A great interview with legendary screenwriter Joe Eszterhas by Howard Stern from June 2012, focusing on Eszterhas’s disastrous collaboration with Mel Gibson. Pretty funny in a lot of spots, but also a fairly disturbing look at Gibson. If you’re interest is piqued, you seriously need to read the Amazon Kindle single “Heaven and Mel”which goes into much more detail. It’s the length of a 150 page book, but it’s only $2.99. One of the most harrowing and hair-raising True Hollywood Stories you’ll ever read. To be fair, aside from Mel’s minor rebuttals, we haven’t heard Mel’s complete side of the story. However, Eszterhas does make a good case and rightly or wrongly, as Mike Ovitz learned, “Don’t f–k with Eszterhas!”
Lots of bad language and adult subject matter so not safe for work or little ones.
This Christmas, Jack Nicholson IS Cosette in the long-awaited adaptation of the musical “Les Miserables” … featuring Jack’s heartbreaking rendition of “I Dreamed a Goddamned Dream”
I realize I’m going to lose a lot of credibility points on this one, but f–k it! Yes, this is hopelessly contrived. Yes, it inspired a horrendously insipid genre of all-star casts falling in love around the holidays. But this is one of my all-time favorite films and one that always brings a smile to my face. This is probably my biggest guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel that guilty about it. There’s terrific acting (especially by Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy, and Laura Linney), a smart script, and is one of those movies that genuinely tries to make you feel good … and succeeds. Next to “A Christmas Story” and “Bad Santa,” this is my all-time favorite Christmas film.
For penance, I tried finding a link to the parody that “30 Rock” did for their own version of “Love Actually”: “Martin Luther King Day” … but alas, this no longer available in good quality on the net.
From the EP “Merry Xmas from X,” John, Exene, Billy, and DJ put their inimitable spin on a Christmas classic. I love the reference to their classic “Los Angeles” at the beginning.
The Ramones contribute a rockin,’ but sweet and sincere Christmas classic. From their pretty decent 1989 album “Brain Drain.” The video is a little corny, but worth a look mainly because, sweet lord, the clothes and hair on the actors (especially the female lead) is sooooo 1989!
One of the best music books of the last 10-15 years is Michael Azerrad’s history of American alternative rock from 1981-1991, “Our Band Could Be Your Life.” Released in 2001 and available in digital format within the next day or so, “Life” is the college radio version of “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” (Peter Biskind’s exhaustive and stellar look at Hollywood of the 1970s). Azerrad devotes each chapter to a different seminal band of the period (Mission of Burma, Butthole Surfers, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Big Black, Hüsker Dü, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Mudhoney, The Replacements, Beat Happening, and Dinosaur Jr.). Some of the stories you may know … others you won’t. But if you have any interest at all in rock history (especially alternative / progressive rock), “Life” is a must. The chapter on the Butthole Surfers by itself is worth the price of the entire book. Seriously, the chapter reads like Hunter S. Thompson smoking angel dust with Monty Python with chaos, insanity, humor, and violence ensuing like a motherf–ker!
One of the most moving portrayals of a marriage ever put on film was in Disney/Pixar’s 2009 Oscar-winning animated film “Up.” The attached montage has no spoken words, and is a combination of two pivotal scenes from the film: one towards the beginning … the other towards the end. However, both scenes bookend each other nicely and I’m glad someone put these two scenes together. One of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen on film. Warning: you will not have a dry eye watching this.
Nowadays, Bob Fosse has sadly become a pop culture joke. Anytime one wants to make fun of musical theater, they throw up jazz hands and say “FOSSE!” dramatically. However, the man was a true pioneer of modern musical theater and also made some amazing films. His filmography is short, but not many can boast as much popular and critical acclaim as Fosse achieved. Three of the five films he directed (“Cabaret,” “Lenny,” and “All That Jazz”) were nominated for Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director (he won for “Cabaret’) and were box-office hits.
However, Fosse’s best and strangely, most critically and commercially reviled film was 1983’s “Star 80.” “Star 80” is the sad, oftentimes unbearably intense and depressing biography of 1980 Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten, who was brutally murdered by her estranged husband and former manager, suitcase pimp Paul Snider. Critics complained that Fosse focused too much on Snider and not enough on Stratten. While this is not necessarily unwarranted criticism, Fosse’s exploration of Snider is one of the most complex and empathetic portrayals of a human monster ever committed to celluloid. Richard Gere was originally attached to play Snider, and while he would have been good, Eric Roberts was by far, the better choice to play Snider and his portrayal of Snider is one of the most ferocious performances I’ve ever seen on film. Between 1978’s criminally underrated “King of the Gypsies” and “Star 80,” Roberts really should have become a powerhouse star/actor on par with Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn.
From Martin Gottfried’s brilliant biography of Fosse “All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse”, Gottfried relayed a chilling tale of how Roberts finally understood how to play Snider. Roberts had a lot of difficulty with the role, breaking down and telling Fosse “S–t! I don’t know what the f–k I’m doing.” Fosse chillingly grabbed Roberts, stared into his eyes and said “Look at me! If I weren’t successful … if I weren’t successful … look at me … that’s Paul Snider. That’s what your playing. Now show me ME!” The attached clip, from the beginning of “Star 80” with Roberts, tells you all you need to know about Snider. However, the clip does contain nudity and bad language, so not safe for work or little ones.
You may or may not know who Polly Platt is / was, but Platt was a dynamic creative force in Hollywood from the late 1960s through the 1990s. She was married to (and then famously divorced from) acclaimed director Peter Bogdanovich and was production designer (and, as many people believe, contributed significantly more creatively) on all of his early 1970s masterpieces/hits (“Targets,” “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up Doc?,” “Paper Moon”). She wrote the screenplay for Louis Malle’s controversial English language debut film “Pretty Baby.” She was the art director on “Terms of Endearment” and co-produced many of James L. Brooks’s films, including “Broadcast News” and “War of the Roses.” She was the producer of Cameron Crowe’s classic “Say Anything.” And, she was responsible for plucking Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson out of nowhere, producing their stunningly hilarious debut “Bottle Rocket” in 1996.
Her marriage to and divorce from Bogdanovich was fictionalized in the conventional, but clever Hollywood satire from 1984 “Irreconcilable Differences” (with Shelley Long playing the Platt character and Drew Barrymore playing her daughter).
Platt sadly died in July 2011, but her contribution to American film over the last 50 years can not be underestimated. For more on the Platt story, please read Peter Biskind’s classic book on 1970s Hollywood “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” and more significantly, Rachel Abramowitz’s exhaustive look at women in Hollywood from the 1960s through the new millenium, “Is That a Gun In Your Pocket?”
Below are trailers for her greatest films:
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Dave's Strange World 