On the Road Again...

The internet guy is coming in a few minute to repossess his modem, and by this time tomorrow I'll be driving down to Florida with a big smile and a wipe o' the brow, so I thought I would leave you with this video, directed by Michel Gondry. 

I was in a Student Movie

This was back in 2001, in those heady days when I was studying journalism at the University of Florida and the spaceship Discovery was flying to Jupiter to make contact with the monolith. 

I was walking through the journalism building when a piece of paper taped to a metal gate caught my eye. It said something like, "Would you like to act in a movie?" And, being both attention starved and quite stupid, I sort of muttered, "Yeah, I guess I would." So I took one of the little slips of paper and called the number that night. The director of the movie answered, a small Asian man whose name I can't for the goddamn life of me remember, so for the purposes of this story we'll just call him Sergio Leone. 

"Uh, hi," I said. "I saw the ad for the movie." 

"Oh, yes. Uh huh." 

A pause. 

"And, you know, I'm interested." 

"Wonderful," he said. We talked for a minute. Then he said, "Would you be free to audition tomorow?" 

"I guess." 

"Wonderful." 

Sergio and I arranged to meet in an abandoned classroom on campus. 

"Hello," he said as I walked in. He turned to a ridiculously beautiful blonde behind him. "This is Kim." 

I shook Kim's hand and grinned stupidly, admiring her figure. I might like this acting business after all, I began thinking. As Kim and I chatted, Sergio began looking through the scripts. 

"Ok, here's the deal," he said. "The movie is actually broken down in sections, each with a different director and script, but with a unifying theme -- the morning after a one night stand." 

I looked over at Kim. I'm definitely going to like this acting business. 

Sergio handed me the script. 

"You, Joe, are auditioning for the role of Victor." 

I leafed through the script, suddenly puzzled. Victor seemed to have all the lines. Not that I minded, but...

"Victor has had sex with a deaf girl." 

Ah. 

"Only, he doesn't know she's a deaf girl until the morning after." 

I did a double take. Seriously, I remember doing it. 

"He doesn't know she's deaf?" 

Sergio leaned back, a supremely satisfied look on his face. 

"No." 

I turned to the end of the script and began reading a scene where Victor starts yelling at her, still totally unaware she's deaf. I was suddenly fidgeting. Maybe I won't like this acting business after all. I gave a serious thought to leaving. 

But shit, you know. You only live once. I looked up at Sergio and Kim and shrugged. 

"Okay." 

"Wonderful," Sergio said. "Shall we begin?" 

Victor's lines were the worst kind of stupid trash. First he can't believe she's still in the house the morning after all. Then he can't understand why she's being such a huge bitch by not even talking to him. Then he figures out she's deaf, realizes he's a douche, and apologizes. 

THE END 

Seriously. 

Sergio called me that night to tell me I had gotten the part. He specifically cited this scene from Chasing Amy as the reason he cast me, saying he could see me doing that scene (to this day I think it's because at the time, I wore a goatee). Not wanting to point out the mountain of fucking difference between confessing your love to a lesbian and hollering like a dingleberry at a deaf girl you banged without knowing she was deaf, I simply thanked him for giving me the part. 

"The shoot is next Thursday at 9 a.m. See you there, Joe." 

THE SHOOT

The day of the shoot my alarm didn't go off and I overslept. I had gotten a friend to agree to give me a ride, and I quickly called him. 

"Yeah, yeah," he said groggily. "I"m up." 

Then I called Sergio. He seemed perturbed, but only slightly. 

"It's okay," he said. "We've been having problems with our equipment anyway." 

I made a hair and makeup choice and decided not to shower. Besides, I thought, bed head is in character. Then I leapt into some previously arranged clothes, met my friend, and zoomed off to the location -- a shitty house Sergio and his friends had borrowed for someone. 

I walked up to the door and knocked. A bored looking girl with a book in her hand opened. 

"Hey," she said. 

She walked away from the door and back over to a coffee table, where she continued reading. To this day I assume she was the girlfriend of one of the other guys on the set, but I honestly don't know. I never talked to her. 

When I came in, the Director of Photography (DP) and the Sound Guy where having an argument about something while Sergio leaned up against a fireplace, talking to Kim. Suddenly Sergio saw me. 

