Your 12 Biggest Questions About Hollywood, Answered
Q: Director Bryan Singer worked really hard to get all the Nazi paraphernalia just right in Valkyrie -- ooo, shiny, shiny jackboots and sparkling death's head pins! -- so why does he let Tom Cruise call Joseph Goebbels "George Gobel?"
A: Because Tom Cruise gets fed all his lines through an earpiece connected to the Very Large Array astronomical radio observatory in San Agustin, New Mexico. It's out of Singer's control. And Tom Cruise doesn't actually get the name wrong, he just pronounces it like a slow eight-year-old from New Jersey reading Sgt. Rock out loud. So
YŌ-sef GÛ-bilz
comes out
JO-suf Gobbles.
The real question is why Bruno Ganz in The Reader refers to Karl Jaspers (kärl yäs'purs) as Karl Jaspers, with a j, like a slow eight-year-old from New Jersey.
Q: Why did anyone do anything they did in the last hour and a half of The Dark Knight?
A: Because the whole world is out of order, man. I know it seems like it doesn't make any sense, and it's cobbled together like a Godzilla movie with Raymond Burr edited in, but that's because chaos is what it's, like, all about. And that's why people keep beating up Eric Roberts and then driving somewhere and then beating up Eric Roberts again. They need answers too.
Q: The guy who wrote the screenplay for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button says:
I don't want to disrespect Fitzgerald, because he's twice the writer I could hope to be, but I knew this was written as a whimsy. It felt like it wouldn't be disrespectful if I embarked on it in a different way.
If you walked around thinking you were about half as good as F. Scott Fitzgerald, would that be disrespectful, or not? James Gould Cozzens was about one-quarter as good as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Where does that put him in comparison to the guy who wrote the screenplay for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?
A: You're twisting his words. And I hear he got cleaned out by Bernard Madoff. (The screenwriter got cleaned out; not James Gould Cozzens.) So ease up. These things work themselves out.
Q: I get what you're saying about The Dark Knight, but no one ever even does anything with the information Eric Roberts gives them. He tells Gary Oldman that the Joker is at a warehouse but instead of going there, Gary Oldman drives to a TV station with some policeman we've never seen before, who has a sick mother in the hospital, to save a lawyer who knows who Batman is, because the Joker wanted Batman to unmask himself but now he doesn't.
A: Don't be such a square.
Q: M. Night Shyamalan says:
I'm sick of feeling like I hope the cool people like me. I hope the teachers like me. You know that thing you do when you're in school? And you're in your mid-30s and you go, "I'm sick of feeling this way." And you kind of like have this urge to take all your clothes off and run outside and say, "Make fun of me. Are we done? Is that it? Good, let's go on with our lives."
You ever feel like that?
A: No.
Q: I think I understand why the ferryboat full of regular people is leaving Gotham City, but it's going in the opposite direction of the ferryboat full of convicts. Where's the ferryboat full of convicts going?
A: It's not going anywhere. It's a metaphor. Like the crazy asshole who keeps coming over to dinner in Revolutionary Road. He's not really there. If he were, Kate and Leo would stop inviting him.
Q: Hey, remember that movie American Carol, by that guy David Zucker, that was really going to sock it to liberals? What happened with that?
A: It made over $150 million dollars because it touched something deep, deep inside the American heart. They're working on a sequel right now.
Q: Really?
A: Nah, I'm just fucking with you. It died like Michael Savage on TV.
Q: I was in Toys "R" Us the other day, and it looks like no one bought any of the Wall-E toys for Christmas. If that stuff gets thrown in a landfill, and some robot digs it up in the future, what kind of irony will it be?
A: Situational irony.
Q: Harvey Dent is mad at Batman because he chose to save Harvey instead of Rachel but Batman didn't choose to save Harvey, the Joker gave him the wrong address, right? So really Batman...
A: Lalalalala. I can't hear you.
Q: What was that American Carol movie about, anyway? You must know someone who's seen it.
