is third.  He should probably be first but I have an ambivalent relationship with naivete.  Even his. I would not vote for Nixon or Bob Roberts, but if I were a member of the academy of crazy eyes arts and sciences, I would vote for Jack Black’s Bob Roberts character for craziest eyes EVER.

In related news, Emile Hirsch (aka the man of zero faces),  has succeeded in making the only celebrity voting PSA that has ever made me want to not vote out of spite.

Scary Blog: Your Barbarella Costume’s Days Are Numbered

Just wanted to let you know that if you, like me, have been thinking about being Barbarella for the past 2 Halloweens only to settle on something easier because finding metal capes and black body stockings that aren’t super porny is too much work, get your mofo shit together TODAY.   This is our year.  The last year.

I’m saying this not because Barbarella costumes could provide a groovy feminist counterpoint to Sarah Palin costumes, perhaps dispensing sex pills like candy at adult parties while Sarah Palin hoards all the chocolate coins and morning after pills so as to save you from yourself. They could, but I’m really saying this because I have read the Robert Rodriguez Barbarella and it is slated to come out next year (it’s possible this project is dead, but i have had it come through my company again recently and there are counter-rumors and i’m not taking any chances).

If you enjoyed the tone and spirit of the original film, I can tell you that this Barbarella is going to disappoint you.  On the other hand, it will delight teenage boys who have never seen the ‘68 version but who have recently learned to masturbate, and who will likely make it a success and talk it up, which will in turn cause teenage girls to dress up on subsequent Halloweens as Rose McGowan or whoever replaces her in the title role, thus draining the steamy, jacuzzi-sized tub of fun that was the orignal/the idea of dressing like Jane Fonda in it, down to a few tepid inches.

Look, in terms of structure and dialog and such, this script wasn’t terrible or anything. And I don’t begrudge a guy wanting to remake this movie and neither does Dino de Laurentis, who produced the original and is producing this new version.  But I do think that 79 year-old de Laurentis’s judgement is less sound than that of 39 year-old de Laurentis.  And I do think that it’s a huge mistake to make Barbarella into a big budget, exploitation-action hybrid with so much girl on girl action, topless lady fighting and other such straight-up, male-only fantasy material in it.  This version -to me at least- read like a space-themed issue of the Fredericks of Hollywood catalog, with none of the playfully strange sexiness  –exciting and appealing to both men and women–of the original, unless you consider it playful to be hit in the head with a two-by-four of Sin City-style f-ing.  I would prefer to just cut out the middle man and watch Showtime after dark than this remake, and I wish Rodriguez would look elsewhere for a presold property.  Like maybe in Russ Meyer’s catalog, which was booby, but honestly so.  Camp and the sexual ambiguity and strange power dynamics represented by a dude with angel wings are not bad, stupid things to be cast off because we’re so modern and this ain’t your grandaddy’s sexy movie.  Far more retrograde is only showing me women named Jessica riding electric bulls all the time.

So I’ve got my chainmail bodice and as I have mentioned on previous occasions, my hair is already awesome (and in Barbarella style).  I advise those of you who want to enact this fantasy while it’s still tinged with empowerment and not strictly pandering*, get on the stick.  Except if you know me personally and we are going to be hanging out on Halloween and you is stealing my idea.  Because then i will fucking cut you.  Or take a picture with you.  Whichever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Obviously a little pandering will be involved.  I’m not made of stone.

An Open Letter to the Makers of “Quarantine”

To Whom It May Concern:

What will it take to convince you that I have been reached by your ad campaign and know that you have a film that came out this weekend?  I have seen banner ads on practically every website I visit, all my social networking sites, the billboards on sunset and everywhere else, my radio and, i believe, the bottom of some friends’ hotmail emails. I don’t even really watch commercials because I have a DVR, but you have saturated the shows i watch with ads to such an extent that the few times in recent memory that i’ve left the room or taken a call or started talking to the person sitting next to me when a show went to commercial, your ad has always been the first thing to come up.

Let me tell you which of the ads i’m referring to: The Ad. The only ad you seem to run with the only footage you seem to have. She’s in a dark room, she doesn’t know what’s happening and there’s something scary behind her that grabs her. I get it.  Mocku-Docu-creature-Blair-Cloverfield-”i’m really scared” Project.  I understand your product, what it does and how i can obtain it. You have earned your money today. Now, when was the last time you treated yourself to a long lunch? What’s that? You’re not hungry? Rats.

Let me just throw this idea out: What if I signed a waiver that guaranteed you that I knew what your movie was called and when it was opening?  Would that absolve me of my obligation to think about your movie when doing work, in my car, relaxing, trying to compose a thought, etc?