"Ah, Joe. Wonderful," he said. 

I apologized for being late, but Sergio brushed it off. 

He walked Kim and I into the bedroom, the site of the first scene. 

"Okay," he says. "So you're both sleeping, then she get's up, and she's topless, then she stares out the window and walks out of the room." 

The word -- topless -- hung over the room like a John Goodman fart. I was suddenly too dumb for speech. I looked over at Kim. She laughed. 

"Yeah, they got this thing for me to wear," she said. She held up two wide strips of flesh colored tape. 

"Ah, yes. Of course," I said. "Of course." 

Then the DP came over and started discussing the scene with Sergio. It was very quickly apparent that the DP had done this before, because he started rejecting all of Sergio's ideas. 

"No no no," he said. "It's much better if we do it this way." 

Finally Sergio just gave up. The DP set of the first shot -- Kim getting out of bed "topless" (sadly, I was told to face the opposite wall and saw nothing). For the next shot, when Kim, now in a robe, leaves the bedroom and starts walking around the house, I found myself in a bathroom with Sergio. 

"Uh, shouldn't you be out there?" I said eventually. "I mean, you're the director, right?" 

Sergio sighed. "No, he's got it. It's a long tracking shot. I'd just be in the way." 

I didn't bring up the issue after that. 

The next scene was me getting out of bed -- not topless, but in my underwear -- and walking out of the room and into the kitchen. I was told to play this scene tired and hungover, which frankly didn't take a lot of acting. Then, suddenly, in probably the world's worst ever two-shot, I realize Kim is still there in the apartment and mutter something to the effect of "what is that bitch still doing here?" 

Then I had a few lines where I actually ask her what she's still doing in the apartment. When she doesn't respond, I start yelling. Eventually, I walk right up to her and continue yelling. 

We actually had a hard time figuring out how to convey to the audience that Kim was deaf. I mean, honestly, how do you do that without her literally holding up a sign that says, "I'm deaf, fuckhead"? 

Anyhow, I'm sorry to say I was the one who figured it out: a series of POV shots. First, from my angle talking to her with the sound of my rant ON, then a shot from her POV -- on my face -- with the sound turned OFF.

Seriously, figuring that out took like 45 minutes. 

After that, the only thing left was my "oh sorry, I'm an intolerant jackass, aren't I? I really shouldn't act like this anymore" speech, and then everyone packed up and went home. Kim gave me a ride back to my apartment. She had a very nice car -- a BMW, I believe -- equipped with the first navagation system I ever saw in a car. Before she dropped me off, she invited me to her birthday party, which was going to be on the day of the movie's "premiere." 

"Sure," I said. "I'll be there." 

THE PREMIERE

The premiere was something like two weeks later. Sergio sent me an email. When I went downstairs to put on my shoes one of my roommates, Ryan Wills, was there. He asked me where I was going and I made the mistake of telling him. 

If you read this, Ryan: yeah, sorry. I didn't want you to come. I knew the thing was going to be a fairly serious piece of shit, and I wanted to save you the trouble of smelling it and me the embarassment of having to hear about it. 

But as soon as I told him, he started putting his shoes on, so I knew I was fucked. I distinctly remember having the instinct to run out the door, but I decided against it. So we walked down to the lecture hall where the premiere was and sat down. Kim was a few rows ahead of me, flanked by friends. 

Watching the movie was, for two different reasons, one of the most surreal experiences of my life. First of all, as you can probably guess, it was a phenomenally shitty movie. My own segment was bad enough, but all of the others were just as bad. It is, to this day, one of the shittiest movies I've ever seen. Full of heavy-handed moralizing, bad writing, worse acting (yours truly included) and production values that make Troma movies look like Lawrence of Arabia. 

Secondly, it was incredibly surreal to see myself be part of this oozing cinematic flesh wound. I mean, it's bad enough for something to be bad, but it's another thing entirely to know it's bad and you helped make it bad. You're partially responsible. When it came time for my big, silent close up, I sunk down into my seat and wanted to disappear, sure than someone would see me and point and say something like, "there he is, that guy who sucked!" 

But none of that happened. When the movie was over, Ryan was incredibly diplomatic, because after all even sadists don't kick old, sagging dogs in the balls. 

