Even if Matthew McConaughey were naked the entire movie and I was a raging homosexual with only McConaughey on the lower brain I would still avoid this movie like the plague.
Who needs to pay for a nap these days? Even if you wanted to, would you choose to take that nap while upright in a chair next to an old woman who smells like diapers? Don't answer that, perverts; you probably would.
In case you think I'm being too harsh, here is the one-line synopsis that elevated this turd from the page to the (now even more tarnished) silver screen:
A lawyer conducts business from the back of his Lincoln Town Car while representing a high-profile client in Beverly Hills.
Hahaha! I get it! It has nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln at all! What a curveball! He just works out of a Lincoln automobile! A really old one, from back when they actually had personality! And it's still running really well because in Hollywood things always go according to plan!
Oh, man--me and the fellas totally gotta sneak away from the wives to see that on Friday, March 18...unless I can hack into the Lionsgate servers and get my jollies ahead of schedule...though I would still probably wanna see it on the big screen anyway...
There was once a Dutchman named Robert Wolders. He was born in Rotterdam in September of 1936, to a man and a woman, although if you asked her, the woman did most of the work.
In 1965, Mr. Wolders became an actor, starred briefly in a TV show, but never achieved much success. By 1975, he decided to retire from acting and marry legendary Hollywood nutjob Merle Oberon.
Below are more than a few words about Merle Oberon, for your pleasure:
She was an exotic beauty born on the British side of Bombay to a British mechanical engineer working on the Indian Railways and her own (half) sister, Constance.
To hide this embarrassing bit of incestuous pedophilia, one of Merle's birth certificates listed her father's wife--a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Maori heritage, who had Constance at age 14 with an Irish foreman of a tea plantation--as her mother and the story stuck.
Merle and her "mother" moved to England, where she dated a retired actor who passed her off to a studio in France when he realized her "mom" was dark-skinned and he was irretrievably racist. The "Sexy Extra All the Powerful Men Hit On at Craft Service" roles poured in and once famous director Alexander Korda got the hots and cast Merle as Ann Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), she was officially going places.
Alexander Korda, Merle Oberon, and Samuel "Thug" Goldwyn
Scarred for life in an automobile accident a mere four years later, skilled lighting technicians were at least able to hide Merle's disfigured face long enough for her to tear up the silver screen opposite Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1939).
By the following year, Merle's face "suffered even further damage...from a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to sulfa drugs." Mr. Korda, now her husband, paid for several treatments at a skin clinic in Nueva York, but to no avail--without makeup she was hideous to behold.
So Mr. Korda decided to join the knighthood and make Merle a Lady, to give her something else to do with her time. Three years later, bored of being a Lady knight and day, Merle divorced her knight and married cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who then created a special light--the Obie--to obscure her facial scars on film.
That act of devotion fell short, however, and Merle married twice more--to Italian industrialist Bruno Pagliai (with whom she moved to Mexico and adopted two children) and the Most Interesting Man in the World, Mr. Robert Wolders--who is 25 years younger than her.
But only four years after Merle marries Robert Wolders, she dies at age 68.
What does the most interesting man in the world do when this happens? Why, he immediately becomes companion to Audrey Hepburn (7 years his senior), of course--ever the proper lady, she was waiting patiently for her turn on the Wolders, no doubt--and the two of them even hang out with the Reagmeister General:
Thirteen years later, in 1993, the honorable Audrey Hepburn dies on him, too, leaving Mr. Wolders all alone in frigid Switzerland. How does the most interesting man in the world cope with this tragedy?
He hops on a train to France, where he becomes the companion of another older woman, of course. Then-64-year-old screen legend Leslie Caron is a French dancer discovered by Gene Kelly in 1951 who went on to become a successful actress at MGM for decades and dance with every famous dancer whose name you have ever heard.
Alas, their torrid, Metamucil-tinged affair lasts only two years before the furnace goes kaput and Mr. Wolders moves on--for the first time?--without anybody dying.