A: Not a soul. But the press material claimed:
Zucker wanted to explore what it meant to be a patriot when patriotism has started to get a bum wrap.
Q: They probably meant "bum rap."
A: Oh I sure hope not.
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I saw the movie. I thought Tom Cruise was incredibly good. You guys are all jelous of Tom. He is a good actor.
Hitler
Has only got one ball.
Goering
Has two but they are small
Himmler
Has something simmler
But Goebels has noe bels at all!
WWII British Army song, to the tune of "Bridge Over the River Kwai".
And Valkyrie
rhymes with "weary".
As soon as I saw the trailer, I thought, "Tom Cruise"? What WERE they thinking?
They were thinking: Tom Cruise is box-office magic. There's nothing he can't do! He's so ultracompetent and charming and grinning and squeaky-clean and perfect, he can easily play a Prussian aristocrat even though any idiot could tell you he couldn't. Greed makes people stupid.
All the gratuitous naughty bits available didn't save "Eyes Wide Shut". Anyone this side of Keanu Reeves could have done a better job than Tom Cruise.
If I understand this correctly, the whole movie was a Cruise idea, so it was naturally predicated on him playing von Stauffenberg. Not the best idea, admittedly, but...too bad Max vonSchell is too old now,he'd have been perfect.
Hey! Leave our slow reading eight-year olds here in New Jersey out of it.
Why are contributors to the Huffington Post allowed to use profanity but those of us who can merely post comments are not? I don't want to use profanity for the sake of shock value or itself, but I have noticed that even non offensive words have to be edited ot p.osted l i k e this but someone with a column has complete freedom. So much for the 1st amendment.
I agree with your sentiment but not with your comment about the First Amendment. So many people assume that a private company MUST print or display everything that is submitted. the First Amendment applies to government and its relationship to the citizenry, not private corporations or other non-governmental or public institutes.
I've seen some profanity in the replies. However, ad hominem attacks definitely gets one unpublished. The occasional undirected f-bomb used elegantly can be ok (am I wrong???), but denigrating women with the c-word is never ok.
When it comes to "The Dark Knight," I find myself somewhere in the middle between those who thought it was a profound masterpiece & those who dismiss it as worthless junk. Ledger was brilliant and his Joker is the most interesting screen villain since Hannibal Lector (not to take anything away from Javier Bardern, but there are a lot more guys trying to perfect their "pencil trick" impressions than their "heads-or-tails" impression). And I appreciated how they tried to tackle serious questions of moral ambiguity in the struggle between those who would protect society and those who would destroy it (with inconsistent success). On the other hand, Harvey Dent/Two-Face didn't work for me as a character, a performance or a thematic element. The movie was way too long for its content, the fight scenes were filmed in an annoyingly sloppy manner, and the ending was a pretentious misfire.
I gotta admit...
When I first heard Heath Ledger got the role I was disappointed but he grabbed The Joker by the throat with one of the more dominating performances of the decade. With the exception of Javier Bardem's sublime portrayal of killing machine Anton Chigurh, what other character froze a 21st century audience like Ledger's dutifully twisted Joker, equal parts nihilist and pragmatist?
Comparing a cartoon -albeit a smarmy wellmeaning one- to morally ambiguous crime noir with flesh-and-blood performances speaks volumes as to the declined of civilization as we know it.
The same people probably ranked 'Happy Feet' ahead of 'Inconvienient Truth' on their year-end best lists a few years back.
I myself am a rabid South Park fan but could never equivocate those hijinks with the Sopranos, Weeds, or even Big Love.
"...the declined of civilization"? So, so true.
I nominate Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in "Tombstone".
I'm so tired of superheroes. They are so boring now. Hollywood needs originality again. Maybe with these changes politically Hollywood will again start doing intelligent movies. I'm tired of the plastic Hollywood that is only glamorizing the beautiful talentless actors. We need brilliance and originality again. I loved Hollywood once, when they had those well maid movies. But lately, I don't see them anymore. The last movie that really moved me was Blood Diamonds. And I loved Hotel Rwanda. I want more thinking movies. I want to see "Che". Milk looks good. I like Sean Penn. But Brad Pitt as best actor: I just don't see it. He is handsome, but his acting skills have never really impressed me. I guess after all the bad publicity, I've had it with him. I just can't seem to want to see his movie.