I left without saying goodbye to Sergio and went to Kim's party. She got incredibly drunk and introduced me to her fiance, a ripped preppy kid. Her mother had come into town for the premiere and I was introduced to her as well, a fit older woman who regarded me suspiciously and didn't mention the movie. 

And then, finally, I went home. Sergio had promised me a copy of the movie, but he never sent it, and to this day I've only seen it that one time. 

Oh, well. It exists better in my memory... one of those weird times where you venture blindly out on a limb for the hell of it... only to have it break and find yourself racing toward the ground, shitting yourself the whole way down. 

An update on the lack of updates

So, I've been having trouble keeping to my informal every-other-day deadlines here on the HH recently, and I suppose I apologize for that. Those of you who know me know this has been a rather busy few days. In short -- I'm moving, having car trouble and was recently robbed and thrown in a Tijuana prison, only to escape with the help of my new friend: Paco Gonzalez Stereotypico. 

By this time next week I'll have everything ironed out. In the meantime, I'm working on an entry about a weird experience I had years ago on the set of a student movie. Since it's one of the only tangible movie experiences I have, I hope it's a barn burner.

As for this particular entry, I thought I would share my, uh, thoughts on the two movies I saw tonight: The Hangover and Public Enemies. 

Why two movies, you ask (or perhaps you didn't)? Well, I went to the movies without checking the times first, and the movie I wanted to see (Public Enemies) didn't start for two hours, and a movie I was kind of interested in seeing (The Hangover) was starting right then. 

Voila! 

So The Hangover is the story of four stereotypes who've somehow become friends (there's the bland guy, the weird guy, the henpecked guy and the go-with-the-flow guy). In the movie, the bland guy is getting married, and he and the rest of the guys go to Vegas to celebrate. When they wake up the morning after, none of them can remember what happened the night before, and the bland guy is gone. The movie follows the other three guys as they try to piece together what happened and find their friend. Along the way they have to deal with an angry naked Chinese guy, a wedding chapel, a tiger, Mike Tyson and Heather Graham's right tit. 

My verdict: It's a funny movie. Sure, the guys get drunk in Vegas; havoc ensues movie has been done before, but The Hangover wisely avoids that part to focus on the hellish aftermath. I'd call it a definite rental. Though, you know, watch out for multiple scenes featuring overweight man-ass. 

Public Enemies, directed by Michael Mann and starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, was not as good. The movie follows Dillinger as he stages a prison break to the moment he's shot through the back of the head outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. However, though Dillinger was by all accounts a publicity conscious, supremely charming man, in the movie he's written and played incredibly flat. Dillinger simply isn't interesting, and his relative blandness makes the movie somewhat tedious in comparison to somewhat similar movies like Scarface, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Mann's own Heat. This is too bad, because the movie is staged and shot incredibly well. 

My verdict: Rent White Heat instead. 

So there it is. A completely humorless blog entry. Oh, well. 

The not-yet-dead set

In response to the rather serious plague that seems to be working it's way through the available supply of famous people, today we introduce a new feature here on the Hollywood Humiliation blog: a tribute to those actors, actors, producers, moguls and whores who are not currently dead, even though you probably thought they were. 

Our first un-dead (but not Zombie) person: Herbert Lom

Lom (left) pictured with someone not on this list.

Lom, for those of you jackass-y enough not to be a fan of the Pink Panther series of movies, is most famous for playing the tormented and (eventually) insane Inspector Dreyfus in, uh, that Pink Panther series of movies. 

Lom was born in Austria-Hungary (back when that was still a country) with the not-too-business-card friendly name Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich von Schluderbacheru. Oh, and this was in 1917, making Lom 91 freaking years old (and thus, older than Finland). 

Given that the average life expectancy of a male is about 76, this means Lom has outlived his life expectancy by nearly as long as I've been alive. 

Apparently he's smug about it, too. 

Before retiring in 2004, Lom's career was mostly characterized by his villainous roles, a career choice Lom explained by saying, "in English eyes, all foreigners are sinister." 

This is really too bad, because Lom could be suave and dignified when given the chance. 

Above: not one of those chances. 