Where does he go? Sadly, one can only speculate.
Here goes:
Immediately after french-kissing his goodbyes to dear Leslie, Mr. Wolders steals her 1964 Peugeot 404 convertible and drives all the way to Marseilles on the wrong side of the highway, chain-smoking a box of Cuban blunts given to him by Johnny Depp at his birthday party last year.
After six martinis and a few bottles of cheap cognac in the backroom of a rough-trade dockside saloon, Mr. Wolders gets himself into a card game and wakes up to find himself at-sea in a 45-foot sailboat named Skye.
Upon hearing several members of the crew refer to him as "Captain" (as in: "Captain, you have vomit in your beard."), Mr. Wolders commands his crew to pull into the nearest harbor for supplies and a bit of barbering.
After a killer haircut and the trading of most of their food, medical supplies, and lifeboats for several dozen barrels of rum, six pounds of beef jerky, a prostitute, and two fishing poles, Mr. Wolders and his crew are able to outrun a couple police officers and set sail for anywhere else.
The crew becomes family as they drift around the Mediterranean with Mr. Wolders for the next 15+ years, mastering kung-fu, running guns for the Russians, trying to get invited to parties along the Riviera, counterfeiting their own Cuban cigars, making their own sushi, experimenting with mind-altering drugs...and subsisting solely on the bounty of nature, the naivete of strangers, and the small fortune Mr. Wolders inherited from his two famous dead lovers.
The crew was not terribly pleased to have their berths converted to rum storage,
but they eventually got over it and embraced the good life.
When his love of the finer things in life--coupled with his innate distaste for labor of any kind--catches up with him, Mr. Wolders sees no other choice but to adopt a fake Mexican accent and resume acting under an assumed identity in commercials for Dos Equis.
It's the closest he can get to not working while still getting paid, so that's alright with him.
Yes, at 74 years of age and still kicking, life has been good to Robert Wolders. I wonder if the next 74 will be so kind?
The Oscars are not that far away, guys. What I'm trying to say here is that before all you nerds go home to fill out your Oscar pools this weekend while laying low with mud facials, martinis, and pre-awards-season bacne treatments, I think you should keep in mind this hot little tip: a donkey should have at least been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Award in 1966, but tragically was not even credited in the film.
The performance in question was written and directed by Robert Bresson, and the uncredited role of Donkey Saint was portrayed flawlessly by the brilliant but chronically unappreciated Balthazar.
Was dear Balthazar's performance too realistically donkey-like to be considered acting? Was he too method for the voting audience? Were all the other actors jealous enough to blackball him? Did he run away with beautiful Marie and just not give a donkey's cuss about getting his name out there?
We may never know--just like with the Oscars this year. Somebody will win the awards and some people will think other people (or donkeys) should have won them instead. Sigh. What can you do, right?
Ladies and gentlemen of taste, I'll tell you what you should do-- make Au Hasard Balthazar the extremely slow but clever and memorable movie you watch this weekend while most people in this country satisfy their baser urges with fast food, fake butter, and the nonagenarian antics of Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller.
You deserve a treat, after all, in these tough times. And so does Balthazar.
Paid for by the Campaign to Posthumously Nominate Balthazar the Donkey for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (CPNBDBSAC)
Anyway, so there I was casually using the term decolletage in a sentence and the next thing I know, I'm knee-deep in a Wikipedia-driven fantasy world, in complete disbelief at what I am seeing, imagining what it would be like for a 12-year-old boy to cruise the internet and discover all kinds of weird shit he probably assumes all adults are into.
Sure, it may be awkward, take forever, only possible when breasts are of a certain size, and please only one partner, but mammary intercourse seems to be the way to go these days for people worried about pre-ejaculate, afraid of condoms, and in favor of pearl necklaces (you know who you are).
Plus, if the devil juice lands on your decolletage and not in your mouth, you won't have mouth babies!
