So, what’s funnier than “Between Two Ferns” the (I hope) fake web interview program from comic madman Zach Galifianakis? That would be “Between Two Ferns” blended with the now legendary trailer for, what else, “The Social Network.” Yet another demonstration of the miracles of editing.
Ah, the wonders of a choral rendition, sung by what sounds like nothing but angelic 11 year-olds, of Radiohead’s “Creep.” I miss that great pop guitar lick from the original, however. You know that “chu-chuh” — not to be confused with the “Law & Order” “cha-CHUNK” — that comes in just before “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo…”
It’s been a personally rather stressful week in a good-news/bad-news kind of a way and Hollywood ain’t doin’ nothing to relax me. And so, we begin with a deep breath…
* The first half of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” will be in a mere 2D. Two dimensions were good enough for Rick Blaine, they’re good enough for Harry. Especially if they really were facing serious technical difficulties, smart move. No studio needs another “Clash of the Titans” fiasco.
* Classic film lover that I am, I also feel pretty good about “My Week with Marilyn” which has Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe, Dougray Scott as her beleaguered husband, playwright Arthur Miller, Kenneth Branagh (who else?) as Laurence Olivier, and Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh (!) among others. And check out the pic of Ms. Williams/Monroe that’s been circulating all over the net today.
Aren’t you glad I used that pictures instead of something of Phil “Mr. Fright Wit” Specter or Al Pacino?
During the Winter TCA Tour in January 2010, I had a chance to talk to Bob Odenkirk about his work on “Breaking Bad,” but before our conversation was over, I had to ask the question that I knew “Mr. Show” fans – and I include myself in that number – were chomping at the bit to have answered: is there still a chance that Bob and his longtime cohort David Cross would work together again.
“Oh, yeah, we’re going to do something together,” Bob assured me. “Absolutely. There is no question. We started writing a live show two weeks ago when he was here. We want to do another live show. Maybe in a year or a year and a half. My kids are older now so I can leave, so we can do a live tour. It’ll be really fun, yeah.”
In early August, during the Summer TCA Tour, I was fortunate enough to run into David, busy promoting his new IFC series, “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.” Not one to miss a chance for an update, I told him what Bob had said in January, and I asked for an update.
“See, I have very little responsibilities outside of a dog,” explained David. “But (Bob) has two kids and a wife. And, also, he has no balls. So when you combine all those things, it’s not good. But I put together a calendar for a way we could do a tour in which he would make money, he would be able to go home…I can’t remember offhand, but I think he would be able to go home for four days every ten days, or something like that.
“It would be a six-week tour, and I said, ‘Here, present this to whoever needs to sign off on it.’ I was, like, ‘You can’t ask for better than this. We’re going to suffer. We’re not going to make as much money, and we’re going to be away longer than we normally would be, but it’s in order to make it so that you can go home and so that these things that you need to address are addressed satisfactorily.’ I would love to do it. I am not the guy holding up the tour. It’s not me.”
So if David’s not the problem, then the problem must be Bob, right?
Time to drop a line back to the Odenkirk camp.
“I love David Cross,” Bob assured me by E-mail once he’d read David’s comments. “I think he’s funny and I consider him one of my best friends. But, sadly, he’s a liar. He is the one with family…two of ’em – but don’t tell either about the other!
“Plus, he claims to have Philatellaphobia – the fear of collecting stamps, which he claims keeps him stuck in the basement of his house, quaking and pooping. I would love to tour. I am standing outside my bachelor condo right now with a packed bag and a stash bag for my cocaine fixes. Oh, and I have no balls.”
So if both Bob and David are both claiming to be ready, does that mean that the tour is a go?
Hell, your guess is as good as mine. But at the very least, we’re getting some good comedy out of the discussion process.
In the meantime, though, enjoy this look back at the Bob and David experience before there even was a “Mr. Show,” and let us keep our fingers crossed that we’ll see them on a stage again in the very near future.
No promises we’ll have a Friday news dump this week, so you’d better enjoy this edition…
* Well, the big news tonight is most definitely the reorganization going over at the Warner Brothers megastudio. As far as I’m able to suss out, what this amounts to is a consolidation of power for CEO Jeff Bewkes. Reading Nikki Finke‘s current summary of the situation is a bit like reading a Television Without Pity post for a very complicated soap opera you’ve never seen, but Anne Thompson keeps it much, much simpler. On his way out exec Alan Horn is a good guy who Thompson believes was simply superfluous. Another case of a nice guy finishing last?
However, Nikki Finke does allude to a very crucial part of the Warners empire, and that’s DC Comics now being headed by the Warners minded and Finke approved Diane Nelson. As it happens, my deep, deep connections in the comics biz were e-mailing me news earlier today — which I was somewhat aware of but failed to properly cover earlier in the week — of an onging reorganization going on over there which certainly ties into the ongoing attempts at Warners to become more aggressive regarding comics adaptations along the lines of what Marvel Entertainment has been doing for some time — and also to try and avoid more flops like “Jonah Hex.”
There was even talk some talk of DC becoming entirely a West Coast operation, but that would be a major breach of publishing industry tradition with some actual problems involved and, in any case, thanks to FedEx and the ‘net, freelancers can live where they want now. Heidi MacDonald’s great comics blog The Beat has been covering this end of the story and you read about some of what’s going on here.
In case you haven’t been paying attention to limited release movies aimed at an older audience, “Get Low” is one of the year’s real success stories. My pretty negative review, notwithstanding, I’m surprised but not upset that the movie is doing as well as it is, both commercially and critically. These days, it’s nice to see a movie with a coherent story, at least, doing well. As for its star, Robert Duvall, being an apparent lock for an Oscar nomination, I can hardly complain. This may not be even close to being his best performance, but it’s a very good one and he’s a national treasure at this point. That’s how these things work sometimes.
“Get Low” stars Duvall as Felix Bush, an irascible and sometimes frightening hermit who contracts with the mildly rapacious local mortician (Bill Murray) to stage his funeral while he’s still alive. Though Bush says the funeral is to hear what people think of him while he’s still alive, it’s clear something in his past is disturbing him. Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek) is a former girlfriend who may hold the key to some of that.
Arriving right on time for the press conference, I saw that things weren’t quite ready and decided to grab a quick (and free) beverage. Looking over the soft drink selection in the hospitality area, however, I turned around and saw a serenely patient Sissy Spacek beaming at me and, before long, talking to me as if I were an actual human being while looking so good I was slightly stunned. As her assistant smoothly parried my lame request to turn on my digital recorder for a brief impromptu interview, she asked that I inform the public that she, at least, had showed up on time for the event. I was too charmed to do anything else but comply with the wishes of the luminous star of “Carrie” and “In the Bedroom.”
Mr. Duvall, it turned out, was only a couple of minutes late and the event started before I could make a proper drink selection. It was immediately apparent that Spacek and Duvall get along quite well and enjoyed joshing each other in front of reporters. (They last appeared together in 2008’s “Four Christmases.”)
