Mailbox:
Scoopy,
I read with interest the copy on
Performance, by Carausius. My Hollywood friends say these
things happen more often than we know. Regardless of how often they
happen, when the subject comes up, the most popular subjects for
gossip in the industry are these four:
1. The
Mickster and his squeeze at the time, Carre Otis, in Wild
Orchid. This is the big one. According to witnesses the two
simply got it on. They have also said that it went on for a long
time, to the point that crew members got tired of watching and
walked away, one by one. This version of the event has endured the
test of time. I’ve read that both Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis have
acknowledged it. The gossipers give all this a 99% chance of being
true.
2. Kim
Basinger and Eric Baldwin in The Getaway. They were a new
couple at the time and crew members have said that the two got in on
in the famous scene. It looks like he was close to down on her in
the released version and, it is said, when she reaches back in the
scene to replace the exited member, it really happened. Maybe not.
The gossipers give this one a 70%.
3. Anne
Heche and Joan Chen in Wild Side. During the filming, it is
said, the ladies did more with their hands, etc., than the director
asked for. It looks real. This is given around an 80% chance of
being true.
4. Then
there is Monster’s Ball. Some awfully good acting in this if
the deed wasn’t being done. It may be just rumor that Halle Berry
and Billy Bob Thornton got it on. Your choice, but the wags like
it.
This brings up a related
subject. What happens to outtakes from close, but not quite,
explicit nudity?
I remember in the late sixties,
or maybe it was early seventies, there was some scandal about
directors showing, at private parties, revealing outtakes of big
name actresses. (They were actresses in those days, not actors.)
Directors were even accused of not quite getting the vase of flowers
or the stair railing in quite the right place on purpose so that
they would have something unusual for their private collections.
For example: What happened to
the outtakes of Katherine Ross from They Only Kill Their
Masters? In one scene, she rises from the bed nude, walks the
full length of the bed, dragging a sheet. The sheet is clasped in
front of her, drags loosely down her side and behind her, revealing
a bare back, her lumbar and the start of her butt. It had to be
just right and they must have finally gotten it right after several
takes. What happened to the outtakes? They were surely viewed in
the dailies, and then what?
The sixties scandal was quickly
quieted by the industry. It’s hard to imagine Hollywood not wanting
publicity, but the one bit of infamy they don’t want is headlines
about non-professionalism. The act of showing unusual film at
private soirees must have violated several guild by-laws to say
nothing of a few right to privacy laws and actors’ contracts. In
any event, the matter was settled quickly without much publicity.
And the directors responsible were probably shunned for some time or
at least mistrusted.
As in the aftermath of most
scandals, I’m guessing a lot of steps have been taken to ensure
integrity.
Which begs the question: What
is happening to today’s outtakes? Is there a set procedure, or is
it just huckelty buck? I would suppose that by now those things are
tightly supervised, but by whom? Anyone know? Maybe a
representative of the actor involved? Anyone else? If the rep is
there, I’m guessing the director would have to give up all the
rejected film to the rep or whomever. Then what do they do with
it? How is the star, and/or others, sure the bunch of celluloid
contains all the throwaways? After all, it won’t be decided what’s
to be used in the film until the principal editing some weeks after
shooting. It’s going to pass through a lot of hands.
Wow, what a black market
possibility here, already done to some degree, of course. In any
case, I’m sure there are little private collections here and there.
The stars themselves probably have a treasure trove of their own
stuff. How would you like to see Nicole Kidman’s collection?
Silver Dollar Sam
Le Pornographe (2001):
This is the story of Jacques, once the world's greatest
pornographer, but retired for two decades and living idly off the income of
his architect wife. Suddenly he needs money again, so he decides to go
back into the porno biz. Sadly, the industry has passed him by. He
intends to make a neo-realistic porn film with muted moaning, no
blatant dirty talk, no fingernail polish, and no lurid close-ups. His
producer watches a few minutes of the porno film being created,
studies the elderly director's lack of involvement, then takes over
the direction himself.