So congratulations to you, Herbert. Statistically, someone will have to die a premature death to make up for you. 

Personally, I'm voting for this guy. 

The Worst Movies... Ever

Congratulations, Blues Brothers 2000!

 

Eagle-eyed readers might notice that I have a particular distaste for bad remakes and sequels. And well, here's another one. 

The Blues Brothers 2000 is a phenomenally shitty movie. Watching it is truly makes you wonder whether they intended for it to be that bad, or whether someone switched out the script for something some jackass wrote on the back of a snot rag.

Following the old Hollywood adage: "a sequel should be the same movie as the original, only shittier," the Blues Brothers 2000 is the story of Elwood Blues trying to get the band back together (again) on a Mission from God (again) with the help of Mighty Mack (John Goodman), the Kid (J. Evan Bonifant), Cabel Chamberlain (Joe Morton) and The Band (no, not that one). 

The only difference is Elwood has to do this without the help of Joliet Jake (John Belushi) who had the good sense to die rather than appear in the movie.  

Oh, and the whole time they're being pursued by Nazis (again), eventually making their way to a battle of the bands contest against possibly the greatest Fake Band ever -- the Louisiana Gator Boys -- featuring Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Steve Winwood, Bo Diddley, Issac Hayes, and Lou Rawls. 

Well, big surprise, the Blues Brothers lose (as would any band up against the Gator Boys not featuring, you know, actual deities), and Elwood asks if the Gator Boys whether they would like to jam. Because neither that scene (nor much of the movie, really) is not on YouTube, here's a video that seems appropriate. 

 

When you look at it, it was sort of inevitable that Blues Brothers 2000 would suck. It was written by Dan Aykroyd, who five years before had written the crappy Coneheads movie, and directed by John Landis, who four years before had directed Beverly Hills Cop III (a movie so bad it might one day work it's way into this series). 

Plus, it was released in 1998, not 2000. This forces you to imagine what must have been an actual conversation 

Studio exec: What are you gonna call it? 

Aykroyd: Well, it's going to be released in 1998, so we thought we'd just call it, you know, Blues Brothers 1998. 

Studio exec: What are you, a fucking idiot? Nobody's going to go see a movie called Blues Brothers 1998. 

Aykroyd: Well, okay. What do you think we should call it? 

Studio exec: Blues Brothers 2000, of course. People will think it's awesome if we call it that. 

Aykroyd: You know, I think you're right! 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Charlie Steiner!  

In keeping with the "theme" of this blog (click here for our Mission Statement), I generally try to keep the topic focused in one way or another on Hollywood. 

But in the high-volume business of internet blogtasticating, you're forced to break a rule now and then, especially if the rule is kind of stupid and you're the writer of the blog and the one who thought it up anyway. 

So that disclaimer brings us back to the great Charlie Steiner, the longtime ESPN broadcaster most famous not for his hard-hitting journalism, but for laughing uncontrollably pretty much every time he anchored Sportscenter. 

Charlie was born in 1949 in New York City. After graduating from a college I've never heard of, he eventually made his way up the radio ladder until he began work at what was then a piece of shit TV station called ESPN, in 1988. 

This is where he came to my attention, as there was a point in my life where I watched Sportscenter religiously. Charlie Steiner was my favorite anchor of Sportscenter in those days, mostly because, as you can see above, he inadvertently screwed up the show a lot. As a young kid who could barely pick his nose without falling off the couch, I could relate to that. 

Sadly, Charlie left ESPN in 2002 to move into baseball announcing full time, first for the Yankees and now for the Dodgers. And from my perspective, that means he's pretty much dead, since I care less about baseball than I do about the dietary habits of moray eels. 

But before Charlie left ESPN, he starred in some of the most hilarious commercials ever made, the original set of "This is Sportscenter" spots. So, for all you sports fans out there, I leave you with this: 

Ah, those magical words!

FADE OUT:

It's the last words you type in a screenplay. The finish line. The thing that indicates the bastard first draft is over, and at least in some sense, you whipped it. 

Well, I reached that mystical landmark today. At, well, about 1:46 am Central Time, two months and five days after I started. 

And yeah, it feels good. As Al Pacino's character asks in Glengarry Glen Ross: "You ever take a dump that made you feel you just slept for 12 hours?" 