PS--I still recommend using a dental dam[Check that link out! -Ed.], though, in case any stray semen finds its devilish way into your mouth, as it is certainly wont to do, although please keep in mind dental dams are only 96% effective against mouth babies. [Hey--every little bit helps, right? -Ed.]
PPS--Did you get a load of that drawing? Did they really need to show the pearl necklace on her decolletage? Who drew this thing? While part of me thinks this is awesome and hilarious, another part of me wishes it were sugar-free.
PPPS--I recommend clicking on the "Listen to this article" box on the actual wikipedia page; it's pretty funny...
The other songs were either classical--interestingly, Bach got 3 tracks, Beethoven 2, and Mozart only 1--or tribal, which isn't surprising.
For the full track listing, please visit the fantastic Lapham's Quarterly.
This oddball mixtape could merely be a reflection of the musical tastes of Carl Sagan, who chaired the selection committee, or it could be the result of a powerful equation devised by the Brains Trust to scientifically weed out the most representative music ever recorded on planet Earth, which would be great to get my hands on, in case I am ever called upon to update the mixtape by factoring in the music of the last 33 years, or in case I just want to play around with it when I'm bored.
Either way, questions inevitably spring to mind:
1. Why no Rolling Stones, Beatles, Fats Domino, or Elton John?
2. Was Roy Orbison, akaThe Big O, [a fascinating wikipedia entry, btw -Ed.] pissed at being snubbed? Something tells me he was, and that, as was his wont, he blamed the success of Pretty Woman for it.
3. Why send only one record? Was cargo room really that tight?
4. Couldn't it have been a double-LP gatefold, with some beautiful Richard Avedon photographs on the cover?
5. Shouldn't they have consulted me on this before I was born?
If anybody knows where Carl Sagan's ghost hangs out, I'd love to accost him and get some answers. So, you know, let me know...
Ladies and gentlemen of the ether, I introduce you to the one, the only--Sage Stallone.
Yes, his father is Sylvester. Yes, his mother is Jon Lovitz. Yes, his father got him into the business.
Curious to know more?
His nickname is Stoney. His middle name is Moonblood. He is friends with Vincent Gallo and Quentin Tarantino. He was born in 1976, seven months before the premiere of Rocky turned his father into an international superstar. He was married to a woman once, until it was annulled less than a year later. He is obsessed with exploitation films.
I feel like I'm writing his match.com profile here!
Ladies? Any takers?
[Legal notice: I get ten percent of both your living allowance and divorce settlement, should you one day take that plunge--GTC]
"Now a married mother living in Hawaii, Geimer was 13 when she told authorities Polanski raped and sodomized her during a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson’s house."
The only way I can think of to make it better is to add "while Burt Reynolds watched from the kitchen window and Jay Leno fixed a car in the garage" to the end of it.
Now, whether it was rape or consensual sex with an underage girl is immaterial--can you imagine fucking a 13 year-old girl in the ass? I mean...WOW...that's really going for it.
Even if she did want to have sex with Polanski--which it appears is not the case--that's like if an actor auditioned for a role in a Wendy's commercial and the director suddenly demanded he recreate Daniel Day Lewis' performance in My Left Foot from start to finish.
What brought Polanski to the point where he thought giving a 13 year-old Quaaludes and fucking her in the ass was a totally normal thing to do? What had he done before that moment that made this evening just another night of fun, in his mind?
Can you imagine the shenanigans that went on at Jack Nicholson's house that never made it to the papers? And those that happened at Robert Evans' house?
I can. And it's blowing my mind...
Roman, Jack, and Robert Evans after a night of fun at Evans' house (photo courtesy GoodtimeCharlie)
If you want to learn more about the escapades of guys like Robert Evans, Jack Nicholson, and Roman Polanski (who partied together quite a bit), you should read High Concept, by Charles Fleming, which focuses on the life and times of one of the craziest sex freaks in Hollywood history--producer Don Simpson.
