Most actors are loath to talk about their crappy past movies. They usually elide around the subject, speaking in delicate, neutral tones. But in the press conference for his upcoming film The Fighter, Mark Wahlberg appropriately pulled no punches and confessed what we all already knew: The Happening was just a terrible movie.
Asked to talk about his co-star Amy Adams, Wahlberg revealed that they almost did a previous movie together and that's when the truth started tumbling out:
I was such a huge fan of [Amy Adams]. We'd actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie, and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet. I don't want to tell you what movie... All right, The Happening with M. Night Shyamalan. It is was it is. F*cking trees, man, the plants. F*ck it. You can't blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. You know? I wasn't playing a cop or a crook.
F*cking trees, indeed. The conference predictably burst into laughter, with by far the biggest laughs coming from director David O. Russell and co-stars Adams and Christian Bale, who all know a little something about crappy misfires.
But congratulations to Mark Wahlberg for speaking truth to power. Between this and Shia LaBeouf admitting what a stinker Indiana Jones 4 was, we may have an epidemic of truth telling in Hollywood. C'mon Russell Crowe! Admit what a colossal bore Robin Hood was! You have nothing to lose but your chains!