Puck Flick Reborn...

FROM TOP LEFT: SEAN WILLIAM SCOTT, KEVIN SMITH, SOURCE MATERIAL FOR 'GOON', JAY BARUCHEL

Back in January, I wrote about a hockey flick scripted by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg called Goon that was slated to go before cameras with Fubar director Michael Dowse helming only to see the production fall apart.   I was disappointed to see that project falter, chiefly because it was being written and directed by Canadians and in the canon of hockey cinema the biggest issue is the stories being created and told by people with precious little knowledge of the game.  Whatever issues plagued it then are no longer a problem and the movie is back in production with Dowse once again at the helm and co-scripter Jay Baruchel (who's co-writer Evan Goldberg is Seth Rogen's writing partner who co-wrote Superbad, Pineapple Express and the upcoming Green Hornet)  appearing in a support role.

KEVIN SMITH SHOWING HIS DEVIL PRIDE

This is good news because Kevin Smith's long discussed project Hit Somebody, which is based on singer songwriter Warren Zevon's song of the same name is going into production directly following Smith's current project, Red State.  I've had the chance to talk with Smith about this project, and his love for hockey (he's a big New Jersey Devil and Edmonton Oilers fan, the former because of his home-state allegiances and the latter because of loyal devotion to Wayne Gretzky) and I'm genuinely intrigued by his project.   Smith twice as a guest on my Sirius Satellite radio show Relentless, and both times he spoke about the development of the film, his reverence for Slap Shot, and his genuine passion for the game.  We discussed the pitfalls that hockey movies often fall in, the largest issue being that the filmmakers don't understand the sport and  ultimately make choices that insult the intelligence of the average hockey fan viewer.  (The Mighty Ducks making Iceland, of all places, the ultimate global hockey power springs to mind, as does the ridiculous scene in Youngblood where Rob Lowe - who's walked off the team and left returns to the rink, gets dressed and steps on the ice just in time to score the game winner, somehow finding himself on the roster, with his gear in the building and his team magically playing a man short to accommodate his sudden return.)  After decades of lousy hockey movies, or no hockey films at all, it's nice to have two projects in the pipeline scripted and directed by genuine fans of the sport.

STIFFLER ROCKS THE HOCKEY HAIR

But all is not well, I'm afraid, because Goon, the Baruchel project, has also announced it's casting and the lead role will be occupied by Seann William Scott. (Also in the cast is actress Alison Pill, seen recently in the under appreciated Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)  I have no issue with Stiffler on skates, but both times I spoke with Smith about his project, he mentioned that he was writing the lead role with a specific actor in mind: Seann William Scott.  I understand that some actors can play similar roles, for example, Kevin Costner has played a broken down old baseball player twenty six times in his career, but I don't see Scott playing the lead in both of these movies. Considering both films are hcokey comedies about a pugilistic hockey player in the lower ranks of minor pro hockey, I would say it's a little too similar to have him in both, and when you consider he'd literally be shooting the movies back-to-back it becomes absurd.   Kevin... it's casting time.  Smith, as he's apt to do, responded to the situation via his twitter, aknowledging that Scott was "circling" Goon, and that because of his work on Red State, the screenplay, which he told me last month was coming along very well, is now at a standstill.  "It's been a busy month, so still on page 101."   Despite losing his leading man, Smith's passion for puck supercedes his desire to cast Scott.  His final tweet looked at the big picture:  "The more hockey flicks, the better. #SellTheGame"   Well said.

80's Cinema

22 EIGHTIES MOVIES... CAN YOU NAME THEM ALL?

I've got a great fondness for the cinema - and the music for that matter - of the 80's.  I think pretty much everyone has a soft-spot for the pop culture of the time when they first started becoming aware of such things.  This design - which is for a T-shirt from the good folks at chopshopstore.com - tickles my nerd bone by featuring all 80's movies and using clever little icons to signify each movie.  The best part is this: they provide no answers.   I've got almost all of them, but there's one that I suspect is intentionally vague and another I'm not sure about at all.   Guesses are welcome - even encouraged - in the comments section.

Badfellas

In the current GQ Magazine, in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Martin Scorsese's classic 1990 mobster flick Goodfellas, they published an extensive oral history of the making of the movie which revealed many things I didn't know about the movie, and almost all of them are bad.    This movie came along at a time in Scorsese's career when he was in desperately in need of a hit.  The eighties, by and large, weren't very good to Scorsese.  His 1980 film Raging Bull is now considered by many to be the top film of the decade, but it earned much of its praise in retrospect and the movie didn't perform particularly well at the box office.  He followed that up with a dark examination of celebrity and celebrity worship called The King of Comedy which also didn't set the box office on fire then made the little-seen After Hours in 1985.  In '86, he made the strange choice of directing a sequel to The Hustler with The Color of Money.   In '88 he made The Last Temptation of Christ, a movie that touched off protests and controversy from the religious right and not only under-performed at the box office, but actually drew picketers.   As the decade was coming to a close, Scorsese, more then any other time in his career, needed a hit.