Well, this screenplay is that dump. Of course, it still needs a lot of work. Ernest Hemingway once said that "the first draft of everything is shit." So yeah, I've got a lot of polishing to do. Hopefully more polishing than Ernest did, since even his rewrites were shit. 

But man alive, at least it's lashed together in some form. In the midst of this swirling, ridiculous thing I call my life, here at last is an unmitigated triumph. 

Good day sir. 

The Miscast-ies -- A Tribute to Hilariously Bad Casting

Now and then you really realize how well a movie has been cast. I mean, is there anyone else but Tom Hanks who could have played Forrest Gump? Think about it. Then think about, say, Russell Crowe playing the part. 

"Mama always said life was like a can of whoop-ass."  

But then there are roles that are cast extremely poorly. And because, you know, that's a lot funnier, that's what I'm going to write about. My too-clever-by-half name for this? 

"The Miscast-ies." 

So, with no further delay, the first Miscast-ie goes to......

.........................................(drum roll).........................................

John Wayne... as Olson -- a Swedish (!) farmer -- in The Long Voyage Home (1940). 

Pictured: John Wayne on the set.  

So if you're trying to imagine just how bad Wayne would be at playing a Swedish guy, I've got news for you: he's worse. Truth be told, it's a miracle he doesn't ruin what's actually a pretty good movie. 

Actually, let me rephrase. The reason he doesn't ruin the movie is because director John Ford, not being a complete dumbass (only a big enough dumbass to cast John Wayne as a Swedish guy), cut out almost all of Wayne's dialogue, to the point where it took me like an hour and 20 minutes before I figured he was supposed to be Swedish and not Irish. By the end of the movie, though, he's jabbering on and on, in such a ridiculous sing-songy kind of Swedish mumbo jumbo it's amazing it wasn't declared a hate crime.  

Unfortunately, there aren't clips on YouTube to show you the massacre Wayne made of it, but imagine Wayne trying to play one of the Minnesottans from Fargo and you'll get pretty close to the cringing hilarity of it. As a video consolation prize, however, here's the video of another legendarily bad John Wayne performance -- as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.

As you'll notice, this is the entire movie. Since it's considered one of the shittiest movies ever made, I wouldn't recommend watching it. But to get an idea of Wayne's total incompetence with accents, fast forward to about 3:50. 

So there you have it. It's a pretty simple equation, really. 

John Wayne doing accent = John Wayne giving crappy performance. 

Fortunately, after The Conqueror he learned his lesson and went back to shooting bad guys and using his regularly weird pausing-in-the-middle-of-sentences way of speaking. Unfortunately, due to the fact that The Conqueror was filmed near a nuclear test site, there's a pretty good chance that making the movie actually led to his cancer, and thus his death. 

The Long Voyage Home was much kinder to him, as the movie, these days, is mostly forgotten. This allowed Wayne to move on to far more important things, like making meatballs. 

Screenplay Writing Lessons from Hollywood Legend William Goldman*

So I've been writing my as-yet untitled screenplay now for two months and two days. So far, I think, it's been going pretty well. As of this minute I'm staring hard down on page 98 with the following staring back up at me. 

THIEF: 

Who are you?

BATMAN:

I'm Batman. 

No, wait. That's some other movie. Sorry about that. 

Anyhow, I'll have some title-less version of it finished in a week or two, ready for the vast and cool and unsympathetic rejection notices of Hollywood's crack talent scouts. But before all of that happens and just ruins the heck out of my day, I thought I would pass along a few things I've learned writing this fucker while it still at least sort-of looks like I know what I'm talking about. 

Lesson 1: Focus on what characters want, rather than on who they are. 

This is probably the most important thing about characterization that separates it from novel or short story writing. Whereas in a novel, the goal more often than not is to strip away layers until you reach the truth about a character or a situation, most movies (for better or worse) are by their nature superficial. 

For instance, what can we say about the essential character of someone as iconic as, say, James Bond? I mean, we know he's an orphan, and that he likes to chase a lot of tail. We know he's clever and can defend himself. But beyond that, uh... what? Do the movies ever reveal what Bond's birth parents did for a living, or where he was born? More specifically than an orphanage, where did he grow up? What was he like as a kid? Beyond being a somewhat amoral killing machine who is nonetheless loyal to England, what can we say about him? 

