"I wanted to run Michael Parks from Red State for an Oscar this year, and I was told I'd need $250,000 minimum to do that. We thought we were eligible for SAG Awards, but it turns out that you have to actually submit to the SAG Awards, even if you're a SAG member, which doesn't make sense to me. And then the Golden Globe people didn't want to give Michael Parks consideration because we didn't screen the movie for them specifically when the movie was out in theaters, but it never was out in theaters so it was kind of ridiculous. You have to jump through these ridiculous little rings to even be considered, and then it's a popularity contest around who has the most money to run." [Moviefone]
Screw moustaches. I give you... Assdance: "Call for entries soon! (THE FILM FESTIVAL IN WHICH ONLY FILMS REJECTED BY SUNDANCE CAN FINALLY BE SCREENED!) All films submitted will be viewed and chosen by a legendary Board of Directors while high on ambien, drunk, and/or stoned (or most likely all at once). Films chosen as Official Selections will simply be the ones which the Board of Directors felt were enjoyable while wasted! That’s it. Call for entries TBA!" [ASS Studios]
If you were put off by the thought of Demi Moore playing feminist icon Gloria Steinem in the currently-filming porn biopic Lovelace, you have the whip-its to thank for this casting change: Sarah Jessica Parker will now step into Steinem's shoes opposite Amanda Seyfried's titular Linda Lovelace as Moore recovers and, as a press release delicately puts it, "seek[s] treatment for exhaustion." Just a few more day-playing A-listers and Lovelace will officially turn into New Year's Eve. [Deadline]
"I'm trying to work in studio movies, but they won't hire me. I get feedback from my agent saying, 'She's too much of an indie queen.' And then on the other side, my name doesn't get the financing to do a movie over $1 million. And I'm called 'the indie queen.' So it's really a challenging path because I know so much about the indie side of the business. Because I grew up in it. It's like I'm back in junior high here at Sundance. There's John Cooper and Trevor Groth and we all grew up together, you know? But it's different times. And this stuff gets projected onto me. People are like, 'You're here every year, you do so many indie movies.' And I'm like, 'No, I did Broken English five years ago.'" [indieWIRE]
If you think his screenplay is implausible, check out Pablo Fenjves's earlier work: "Fenjves, who lived in Brentwood in the early '90s, was the person who heard a dog wailing at the time of the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. Even odder, Fenjves found himself years later ghost-writing Simpson's If I Did It pseudo-memoir." [THR]
"I haven’t seen it yet, which I wouldn’t normally admit to an interview subject, but you are a dog so who cares. But I’ve heard it’s very good!" "Bark bark bark bark bark." [Videogum]
"I enjoy these strange and possibly creepy videos, although I'm not entirely sure why — there's something weirdly special about memorializing a child's untimely death with clips of her sliding across the floor in a football helmet or staring round-eyed into strobing TV static. As camp artifacts they're unbeatable, but occasionally music and image collide just right and I get a little choked up, despite myself." [The Hairpin]
Days after the polarizing Red Hook Summer hit Sundance, co-writer/co-producer James McBride unleashed a passionate missive comparing the black artists' experience to cultural servitude: "You get to drive the well-meaning boss to and fro, you love that boss, your lives are stitched together, but only when the boss decides your story intersects with his or her life is your story valid. Because you’re a kind of cultural maid. You serve up the music, the life, the pain, the spirituality. You clean house. Take the kids to school. You serve the eggs and pour the coffee. And for your efforts the white folks thank you. They pay you a little. They ask about your kids. Then they jump into the swimming pool and you go home to your life on the outside, whatever it is. And if lucky you get to be the wise old black sage that drops pearls of wisdom, the wise old poet or bluesman who says ‘I been buked and scorned,’ and you heal the white folks, when in fact you can’t heal anybody." [40Acres.com]
This trenchant observation press release just over the transom at ML HQ: "You’ve probably seen the news by now –- Ryan Gosling has been snubbed by the Academy. Once all the hoopla and cries of injustice die down, you’ll find that Ryan Gosling, the supposed darling of hearts everywhere, really wasn’t all that popular. In a recent survey conducted by Badoo, the world’s largest social network for meeting new people, when asked which male celeb they would like to hang out with, people overwhelmingly chose Tim Tebow (31%) and not Ryan, who brought in only 6% of the vote. Even amongst women, Ryan did poorly against the likes of George Clooney, garnering a meager 9% to Clooney’s 24%." Now you know. [Press release]
The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern reports from Saturday night's hot ticket: "Aziz [Ansari], barely audible over the jabbering crowd and telling jokes skewering everything from the gay hookup app Grindr to the sanctity of marriage, is bombing terribly. He’s visibly annoyed. All of a sudden, Cuba Gooding Jr. bum-rushes the stage out of nowhere, snatches Aziz’s microphone, and yells, 'Everybody, shut the FUCK up! Have some respect for the black men onstage.' Aziz —who is Indian— looks baffled, and when Cuba exits, remarks, 'Y’all would be paying more attention if we were showing Boat Trip up here!' Aziz: 1, Cuba: 0." [Sundance Channel/Daily Beast]
"Evidence continues to mount that Michigan's budding film industry really was no such thing. Would-be moguls scatter as soon as a new governor deep-sixes the nation's leading incentive program because it amounts to cutting Hollywood checks for money spent here, not capital invested. Now a state-of-the-art studio backed by savvy businessmen with names like Al Taubman and John Rakolta is on track to miss payments to bondholders, often a fraught tripwire on the way to bankruptcy. Not much of an industry, that. Not if you understand the word to imply a modicum of permanent investment — the kind Taubman, Rakolta & Co. assumed with their backing of Raleigh Studios in Pontiac — instead of a traveling minstrel show partly financed by starstruck taxpayers." But! They'll always have 30 Minutes or Less. [The Detroit News]
"I didn't see the president take any popcorn, which I jokingly called 'political popcorn' because it had just the right amount of salt and butter. It was some of the best popcorn I've ever tasted," recalled director Anthony Hemingway of his January visit to the White House to screen Red Tails with his cast, producers, surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen, and President Obama. However, "the theater isn't set up that well. The sound could be better. The projector needs to be upgraded." And alas! The wistful conclusion: "I actually ran to the bathroom because I drank too much during the movie, and by the time I got back, the president had left for another engagement." [THR]
And/or be able to tell time: "Odeon Liverpool One can confirm it has issued a small number of refunds to guests who were unaware that The Artist was a silent film. The cinema is happy to offer guests a refund on their film choice is they raise concern with a member of staff within 10 minutes of the film starting." [The Telegraph]
Or Van Helsing and Dracula, or whatever Sony's apparently calling it? Don't everyone speak up at once. [Fusible]
Now that Golden Globe winner Octavia Spencer's sitting pretty with her Best Supporting Actress trophy, the L.A. Times breaks out a choice quote from an October visit to the set of her Sundance 2012 pic Smashed: "You do a movie like [The Help] to get a movie like this," she said of her new film, which sees her go from spitting retorts and baking special pies as The Help's Minny to helping Mary Elizabeth Winstead battle alcoholism. "It’s nice... to play roles when I'm not just a sassy black woman." Hear, hear. Now let's get Spencer the Oscar, already. [LAT]