Jacques then quits, of course, and bemoans the fact
that an industry which once represented rebellion and artistic freedom
to him and his friends has degenerated to the point of cookie-cooker
commercialization. That's only the beginning of his troubles. His son
walked out of his life when he found out about the whole pornography
thing, and they are trying to reconcile. Jacques is not doing
especially well with his son, and he also manages to alienate his faithful wife and to push away
his loyal best friend as well, finally choosing to spend his time in a room
alone, writing down his thoughts and navel-gazing about his
insignificant place in a vast and meaningless universe, until madness
completely overtakes him.
So Le Pornographe is basically Boogie Nights, as
reimagined by Dostoevsky and directed by Ingmar Bergman. People
staring off into the middle distance. People sitting silently with
shoulders hunched in defeat. Somber classical music. One stagy
tableaux after another.
I suppose that in addition to being about the way
pornography has changed since the idealistic seventies, Le Pornographe
is also about the changes in the French film industry, and films in
general since that ambitious and individualistic era. Not to mention
sex, personal craftsmanship, rock and roll, politics, the environment
and anything else you would care to append to the metaphor.
Unlike Boogie Nights, The Pornographer does include
explicit sex. In the scene where the producer takes over the sex
film's direction from Jacques, we see a porn actress on the receiving
end of some thrusting from a well-endowed fellow, and then accepting
the traditional faceful of happy juice. The porn actress in the
film-within-a-film is played by a real porn actress named Ovidie.
Although the film shows penetration, there are no good looks at any of
Ovidie's naughty bits except during the ol' in-out.
Ovidie |
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No Small Affair (1984):
Brainscan and Tuna disagreed strongly on No
Small Affair. Tuna rather liked it, while Brainscan took a major
dump on its face. It seems to me that this film is too
inconsequential to spend much time on, but I thought it was
decent. The great weakness of the film is that it's a romance in
which the relationship of the two partners is utterly
unconvincing. (Not to mention statutory rape, but they ignored
such details back in the 80s.) That fact alone should render the
film unwatchable, but it really doesn't. No Small Affair
actually a decent way to pass the time if you like adolescent
angst movies. If you don't like such movies, you should not make
any effort to see it, but if someone forces you to sit through
it, it probably won't be as bad an experience for you as it was
for Brainscan ...
unless ...
... you are allergic to one or both of
the two things that could irritate the hell out of you.
1. Jon Cryer. In general, I sympathize full
well with what Brainscan wrote about Cryer, the perennially
unfunny Matthew Broderick impersonator, but Cryer didn't
bother me in this film. I'd say this is his most engaging
performance. Cryer's biggest problem has always been that he
tries too hard to be funny, and that can be painful to watch,
but in this film he just sort of blended into the woodwork,
played his part, trusted the material, and let the director
focus on the better elements of the film.
2. Elevator music. Chrissy Faith provided
some excellent saloon singing as Demi Moore's voice double.
There are a lot of mellow "easy listening" vocals in this
movie ("My Funny Valentine," e.g.). I mean a lot. Many
minutes. Songs sung all the way through. The movie will
therefore grate on you if you are one of the many who hate
elevator-in-waiting music. Again, this didn't bother me. I
liked Chrissy's vocals. There are also the inevitable musical
montages, but I fast-forwarded through them.
The director of this film was Jerry Schatzberg,
who was much better known for seventies-era dramas replete with
social consciousness, like Scarecrow and Panic in Needle Park.
There must be an interesting story behind his migration from
serious Pacino films to fluff like this, but I don't know it.
Maybe he was just leaving the narrow current of the seventies
and swimming out into the open sea of the eighties, like the
rest of us.
Overall, I have to side with Tuna in this
debate. I have no enthusiasm for this minor movie, but watching
it wasn't an awful way to pass the time.
Other Crap:
The director of Rome is accusing the BBC of
sensationalising his work by over-playing the sex and
violence and cutting out key political narrative.
Because you just can't get enough 2000 year old political
narrative!
(NOTE: the Brits cut episodes 1-3 down to two episodes,
while HBO showed it uncut.)
"Jennifer Garner (to be) Naked In Erotic Thriller" ...
I'll believe this when I see it.