The answer, of course -- even after 22 movies -- is pretty much nothing. 

But what does James Bond want? Ah, that's much clearer. Bond wants women and martinis. He wants to stop Blofeld from, you know, blowing up the world. He wants information. He wants to break in to some kind of secret facility. He wants to break out of a holding cell. Etcetera etcetera. 

Bond makes a good example for this kind of thing because he's so straightforward in what he wants and so opaque about who he is. And the truth is, we don't really question it, because he's a spy, and we expect spies to be secretive. It's part of what in my opinion makes him to adaptable to the current age, since he hardly ever states his opinion about anything other than that bad guys should be stopped, whatever girl is standing in front of him should take off her clothes, and how his martinis should be served. It's part of why his line in Goldfinger about hating The Beatles is so out of place. Not only is it uncharacteristically opinionated, but we never imagine Bond just sitting around and listening to music for fun. 

This is not to say, of course, that movie characters can't have complicated backgrounds and character quirks. On the contrary, characters in movies should be interesting and conflicted and have both external and internal obstacles to overcome. But what a character wants is first and foremost the reason for them to go off and do the interesting things that we'll find worth watching. It can't be something like:

CHARACTER A:

My name is Alfred Derby Lepercolony. I was born in New Jersey in 1948 to Deborah and Scallawag Lepercolony. My childhood was very unhappy because I was born with only one leg. This led to the neighborhood children calling me "stumpy," but coincidentally made me an expert with a Pogo stick.

Uh, yeah. Don't do that. 

Lesson 2: Construct scenes so that the characters in them want different things. 

Aha! Here's where the fun begins. Let's say you've established that Character A really wants a piece of information in the possession of Character B, who really doesn't want to give it up.

Already, you've sown the seeds to an interesting scene. Every police drama, terrorist movie, mystery and courtroom movie is based on this kind of conflict. Character A will ideally have compelling reasons to want the piece of information (location of a bomb hidden somewhere in his scrotum) and Character B will have compelling reasons to want to avoid telling Character B (Character A's scrotum will one day lead the resistance to victory over Skynet). 

It sounds simple, but it's a very effective dramatic tool, and it always gives the characters something to talk about. Consider, for example, which of these scenes would be more interesting:

CHARACTER A:

I believe the Moon is made of cheese.

CHARACTER B:

Uh, I don't. 

Or,

CHARACTER A:

I want to convince you that the Moon is made of cheese. 

CHARACTER B:

I want to commit you to a mental hospital.  

The answer, sadly, is that neither of these scenes seem very interesting. But at least the second scene is going somewhere. The first one is just a set of declarative statements, which would probably be followed by Character B trying to sneak out of the room. In the second one, they would at least have a conversation.

In my own screenplay, I've written many scenes where, for one reason or another, characters are compelled to lie or deceive each other. I've found this a very effective device, as their reasons for doing so -- what they want -- becomes an effective dramatic underpinning to those scenes.  

Lesson 3: The rules of the universe of the movie can be whatever you want them to be, but once they're established, don't break them. 

In a world full of movies like Transformers, where by design nothing makes sense, it's hard to see this as a hard and fast rule, but to me it's ironclad. 

It basically works like this: Yes, you can have a movie where cars and trucks transform into sentient killer robots. But if you get to a point in the plot where a character needs money, you can't just have a transformer turn into a bank and start printing $100 bills. If you do, even good natured people will stomp on your face. 

By the same token, if you establish that your main character is a mild mannered chemical weapons expert, you can't have him kill a special forces guy in hand to hand combat in the third act. 

Movies don't have to make sense or even seem real in the context of actual life. Suspension of disbelief pretty much allows you to have any rules you want, but once you've established those rules, in the name of God: obey them. 

So with that, I bring this incredibly boring Syd Field impression to a close. Some other time, I'll get around to different little nuggets I've picked up on plot and structure matters. 

Or perhaps I'll do something a bit more interesting, like read you a bedtime story. 

Oh, well. How many celebrity birthdays in a row can one man do? 