Not biting? Ok…what if I promised to bring in two other people to sign the form, and then they promised to bring two in and so on and so on? Would that make the offer more attractive to you?

No, huh? OK, final offer: I get a tattoo of the name of your movie and 10/10/08 on the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, so that every time i shake hands with someone they are made aware that you have a movie that you would like us all to see. In exchange I get to live in a world that doesn’t revolve around the girl in the room talking to the camera and then getting yanked away from the camera. Deal? Let me know.

Respectfully,

Cecelia Script Reader, President, Consumers Against Faulty Eyewear*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Bonus Reader Quiz! For those few of you reading this who aren’t part of the thousands-strong marketing team for Quarantine, this consumer group name was taken from a movie about summer fun.  Can you name this move?  The only prize as of right now is my respect, but if i can cut a deal with the Quarantine people i might be able to get you out of your ad watching responsibilities as well, so send in those answers!

 

 

 

DeforMALity in Horror: One More Thing that Skeeves me Out.

Read a script today in which the terrifying killer is fought off by his would-be victims, who know he is a neat freak and cleverly upset his porcelain knickknack collection so as to make him lose his shit.

This is not the first time that OCD or other hospital-corners fixations have been attached to bad people in movies to make them seem creepier.  Actually, by my count it’s the 7001st time.  Far fewer are the times that the homicidal maniac is a big old slob, which would seem more likely since homocide is such a big job it would seem to preclude thorough housekeeping.

In the same family for me are scripts in which the killers have some physical deformity.  I read Wrong Turn back when it was looking for funding, and remember distinctly that the mountain men in it were described as being huge and hideous because of generations of inbreeding.  Kind of taking a page from Deliverance’s backwoodsy book without actually reading that book, which is about some tiny, feeble banjo-playing people.

And it’s not just inbreeding. I’ve read lots of other stories involving a mentally or physcially disordered killer, including a script where the killer is afflicted with albinism and I was supposed to be scared by him touching the the creamy white skin of some kidnapped girl with his own…creamy white skin.

I guess it’s possible that being afflicted with a physical deformity could make you more likely to want to kill other people in ridiculous ways. And i definitely agree that people with mental disorders lend themselves to horror since there have been killers with such disorders in real life.

Still, I don’t like it. Unless it’s done very well, this sort of thing makes me go all cringey.

When you present a killer as having some sort of deformity or impairment, once i get past your lingering shots of their stump hand or pink eyes, lovingly grotesqued up by Rick Baker if you’re lucky, I still find them way less terrifying than other, less deformo characters. Possibly this is because I have hospital corners tendencies myself, but mostly I think it’s because it’s so easy and convenient to distance ourselves from the scary stuff by lumping it under the heading of “different,” or “not like anyone i know,” and there’s no heading that says that better than a physical or mental deformity.  On the other hand, Ted Bundy has me practically peeing my pants when I hear his name because he looks like everyone and his smile only looks creepy when you know he used it to kill.

So unless a writer creates a very specific psychosis for their villain based on his or her deformity, i’m almost always going to respond better to a story with a good-looking killer with all his fingers and toes.   And anyway, do albinos and inbreeders and *sharp intake of breath* very neat people really need yet another reason for people to look at them like they have the plague?

I should close with the caveat that all of the above doesn’t apply to the mentally retarded.  I think they are aching to be stood next to the albinos and the OCD-havers as the next slasher to do some crazy, evil crimes. Am I right?  I mean, these people have been confined to a portrait of innocent and good-temperedness for long enough! Probably because the people who make movies about mentally retarded characters are Oscar hounds and they know that horror movies with non-retarded physical or mentally disordered characters is a thankless labor of love, not a fucking accolade party.  Case in point, where’s this guy’s oscar?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He acted his inbred heart out for you for NOTHING!

(It’s a sin to shoot a mockingbird, you know.)

The Dog Ate My Blog.

Back next week.  In the meantime, anyone wanna discuss Spike Lee? Specifically, his reaction to Italians getting angry about Miracle At St. Anna’s revisionist history take on a massacre of Italian civilians in WWII, which the film blames on partisan collaboration with the Nazis, which in real life probably didn’t happen.

I read this script and thought that the reaction of James McBride, who wrote the movie, was about right. It is shitty to have your story told by other people. However, what he wrote was a fictionalized version of events that was more like a 40’s war movie about group soldier dynamics than it was a factually accurate docudrama, so he took some liberties.

But Spike Lee had to be all Fuck You, I am not apologizing and you should get used to the fact that you guys don’t know everything and this could have happened in Italy during the war. This is too bad in my opinion. Missed opportunity. To not be the Spike Lee who sues Spike TV and to instead be the Spike Lee who tells great stories.  Like some magical, mystical, thread-spinning black man.