Here's a taste of what it has to offer, courtesy of Salon.com:
Simpson created an infamous persona -- he'd have hookers flown to his film sets, for example -- and eventually established a reputation as "the town's most notorious bad boy." He also had, for a few years, a nearly perfect instinct for what the public could be sold and a peerless story sense, manifested in cocaine-fueled, 40-page faxed memos.
It's hard to tell where Simpson's narcissism ended and his insecurities began. He subjected his chunky, 5-7 frame to epic quantities of drugs and booze, to late-night binges on peanut butter and hamburgers, to crash diets and workouts, to testosterone implants and to at least 10 procedures by plastic surgeons, including a butt lift and a penis enlargement. When Simpson died in 1996 at the age of 52, the coroner found 27 prescription drugs in his blood, plus cocaine, heroin and booze.
And from his wikipedia entry:
Simpson's unusual personal life has been documented in a number of sources. A chapter in the book You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again (which describes four prostitutes' stories about their sexual encounters with Hollywood celebrities) discusses his preferences for S & M and videotaping of their sessions. He is also known to have had several plastic surgery operations, allegedly including a collagen injection to his penis. People magazine, in an article after his death, alleged that he was a fan of snuff films.
Yeah. I guess when you're hanging around in this sorta circle, fucking a drugged 13 year-old girl in the ass is probably way closer to the line than it is for most people, thankfully.
As if that poster isn't enough to make you vomit uncontrollably for the rest of your life, check out this summary from 20th Century Fox:
Derek Thompson is 'The Tooth Fairy,' a hard-charging minor league hockey player whose nickname comes from his habit of separating opposing players from their bicuspids. When Derek discourages a youngster's hopes, he's sentenced to one week's hard labor as a real tooth fairy, complete with the requisite tutu, wings and magic wand. At first, Derek "can't handle the tooth" – bumbling and stumbling as he tries to furtively wing his way through strangers' homes…doing what tooth fairies do. But as Derek slowly adapts to his new position, he begins to rediscover his own forgotten dreams.
Now, I don't blame The Rock for taking the $15-20 million payday and not giving a shit about what his employers make him do and say--I mean, come on, it's way better work than acting in a pointless homoerotic soap opera for an abusive audience of retarded rural morons--but Howie Mandel and Lowell Ganz (along with the other four credited writers, executive producers, development execs, and anybody else whose hands brushed against this turd) should be shot in the face, driven out to the desert, and left for the vultures.
Or, at the very least, they should all be stripped of their salaries and barred from ever being involved in the entertainment industry for the rest of their lives.
What movie ideas did Fox turn down in order to greenlight this piece of shit? Were they all pornos starring Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman? Is their development pool really this shallow?
I think those unfortunate suits in Century City need to lend me their ears for twenty minutes sometime this week so that I can blow their minds with a handful of random, off-the-cuff ideas that don't suck.
Or they could just devote their entire production budget over the next ten years to Avatar sequels, since that's the only movie on Fox's 2009-2011 slate that I would ever want to see...
Chelsea Clinton announced yesterday that she is going to do her part in sending aid to the people of Haiti--by hosting a spin class in Manhattan.
"Good Afternoon SoulCyclists," the note says "in a time of need, we can always look to our SOUL COMMUNITY to take action. In response to the recent devastation in Haiti, we are doing our best to make a difference. Please join Chelsea Clinton and SoulCycle for a special 90-minute ride on Thursday, Jan. 21 to benefit The Clinton Haiti Relief Fund."
Front row "seats" to the event cost $1,000, while second row bikes will go for $500 and all other bikes will be $100. Checks were to be made out to The Clinton Foundation with a notation that it should go to Haiti relief efforts.
Boy, she's really got that Super Rich act down pat already. The only child of wealthy, politically-connected, celebrity parents, she was somehow hired as the youngest consultant at McKinsey & Company immediately after receiving a master's degree in International Relations from Oxford, then decided to move on to a hedge fund run by a good friend of her parents and get engaged to an investment banker.