- By the way, what is wrong with this sentence:
"Jennifer Gartner recently signed a contract to play in
Disney's erotic thriller "Sabbatical."
- Well ... besides the fact that her name is not
"Gartner"
- I don't know about you, but when I think of erotic
thrillers, I immediately think of Disney. What do you
think Mr Toad's wild ride REALLY was? He was merrily,
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily on his way. How do
you think he got so fucking merry?
You may want to scratch Somalia off your vacation
destinations:
"Pirate Attack Repelled by Cruise Ship Crew"
Celebrity Double Jeopardy:
Beatty Tries to Crash Schwarzenegger Rally
Baylor hangs tough in 0-62 defeat.
Oklahoma
high school cagers lose 112-2 (and with a constantly
running clock in the second half!). "Hey, dad, the good
news is that I was the team's second highest scorer
tonight, only two points out of the lead. The bad news is
that I didn't play."
Is there really any difference between Mountain Dew,
Mountain Breeze, and Mountain Edge?
Additional nudity from:
Anne
Hathaway and Bijou Phillips in Havoc
Kind of interesting.
The following is a quote from the Vice-President of the
United States:
- "He’s already demonstrated a willingness to use
these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used
poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction. This
man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of
people. So this is a way to save lives and to save the
stability and peace of a region of the world that is
important to the peace and security of the entire
world."
- So why did I link to this humorless, boring,
blatantly political and generally strident article?
Well, the trick is that I didn't say WHICH
vice-president.
The world's largest employer asked nine economists to
assess its effect on the economy. Today, at a conference
organized by Wal-Mart, they'll respond.
"Denver Is First City to Legalize Small Amount of Pot"
... The significance of this has been widely
misinterpreted and misreported.
- First of all, Denver police ordinarily cite
offenders under state law rather than city ordinance.
(98% of marijuana citations in the city are under state
law.) The state law is pre-printed on the front of
tickets, so just by checking a box an officer can issue
a fine for as much as $200. To use the repealed city
ordinance, an officer would have to write out the
relevant code by hand. "Citing under state law has been
a tradition here for years. We intend to keep doing what
we've been doing," said David W. Broadwell, an assistant
city attorney.
- However, the repeal of the city ordinance is not
meaningless. The repealed ordinance was stricter than
the state law, and carried a maximum penalty of a year
in jail, so the maximum penalty for possession of small
amounts of marijuana in Denver has been effectively
reduced to a $200 fine - as per the state law. Before
the recent referendum, somebody could in theory have
gone to jail for that same act, if the arresting officer
was in a particularly ornery mood. Although the Denver
city attorney's office prosecuted 1,565 people last year
under state law, the city also prosecuted 36 adults last
year for marijuana possession under the city ordinance.
Obviously, the earlier repeal of the ordinance would
have affected those 36 people.
-
Here is the Denver Post's take on this matter.
Insert predictable "Mile High City" comment here.
Daily Box Office - Friday, November 4, 2005
- Jarhead exceeded expectations with a ten million
dollar opening day. It was in a virtual tie with Chicken
Little for the #1 spot.
- (Of course, the kid's movie should do relatively
better on Saturday and Sunday)
- Shopgirl and Good Night and Good Luck made the top
ten.
This is a real story:
Mystery radio signal keeps Canadian cars in their garages.
And America is to blame!
More details on Clobberin' Clooney and his London Street
Brawl
Charlie Sheen, Denise Richards Rekindle Romance
"A study of the effects of peyote on American Indians
found no evidence that the hallucinogenic cactus caused
brain damage or psychological problems."
- Dude, just call me Typing Bear.
- They take in the peyote as a religious sacrament.
They consider it to be the body and blood of Hunter
Thompson
Sex-and-drugs royal romp to hit British TV screens
- Lord Antony Snowdon, 75, is alive and reportedly
"incandescent with rage" over the drama.
Maradona says Bush is 'human rubbish'
- I don't expect anyone to believe that - unless they
see the DNA tests proving he's human.
- Y'know, for a drug-crazed guy with a negative IQ,
Maradona is amazingly perceptive!
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Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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