 ROBERT DeNIRO, JOE PESCI and RAY LIOTTA

He got it.  Goodfellas was a return to form for Scorsese and was a massive critical and box-office success. Any discussion about the greatest films of Scorsese's esteemed career would have to include Goodfellas, but it easily could have gone the other way.   It's hard to imagine, but at that time, Scorsese, coming off a string of middling films, didn't have the clout he has today, and as such, the casting of the movie wasn't entirely in his control and he dealt with studio interference in this regard.   A large part of the success of the film, beyond his brilliant direction, was due to the excellent cast: Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci, but none of them were originally in place.  The original discussions about who would play the lead character, Henry Hill, didn't include Liotta who had a supporting turn in the Jonathan Demme flick Something Wild (which Scorsese loved) but precious little else on his resume.   The part instead was ticketed for Tom Cruise, who Marty had worked with a few years earlier on The Color of Money.   Cruise is a great actor, but he would be horribly miscast in the role of career mobster Henry Hill.  Scorsese stuck with his guns and eventually studio relented and offered the part to Liotta.  Robert De Niro, who had collaborated with Scorsese several times in the seventies and eighties was originally not offered the part of Jimmy Conway.  Initially the studio approached John Malkovich who turned the part down.  "It sort of came at a bad time in my life, when I wasn't feeling well and didn't want to think about working.  It's hard to explain why end up in Eragon (his 2006 bomb in which he played an evil King and former dragon rider) and not Goodfellas.  But De Niro is fantastic."   Malkovich is a skilled actor who's delivered some great performances and infuses his characters with a lot of interesting layers, but I can't imagine him playing an Irish gangster in a Martin Scorsese flick.  One of the things Scorsese stresses over and over again in the article is his unwavering quest to make the movie "authentic" and while Malkovich isn't Irish; he might have disqualified De Niro from contention for the part because he couldn't envision De Niro playing the non-Italian in the story. 

JOE PESCI AS WISE GUY TOMMY DeVITO

The other lead, Joe Pesci, wasn't interested in doing the movie at all.  He told Scorsese he was gonna pass, but after talking with Marty about some of the stories of things he had seen while working in a restaurant frequented by local wise guys; and Scorsese's subsequent enthusiasm regarding incroporating those stories into the screenplay (included among these, the infamous "How am I funny?" ball breaking sequence which unfolded, in Pesci's real life, when he told a wise guy he thought he was funny and the guy took mock offense at the remark) Pesci agreed to sign on.  I simply can't imagine this movie without the outstanding contributions of Joe Pesci.   As brilliant as Martin Scorsese is as a filmmaker and as incredibly fascinating as the source material is; I don't believe this movie would have been nearly as good had any other actor taken that role.  Pesci would ultimately win the Academy Award for Best Supporting actor for his work, and he's provided us with some of the most quotable, fantastic scenes in movie history.  The "Go Get Your Shinebox" scene with Billy Batts, for example, is an absolute classic, and Pesci's unhinged, raging performance is the lifeblood of this scene and this movie.  He embodies the insanity of the lifestyle and it's intoxicating allure all wrapped up in one tiny, lethal package.  He is danger.   This movie, without him, isn't the same beast at all.  But, amazingly, there was one other casting tidbit in the GQ piece that, had it happened, could have sunk this movie even if Scorsese had his real male leads in place.  The Lorraine Bracco role of Henry Hill's wife Karen almost went to a different Italian actress, and this would have been much more catastrophic then Sophia Coppolla in The Godfather Part III... In consideration for the role was the antithesis of acting: Madonna.