Now, despite her own lucrative salary and her family's ridiculous wealth (the Clintons made $109 million between 2000-2007), she is not donating any actual money to the cause--just 110 minutes of her time, including travel to and from the fitness center, for which you will be asked to pay dearly.
Is all the family money getting sucked up by that daring team of hairdressers that straightens and dyes Chealsea's rat-nesty hair four times a day? Or are the Clintons simply stockpiling and laughing their way to a dynasty?
Probably a cocktail of the two. Anyway, I'll be praying to Jeebus for a barren womb for Chelsea this Christmas, so that I can take over the deep, jowly laugh from Billary and join in all the fun. Are you there God? It's me, Charlie...
Chelsea Clinton fact of the day: During the Clinton's stint in the White House, Chelsea's Secret-Service codename was 'Energy.'
His wikipedia entry is more interesting than his celebrated, supposedly-comic, first novel, Lucky Jim, which I read cover-to-cover yesterday while recovering from the bends after a particularly strenuous deep-sea recovery mission which took me to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
To wit:
Amis was by his own admission and as revealed by his biographers a serial adulterer for much of his life. Not surprisingly, this was one of the main contributory factors in the breakdown of his first marriage. A famous photograph of a sleeping Amis on a Yugoslav beach shows the slogan (written by wife Hilly) on his back "1 Fat Englishman - I fuck anything".
In one of his memoirs, Amis wrote: "Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time". He suggests that this is due to a naive tendency on the part of his readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself. This was disingenuous; the fact was that he enjoyed drink, and spent a good deal of his time in pubs. Hilary Rubinstein, who commissioned Lucky Jim, commented: "I doubted whether Jim Dixon would have gone to the pub and drunk ten pints of beer ... I didn't know Kingsley very well, you see. Clive James comments: "All on his own, he had the weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the Garrick Club even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi."
Amis was, however, adamant in his belief that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work. That this was certainly the case is attested to by Amis's highly disciplined approach to writing. For 'many years', Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule upon himself in which writing and drinking were strictly segregated. Mornings were devoted to writing with a minimum daily output of 500 words. The drinking would only begin around lunchtime when this output had been achieved. Amis's prodigious output would not have been possible without this kind of self discipline.
Nevertheless, according to Clive James, Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social, and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour toward Hilly. "Amis had turned against himself deliberately ... it seems fair to guess that the troubled grandee came to disapprove of his own conduct." His friend Christopher Hitchens said: "The booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health."
I will spare you a selection from his novel, as there is no point in boring you any more than I already have. Perhaps Take A Girl Like You or The Old Devils are better; perhaps I will never find out.
(photo by Goodtime Charlie - Caesar's Palace, LV, NV)
Eureka!
I have finally discovered the link between Lennon/McCartney and Elton John/Bernie Taupin, two of the greatest musical partnerships the world has ever known.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dick James, courtesy of wikipedia:
Early Life
He was born in the East End of London.
Early days
James sang with North London dance bands in his early teens, and was a regular vocalist at the Cricklewood Palais by the age of seventeen. He joined the Henry Hall band, and made first radio broadcast in 1940. Joining the Army in 1942, after World Was II he continued to sing with top post-war bands, including Geraldo's. Later still, James was also a part time member of The Stargazers, a popular early 1950s vocal group.
He was the singer of the Robin Hood and The Buccaneers theme songs, from British television in the 1950s, and was a friend and associate of renowned record producer George Martin.
Switch to publishing
James entered the music publishing business as his singing career tapered off, and in 1963 established Northern Songs Ltd., with Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney, to publish Lennon and McCartney's original songs. (Fellow Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were also signed to Northern Songs as songwriters, but did not renew their contracts in 1968). James's company, DIck James Music, administered Northern Songs.
What initially began as an amicable working relationship between the Beatles and James disintegrated by the late 1960s; the Beatles considered that James had betrayed and taken advantage of them when he sold Northern Songs in 1969 without offering the band an opportunity to buy control of the publishing company. James profited handsomely from the sale of Northern Songs, but the Beatles never again had the rights to their own songs.