When did Hollywood not glamorize beautiful and talentless actors? That is what Hollywood is all about. Glamorizing beautiful people in vacant stories that serve only to remove us from our miserable lives for two hours.
Name one year when Hollywood wasn't pumping out obscenely expensive, shiny razzle-dazzle plastic nonsense.
If you like films like Che and Milk, then support indy films and indy filmmakers but don't expect Hollywood to change.
Perhaps you should see the movie then before criticizing Brad Pitt's acting in it. Because if you haven't seen the movie, then you have no right to comment on his acting in it.
I wonder if that writer of "Benjamin Button" was hoping that the interviewer was going to stop him and say he's really as good as Fitzgerald?
How come the myriad questions on how the BatCycle can go through walls etc., without so much as a fender protecting the front wheel, yet it doesn't simply flip Batman head-first onto the dirt - how come you didn't include those questions?
Great piece ! Thanks Chris
Besides the weird plot twists and dead ends noted. I didn't know Batman had the strength to bend rifle barrels. Also Harvey Dent's face should have had more goo dripping from it. IMHO
I need to clear my eyes. I thought you wrote "burn wrap".
Can you get one of those at Spago?
See Steven Weber's Profile
For the simple act of stating "George Gobel", you should be given anything you desire (within reason).
I AGREE! I HOPE WE AREN'T THE ONLY TWO IN HERE WHO REMEMBER THE ADORABLE GEORGE GOBEL.
George Gobel, a real time machine moment. Haven't thought of him years.
With Joe G siring six children, he could hardly be called "Lonesome". But, he was the "dirtiest of birds", eh?
George Gobel's best line ever (an ad lib on the Johnny Carson Show): "Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?"
George Gobel: besides Paul Lynde, the most reliable and funny of the original Holloywood Squares regulars.
I'd forgotten about American Carol until you reminded me. I went and checked on IMDb and lo and behold - schadenfreude:
An American Carol (2008)
Box Office
Budget: $20,000,000 (estimated)
Opening Weekend: $3,656,000 (USA)
Latest gross: $7,001,720 (31 October 2008)
hehehe
that makes me so happy. you made my day.
thank you. : - )
Apparently the right wingers can't tear themselves away from BillO the clown long enough to see a movie.
The takeaway is "Making a movie that ridicules the left in a center-left nation will not result in a profit for you endeavor."
No, no, no, you got it all wrong! Somehow this is Michael Moore's fault!
"American Carol" rests in the cinematic graveyard right next to that silly film Ben Stein made about "Darwinism".
I lived in Hollywood and I had a holly tree in my front yard!
Why are there no hollies in Hollywood?
Because the band disbanded in the late '60s. And it wasn't an LA band in the first place.
I am so glad I saw none of tese films. Slothfulness is so rewarding.
My father owned a theater when I was child and I saw thousands of films for free as a son of a thater owner. There were more than 50 movie theaters in the city I lived in. I went almost every day. I saw great films and many awful ones.
last good movie I saw was "No country for old men." I lke the author's books. Pointlessly violent and yet intellectualy stimulating.
Sounds like a fab experience. My friends and I would watch old movies after school, instead of cartoons. These These days, it's getting harder to find anything that Hollywood puts out that I want to see. while the production values are often superior, the practice of having the camera constantly jump from one character to another is so distracting and off putting that I rarely bother going to the movies any more.
The few that I've seen recently, like the latest Indian Jones film, are dispiriting experiences, at best.
I suppose it comes from big corporations running the studios rather than people who are entertainers. It seems that the further films move away from it's roots in the theater, the worse they seem to get. Certainly, the number of actors who can keep one spellbound for two hours, seem to be diminishing.
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