MADONNA: THE THESPIAN

Goodfellas Executive Producer Barbara De Fina, who worked with Scorsese on The Color of Money, Michael Jackson's 'Bad' video and The Last Temptation of Christ reveals that the Madonna talk progressed beyond just idle speculation.  "I remember that we went to see her in the play 'Speed-the-Plow.'   Marty said hello to her afterward.  Can you imagine?   Tom Cruise and Madonna?  But Marty can get a performance out  of almost anyone."   Yes, Barbara.  Almost anyone.  I would wager a fair amount that Madonna, who has built a resume of shockingly mediocre performances in lousy movies and somehow has managed to capture the opposite of charisma and ooze that out in every scene she's ever done would prove to be the exception to that rule.  By all accounts, what they would have seen that night was a very underwhelming performance (The New York Daily News headlined their review "No, She Can't Act") I suspect Scorsese watching her perform live was something he told the studio he would do before he officially shit-canned any chance of her being in the movie. She instead made Dick Tracy - a film she was awful in - and shacked up with Warren Beatty instead of appearing in a modern American classic. Madonna in the cast of Goodfellas would have been an absolute game-changer.   It's not just an issue of how bad she would have been - and by now, we've seen more than enough evidence that she would be truly lousy in this film regardless of what magic pixie dust Martin Scorsese sprinkled on her - but there's also the issue of the film losing the outstanding performance of Lorraine Bracco, who ultimately landed the role of Karen.  This would be a terrible, terrible trade.   The GQ article really  illustrates that  this modern classic might very well have been the film that all but ended the career of America's greatest film director.


The article is in the current October issue of GQ, which is on newstands now.

Wit Vs. Twit

The always delightful Paul Lemieux has an excellent recurring bit on MTV Live called One on One.   It's the Canadian red-headed step child of Zach Galifinakis' Between Two Ferns.  In this edition, my favorite of the bunch so far, Paul interviews 'Jersey Shore's' Ronnie.  

Find more of Paul's excellent One on One work here.

Danny De Vito in "Ghandi II"

It's comforting to know that I'm not the only person waiting with baited breath for the inevitable sequel to the Ben Kingsley classic Ghandi.  It is, however, quite surprising that I'm joined in this by none other then David Mamet.   The Pulitzer prize winning playwright, who also penned one of my favorite film scripts ever - Glengarry Glen Ross was from his own Tony nominated play - seems like literally the last person in the world I would expect to team up with FunnyorDie.com but amazingly, that's exactly what this is.  Mamet wrote and directed this "on set" interview with Danny De Vito, where he discusses taking the title role in Ghandi II.

Phoenix Hoax Fallout

PHOENIX IN ONE OF HIS MORE LUCID MOMENTS ON 'THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN"

DIRECTOR CASEY AFFLECK WITH PHOENIX

Casey Affleck, the brother-in-law of Joaquin Phoenix, and the director behind the recent "warts and all" documentary about Phoenix's attempt to transform himself into a rap artist; has revealed the movie - and Phoenix's career change - were all a hoax.   This reveal has surprised many in that it came so shortly after the film began showing at film festivals (including the just completed Toronto International Film Festival) which totally demystifies the movie and takes away much of the allure to see it.  Why spend a year building this elaborate fake story line then throw it all way shortly after the movie is made available to the public?  Seems odd.  It's even stranger when you factor in that Affleck stuck by the film and insisted to the press at both the Venice and Toronto film festivals that it was a real document of his friend and brother-in-law scrapping his acting career and earnestly pursing a new career in hip hop, only to then tell the New York Times the entire thing was a hoax less then a week later.  Affleck (strangely) claims that "I never intended to trick anybody.  The idea of a hoax never entered my mind."   This is a bizarre remark considering he just released a documentary about Joaquin Phoenix where Phoenix is acting from start to finish and is telling a purely fictionalized tale.  His documentary, by definition, isn't a documentary at all, and rather a pure work of fiction - or as Affleck calls it a look at "the disintegration of celebrity;" whatever that means.  How is it possible that a the notion of this being a hoax never entered Affleck's mind?