During the 1960s he also handled Billy J. Kramer and Gerry & The Pacemakers.
Later Days
James signed Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin as untried unknowns in 1967, and formed DJM Records in '69. Indeed, all of John's early releases (up to 1976) were issued on the DJM record label. The label also carried Jasper Carrott, RAH Band, and even John Inman.
John formed his own Rocket label in 1976, but in 1982, John was involved in a long court case with James about royalties.
Death
James died of an heart attack in early 1986, at the age of 65.
Dick James, the leftmost of the two dorks in this photo
The guy sounds like he was probably a real asshole, but according to a story that I read once, he got Elton John and Bernie Taupin together via a classified ad, so ya gotta at least give him credit for that oh-so-perfect marriage of poet and musician.
Speaking of Elton John, he may not have handled his balding, age, or gayness as well as he should have and currently resembles a fat, depressed, androgynous penguin, but the guy used to be pretty cool:
Who knew the story of Joseph Schlitz was so interesting:
In Milwaukee, Schlitz was hired as a bookkeeper in a tavern brewery owned by August Krug. In 1856, he took over management of the brewery following the death of Krug. Two years after Schlitz married Krug's widow, he changed the name of the brewery to the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co.
The company began to succeed after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when Schlitz donated thousands of barrels of beer to that city, which had lost most of its breweries. He quickly opened a distribution point there, beginning a national expansion. Schlitz built dozens of tied houses in Chicago, most with a concrete relief of the company logo embedded in the brickwork; several of these buildings survive today, including Schuba's Tavern at the corner of Belmont and Southport.
Schlitz died May 7, 1875, when on a return visit to Germany; his ship hit a rock near Land's End, Cornwall, and sank. Control of the corporation passed into the hands of the Uihlein brothers, nephews of founder August Krug. When Anna Maria Krug Schlitz died in 1887, the Uihleins acquired complete ownership of the firm.
I can't say much about the beer--it being a bit below my standards--or their business sense--running the #1 beer in America out of business--but the fellas at Schlitz (who were eventually bought by their Michigan competition, Stroh's, and now owned by bitter cross-town rival Pabst) know a thing or two about hilarious/sexist advertising, eh?
Huffington Post and the Associated Press dropped some stunning stats the other day, regarding President Obama's trip to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
But first, a bit of interesting info you probably do not know about Alfred Nobel, courtesy of wikipedia:
The erroneous publication in 1888 of a premature obituary of Nobel by a French newspaper, condemning him for his invention of dynamite, is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. The obituary stated Le marchand de la mort est mort ("The merchant of death is dead") and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." On 27 November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. He died of a stroke on 10 December 1896 at Sanremo, Italy. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel's will gave 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to about 1.8 billion kronor or 250 million US dollars in 2008) to fund the prizes.
Huh. Fascinatin'. And now, the larch*:
Despite his being there for only 24 hours, Norway is spending $16 million for security during Obama's visit. The chief of staff of Oslo's police force, John Fredriksen told the AP that the event was "the biggest - and most demanding - security operation in Norway's history."
From the AP: With all the attention Obama's visit has generated, about 2,500 police officers from all over the Nordic country have deployed to Oslo. The Norwegian military has also contributed support in the form of helicopters and sharpshooters.
Last week, city maintenance crews welded shut over 400 manholes in downtown Oslo, and police said they will remove all downtown trash cans on Wednesday afternoon to eliminate potential hiding places for bombs.[...]
Police and city work crews spent much of this week erecting barricades around Oslo's compact downtown to help control the crowds expected to surge into the capital when Obama arrives.
On Wednesday morning, Norwegian police armed with machine guns guarded the Grand Hotel as hotel workers installed bulletproof glass to protect the president during Thursday evening's procession.