*Note: Lessons not actually written by William Goldman, though he wishes. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Herman Munster! 

You know, I hate doing that to Fred Gywnne (the guy who, you know, played Herman Munster). But I just can't help myself. When I think of Fred Gywnne, I think of Herman Munster. I mean, how could you not? 

Sorry, Fred. 

This is perhaps most unfortunate when reflecting on the fact that The Munsters only ran for TWO seasons (frankly, this fact shocked the hell of out of me). Given that Gywnne lived to be 66, this means that his time making The Munsters accounted for only 1.32% of his life. 

Ok, I'm 27 years old. 1.32% of my life accounts for about three and a half months. Thinking back on my life, I calculate this is approximately the amount of time I've spent picking my butt. 

So once again: Sorry, Fred. 

And it's not like Gywnne didn't do anything with the rest of his life. We're talking about a guy who graduated from Harvard and was the president of it's satirical Lampoon magazine (one of those things -- like being drafted in the NFL, I'm sorry I'll never get a chance to do). 

And beyond that, Gywnne served in the US Navy, acted on Broadway, had a recurring role on Car 54, Where Are You? (believe it or not, an actual popular show in the early 60s), The Phil Silvers Show, and acted in a bunch of other shows and movies (the role of the judge in My Cousin Vinny probably being the most famous). He also sang, wrote and painted (though honestly, who doesn't?). 

But The Munsters, yeah. The Munsters live on. Which means, of course, that Fred Gywnne lives on, because as accomplished as he might of been compared to the rest of us insignificant peons, he would still be nothing more than a fond memory to his loved ones if it wasn't for The Munsters (on an audition in 1984 -- 18 years after The Munsters left TV -- for a role on Punky Brewster, an auditioner actually referred to Gwynne as Herman Munster, causing Gwynne to walk out). 

Try as he did, though, Gwynne could never actual bring himself to hate the character, and he died of pancreatic cancer in 1993, shortly after completing work on My Cousin Vinny. 

So yes. The 6'5" Gwynne might have played a simple-minded oaf, but the reality was that he was actually a whip-smart oaf. And whatever sarcastic things you could say about The Munsters (and I could say plenty), there's one indisputable fact: he got to drive the coolest custom car ever featured on a TV show -- The Munster Koach: 

So adios, Fred. I could say a few things about what became of your, you know, career, but I hold back out of respect, and indeed I wish you a safe journey into that (hopefully) Munster-less beyond. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Jessica Hahn!

For those of you who don't remember Jessica Hahn, there are two things it's very important to keep in mind: 

1) Her huge red hair, and 2) Her even-more-huge breasts.  

Pictured: the least slutty picture of Jessica Hahn on the internet.

Oh, and there's that little matter of how she came to the spotlight -- the story of how, while working as a secretary for the TV show The PTL Club, televangelist Jim Bakker either raped her (her story), or, they had a wild night of passion that would even make God say, "Jim, you are the finest sexual beast I have ever created" (his story). 

Now, it would be wrong of me to take sides on this kind of thing. But here are a few facts to keep in mind. 

1) Bakker's church paid Hahn more than $250,000 to keep her story quiet (after the story broke, she was court ordered to pay most of the money back). 

2) Bakker's wife -- ie, a woman we can prove had sex with him consensually -- looked like this.

3) Even if Jessica Hahn had been killed by a robot sent back in time to prevent a human uprising, Bakker would still have had to resign in disgrace for fundraising irregularities, fraud and just generally being an asshole. 

4) After becoming famous, Hahn decided to pose for Playboy and live for a while in the Playboy mansion. 

5) And make 1-900 commercials (like the one above). 

6) And date Sam Kinison, a former preacher turned comedian and hedonist. 

7) And appear in a see-through top at a Howard Stern press conference. 

So what can I say? Jessica Hahn is one of those bizarre 80s spectacles whose story needs to be etched onto a satellite and hurled into space. Hopefully an alien civilization can find it and give us the punishment we so richly deserve. 

Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, America! 

Ah, Independence Day, a movie about aliens that come to Earth to, uh... um. Yeah. I have no idea. I guess they just like shit blowed up.