BEST TALK SHOW APPEARANCE EVER

One of the hilites of Phoenix's (fictionalized) descent into madness was mostly incoherent, strange appearance on David Letterman.  (For the record, Phoenix, likely clean shave and using full sentences and talking about this faux-film, will return to the Letterman show on Wednesday.)   On Letterman - in character as the "retired actor turned rapper" - Phoenix appeared incoherent, confused, and mildly sedated.   This too, of course, was a hoax with the Letterman people in on it.   This isn't the first time Dave has courted weird controversy via a strange actor behaving, well, strangely.  On July 28th, 1987, actor Crispin Glover - best known as George McFly from Back to the Future - appeared on Letterman's old show, 'Late Night' and while wearing a wig and platform shoes gave a strange, rambling interview where he rails against the press in a peculiar panicked manner before announcing to Letterman that he was "strong" then he announced he "could kick" before sending a platform shoe within inches of Letterman's head which led to Dave announcing "I'm gonna go check on the Top Ten" before fleeing his desk and sending the show to commercial.  After the break, Letterman returned with Glover and commented on how close he came to getting a dent in his head.  It was, of course, spectacular television... but was it real?   First of all, this wasn't the result of Glover stoned out of his mind, though it did look that way.  He was on the show to promote the little known real crime drama The River's Edge (a great, dark movie by the way) but he elected to use this time, instead, to promote a movie that wouldn't be released for another four years.  He opted to do the entire interview with Letterman in character as "Rubin" from the little-seen and not yet made film Rubin & Ed, which would ultimately be made in 1991.  Letterman, apparently didn't know he was doing this, but I suspect he was acutely  aware that Glover had some Andy Kauffmanesque plan in store for the appearance. Strangely, Glover appeared on Letterman again, just two weeks later to "apologize" for the incident - which he never did, by the way, instead he denied ever being on the show before and despite many attempts by Letterman to get to the bottom of the his strange schtick on the previous appearance, Glover offered very little.  Back then, I used to pour through the TV Guide each week when it came in the paper to see who the guests were on the late night talk shows so I could tape any episodes featuring guests that intrigued me, and I remember finding it quite odd that Glover's name was listed as a Letterman guest ... again.   This was strange because these things were printed so far in advance that playoff games in any sporting event never had teams listed, and yet, with just a two-week lead, somehow they knew that Crispin Glover was going to return to the David Letterman show?  How could they have known that if, in fact, he hadn't been booked to return well before his first show ever aired?

Check out Glover's original, spectacularly odd appearance on Letterman below:

Excellent Casting

MERCURY ON STAGE AT LIVE AID, 1985

The rock n' roll biopic is a sub-genre littered with a lot of predictable fare, so much so that it's been lampooned with Walk Hard: The Dewy Cox Story starring the criminally under-rated John C. Reilly.  It's usually the same formula: young rising star needs to get his music out there; fame changes them; drugs enter the picture; they fall from grace and/or die; the end.  That being said, when they are done well, they provide excellent dramatic fodder, and, as an added bonus, they have kick ass soundtracks.   Hopefully this upcoming project will fall into the latter category. An interesting piece of casting news surfaced this week when word came out that Sasha Baron Cohen - yes, Borat himself - is set to play Freddie Mercury in an upcoming Queen biopic.  The film will chronicle Queen's rise in the 1970's to the top of the rock heap and will climax with their 1985 Live Aid performance which essentially was the bands last hurrah and a gig considered by many fans to be the best the band ever did.  A few years later, Mercury's physical condition began to worsen and rumors began to surface when he appeared gaunt and frail in his increasingly rare public appearances.  Mercury, who while a very flamboyant and engaging performer was notoriously quiet and publicity-shy off stage, shot down speculation he was suffering from HIV and dismissed all the rumors, but by 1991, Mercury, on his deathbed, confirmed that he was in fact dying from AIDS complications.  The following day, on November 24th, 1991, Mercury passed away at the age of 45.  This film, however, will focus on Mercury's tremendous career and successes and not his sad demise, which is really a sad footnote and not what defined him.

'BORAT' LOOKING SLIGHTLY MERCURY-ESQUE

Baron Cohen, of course, is a total question mark, outside of comedic work.  That being said, the very immersive nature of his comedy performances - essentially becoming a character and reacting as that character rather then the more traditional set up/joke nature of most comedic actors in Hollywood - lead me to believe he will follow in the long line of comedians and comedic actors capable of delivering stellar dramatic performances. It's worth pointing out that Baron Cohen is currently shooting a Martin Scorsese flick, so clearly there's a school of thought - and a highly respected one - that thinks he can act. In this case in particular, I think he's an inspired choice to play Freddie Mercury, and I suspect he will absolutely kill in the role.  Mercury's surviving band mates - who had casting control as the movie will be made, in part by the newly-formed Queen Films (in partnership with  Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions and GK Films, who are currently making Hugo Cabaret, the aforementioned Martin Scorsese film) - have endorsed the casting choice as well.   Other than the large height difference - Baron Cohen is nearly six inches taller than Mercury was - there is a strong physical resemblance between the two right down to the shape of their mouths and the ability rock a thick mustache.  There is no director attached yet, but the script is being written by Peter Morgan - the scribe behind the excellent Frost/Nixon and, fittingly, The Queen - which gives me a lot of hope that will be more then a paint-by-numbers retelling of the rise of a rock band.   The fact that the band members are involved in the production should add to its authenticity, and, perhaps more importantly, the rights to the full catalog of Queen music.