Reminds me of my last state visit in 2003, although I believe I stayed at the Continental. They welded 400 manhole covers shut? I hope the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles weren't down there--or if they were, let's hope they at least had a stockpile of anchovy pizzas to wait out the surprise imprisonment...
*a Monty Python joke I hope at least three of you understood... _
In July 2007, Giorgio Armani told Time Magazine that viewing PETA materials “convinced me not to use fur." However, according to PETA, Armani’s Fall 2008 collection included fur coats for babies, floral printed furs, fur-hemmed skirts and fur-trimmed jackets. The animal rights group has contacted celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and Glenn Close asking that they not wear Armani-designed clothes.
In his admonishing response to Manola Darghis' scathing review of the upcoming release Gentlemen Broncos, Richard Brody (of New Yorker magazine) went too far in his appraisal of director Jared Hess, no matter how good or bad that particular movie may be.
In light of the gratuitous bodily function jokes apparently present in Broncos, Brody claims the director that Jared Hess is most similar to--in all of film history--is none other than philosophical Italian provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Huh? Yeah. Peep this:
But then, she also thinks that Benjamin (Michael Angarano), the teen-ager at the film’s center—a science-fiction fantasist whose work is pilfered by a blocked, aging novelist and by a pair of local filmmakers—is a “rotten writer.” In fact, he’s the author of a new gospel, and Hess’s wondrously ingenuous filming of Benjamin’s visions are both as sublime and as crudely carnal as scripture itself. The grotesque bodily functions, human, animal, and alien, that the movie depicts unflinchingly—as well as the “unpleasant, unattractive characters” Dargis says the film is filled with—are the point. It’s easy to present the beautiful people and the scrubbed world as divine creations; Hess’s vision sacralizes what other filmmakers don’t. The director he’s closest to in this regard is Pier Paolo Pasolini (and Pasolini, too, had an extraordinary sense of the naïve, the repellent, and the ridiculous).
Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with Pasolini's work, but it is nothing like Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre, or Gentlemen Broncos. Nothing. Unless you find semi-amusing fart jokes and frightening, ritualistic depravity to prove a philosophical point one and the same.
Comparing Jared Hess to Pier Paolo Pasolini simply because they both made movies about outcasts living on the fringes of society is like comparing Scorsese to Taxi director James Burrows because they both made projects involving taxi drivers. There is nothing funny about Pasolini's depravity; there is nothing insightful about Hess' fart jokes.
Here is a quick recap of Jared Hess' life and works:
He is a 30 year-old heterosexual Mormon who studied film at Brigham Young University, is married to his college sweetheart, Jerusha Hess, has one child, lives in Salt Lake City, and has co-written and directed three feature-length oddball-comedies with his wife, one of which (Napolean Dynamite) became a cult hit.
Now, here is a quick recap of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life:
He studied literature and philosophy in college, was drafted into WWII, escaped from a Nazi prison to join his mother as a teacher of children in remote villages, was persecuted by the state due to his homosexuality and candor, became an accomplished poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, photographer, filmmaker, linguist, and political activist, troublesomely preached that a shift to communism was the only way to save Italy, had most of his films censored at one time or another due to their stark exploration of the depressing lives people led in the suburbs of Rome and their focus on sexual themes, and was brutally murdered by being repeatedly run over by his own car on a beach near Rome, not long before the premiere of what Time Out recently dubbed "The Most Controversial Film of All Time," Salo, his magnificent and horrifying adaptation of the the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, in which he calls out fascism for being not unlike sadomasochism.
Okay, so...a sheltered and ignorant Mormon (a Mormon, for Christ's sake!) out for cheap laughs by exploring the fictional lives of losers living on the fringes of society in Middle America is supposed to be comparable to a notoriously revolutionary, oft-censored, communist homosexual Italian poet/filmmaker who unflinchingly documented the darker side of humanity in his starkly realistic explorations of the depths of the mind and its potential for depravity? An artist whom intellectuals still revere 34 years after his death?