Fun piece of trivia: The director of ID4, Roland Emmerich, is actually a native of Germany. He also directed the movie The Patriot, a Revolutionary War movie starting revolutionary war movie specialist Mel Gibson. 

Pictured: not a Scottish guy, either. 

But all kidding aside, I've always had a problem with July 4th being known as America's Independence Day. Sure, that's the day we sent off a letter to King George telling him, as Sam Seaborn says on The West Wing, to "bite me, if you please." 

But c'mon. Signing a letter doesn't make you independent. You've got to prove that shit, homey (ask them in South Carolina whether they celebrate December 20th as the Confederate Independence Day), and we didn't do that until Cornwallis sued for peace in Yorktown on October 19th, 1781. 

For me, calling July 4th Independence Day is like saying you've lost your virginity when you tell a girl on a Web cam that you'd really like to screw her. 

Sorry, America. But the proof is in the pudding. We weren't independent until we won, and we didn't win until October 15th. 

But that doesn't mean I hate the 4th. On the contrary, it's probably my favorite holiday, as it combines the three great American traditions: BBQ, booze and explosions. 

The Worst Movies... Ever

Worst Movie #2: Planet of the Apes (the completely unnecessary remake)

The rationale behind the making of this movie has never been fully explained. After five orginal Ape movies, each with significantly (and eventually, pathetically) diminishing returns, you would figure that the powers that be would decide that people had had enough of heavy handed social commentary hidden behind, you know, gorilla masks. 

"Oh my God, so when that Ape says he's tired of being a second class citizen, he's really talking about minorities, right? And when a group of Apes lay down in front of an advancing column of infantry, they're really talking about the Vietnam War, right? And when a race of genetically deformed humans worships a nuclear weapon, they're really talking about...."

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

You get the idea. Not unlike Star Trek, the Planet of the Apes franchise used a thinly veiled sci-fi concept to discuss socially relevant issues. And hey, I'll be the first (by which I mean, probably not the first) to say it was effective. 

The first one? The one with Charleton Heston? I dug it. Totally awesome. Seen it 20 times at least. The one after that, with Charleton Heston look-a-like James Fransiscus. Well, you know, it was okay, I guess. 

Everything after that? 

Not so much. 

Which brings us to the remake of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Tim (my soul is so black and troubled I have a fleet of publicists and a standard $5 million pay or play deal) Burton and starring Mark (no baby, that wasn't actually my penis in Boogie Nights) Wahlberg. 

Reading over the plot summary again, I actually sort of wish I could just post the entire thing here, since it's filled with so many "what the fuck" moments it's fundamental shittiness should have been apparent to anyone who bothered to read a synopsis on the script.  

For instance: 

"A familiar vehicle descends from the sky and is identified immediately by Leo (Wahlberg). It is the pod piloted by Pericles, the chimp astronaut. Pericles was pushed forward in time as Leo was, and had just now found his way to the planet. When Pericles lands, the apes interpret his landing as the return arrival of Semos, the first ape, who is their god. They bow, and hostilities between humans and apes disappear."

Yep. That's what happens. Meanwhile, in the audience, a pregnant woman miscarries. 

The horribleness continues as Leo decides he'd rather not be in such a ridiculously conceived and executed future, and boards the only pod available to travel back to our time (leaving behind the pet chimp who just saved his life), through the same incredibly stable and plot convenient electromagnetic storm. 

After crash landing in Washington DC, both Leo (and the audience) get a final big wad of shit stuffed in their mouth, as we discover, with no goddamn explanation at all, that somehow Apes now control our time as well, complete with a monument to what surely has to be called "Apebraham" Lincoln. 

Yeah, they went there. 

Suffice to say: The Planet of the Apes remake is a movie so terrible it makes me want to throw feces at the screen. 

Why? Because they took an awesome movie, with a cool premise, and turned it into a hundred pounds of rotten mangoes. 

The last time I did one of these features, I compared watching Hollow Man to getting your nuts caught in a toaster. Well, as bad as Planet of the Apes is (and it's a genuine shit sandwich), it's not quite that bad. I'd compare it more to the experience of watching someone you like (say, Charleton Heston) get mangled by a wheat thresher piloted by an ape who looks suspiciously like Tim Burton. 

What's the proper response to this kind of travesty?  

Well, how about this: