"I love George Clooney's movie, The Ides of March," Harvey Weinstein raved recently when asked for an Academy Award prediction. "I love politics, and this movie is the best political movie -- it's gotta be right up there with the best of the best. Seriously, it is the toughest, most incisive, no-bullshit movie I've seen this year. And [Ryan] Gosling hits it out of the ballpark. And the entire cast is great. Clooney just nailed it. It's an appropriate movie for these times. So Oscar prediction? That that gets nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. And it's not mine." [Vulture]
Today's real talk from Johnny Depp, speaking with Vanity Fair about his lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: "Basically, if they're going to pay me the stupid money right now, I'm going to take it... I have to. I mean, it's not for me. Do you know what I mean? At this point, it's for my kids. It's ridiculous, yeah, yeah. But ultimately is it for me? No. No. It's for the kids." And, on the subject of being photographed: "Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped ... It feels like a kind of weird -- just weird, man." [Vanity Fair, THR]
Porn-star guest critics notwithstanding: "It's a lot of work and a lot of reviewers aren't going into that movie to like it. They don't want to like it. None of those reviewers was psyched to see Bucky Larson and laugh. They go in with the mentality, fuck these guys for making another movie. They go in there to kind of headhunt. It makes me laugh because it's just so embarrassing. It makes them look like such morons. You can't review Avatar then review Bucky Larson. Comedy is so subjective, you know what I mean? To sit there and technically pick it apart is so stupid. We've never made movies for critics, so we could give a fuck." Clearly. [Splitsider]
Spoiler alert: James Franco's character wasn't always supposed to survive the Rise of the Planet of the Apes chaos. According to an early script, Franco's Will Rodman was supposed to die in the arms of his primate pal Caesar after being hit with a bullet during the dramatic forest showdown. At the last minute, the filmmakers decided to change the ending and flew the actor cross-country to film an alternative goodbye scene with Caesar (Andy Serkis). The casualty-free climax made the final cut, Rise of the Planet of the Apes grossed over $400 million worldwide and Will Rodman lives to film a potential sequel. [THR]
"We start shooting in October. Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team Of Rivals is much too big a book to be a movie, so the Lincoln story only takes place in the last few months of his Presidency and life. I was interested in how he ended the war through all the efforts of his generals... but more importantly how he passed the 13th Amendment into constitutional law. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war powers act and could have been struck down by any court after the war ended... But what permanently ended slavery was the very close vote in the House of Representatives over the 13th Amendment -- that story I'm excited to tell." Fine, but who will pay for the 3-D glasses? [Empire]
What keeps Tom Cruise relevant after 30 years in Hollywood? Take this hint from his Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird: "You look at the directors he's worked with [...] It's a who's who. Scorsese and Kubrick and Spielberg and Oliver Stone -- when Oliver Stone was making better movies -- and Michael Mann and Sydney Pollack and on and on and on. It's kind of stunning. Not every one of them was a great movie, but he's worked with great directors over and over again, and you can engage him in those conversations." Or Paul Thomas Anderson. Or Ridley Scott. Or Brian De Palma. Or John Woo. Or Neil Jordan. Isn't Quentin Tarantino hiring at the moment? Let's make that happen. [LAT]
In addition, that is, to an exceptional Alex Gibney documentary premiering tonight on ESPN: "How could the Cubs, up 3-0 and five outs away from the World Series, manage to lose 8-3? Did the players feel the expectation and the dread of its upending and so fulfill their fans' darkest fears? And why was it that once that game six was lost, most of the fans in Wrigley -- and even some of the players, as it turns out -- were certain that they would lose the next day, as if the fates had decided to twist the knife in their wound?" [Grantland]
"For John Gotti Sr, you need a man's man to play that role," critiqued former mobster Lewis Kasman about John Travolta's casting in the upcoming crime-boss biopic from Barry Levinson. "He's a thug, so you need someone who's a thug... a guy who grew up in that life." Apparently, Travolta's Oscar-nominated Saturday Night Fever performance doesn't hold much weight among the mob set either: "John Gotti Sr. never danced a dance in his life." [Daily Mail]
Eight years after Aron Ralston cut off his own arm to free himself from a boulder in Utah's Little Blue John Canyon, a 64-year-old North Carolina man faced a similar survival nightmare while hiking in the same Utah desert earlier this month. Even though Amos Wayne Richards had seen 127 Hours -- the Danny Boyle film starring James Franco that chronicled Ralston's hiking disaster -- he still set out for a solo hike without telling anyone of his plans. Richards broke a leg, dislocated his shoulder and was forced to survive four days on rain water and a pair of protein bars before attracting the attention of a helicopter pilot overhead with the flash on his camera. Lesson learned this time? [EW via AP]
A funny thing happened on the way to Mindy Kaling attempting to sell a rom-com in Hollywood: "The junior executives' office at Thinkscope Visioncloud was nicer than any room within a fifty-mile radius of the Office studio. After I finished pitching one of my ideas for a low-budget romantic comedy, I was met with silence. One of the execs sheepishly looked at the other execs. He finally said, 'Yeah, but we're really trying to focus on movies about board games. People really seem to respond to those.' For the rest of the meeting, we talked about whether there was any potential in a movie called Yahtzee! I made some polite suggestions and left." [The New Yorker]
Perhaps you recall Daniel Kraus, the author and filmmaker behind the WORK Series -- a quartet of documentaries that includes the underrecognized masterpiece Musician and continues Sunday with the world premiere of Preacher. Kraus sends word that this entry in his franchise of vocational voyeurism will the last for the foreseeable future, so do yourself a favor and tune in to the Documentary Channel at 8 p.m. You can check out the trailer here, too; I promise it runs laps around Machine Gun Preacher. [Documentary Channel]
"A year ago we took a trip to Sequoia National Park. I wanted to excite my daughter while being in such amazing surroundings. Being the Star Wars geek that I am (so is she), I told her that this is where the Ewoks live. [...] Maybe I'm a little wrong for lying to her and falsifying the pictures, but I don't care. She'll never forget the time she spent in the big woods with Ewoks." George Lucas would no doubt be appalled. [Wired via BuzzFeed]
Good news and bad news, Oz fans. The good: This December, Profiles in History will be selling a pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz as part of their "Icons of Hollywood" auction. This particular pair boasts leather soles that were painted red for the film and an inside lining that reads "#7 Judy Garland." Additionally, the pair being sold is the actual set of shoes shown at the end of the film when Dorothy clicks her heels. The not so good news, for those on a budget: Dorothy's ruby slippers are estimated to sell for between $2 million and $3 million. Good luck, bidders! [EW]
Love the fire, Jose Padilha, but come on: "I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop, and I think that such a film is now urgently needed. [...] But I will not repeat what [original director Paul] Verhoeven has done so clearly and strongly. Instead I try to make a film that will address topics that Verhoeven untreated. If you are a man changes into a robot, how do you do that? What is the difference between humans and robots developed? What is free will? What does it mean to lose your free will? Those are the issues that I think." [Film 1 via The Awl]
"[Hysteria director Tanya] Wexler said she gave everybody on set a vibrator. But getting them there caused a bit of embarrassment for a security guard at a Heathrow airport luggage checkpoint. 'The officer said, "You have 20 or 30 small electronic devices in your luggage," and I said, "Yes, they're vibrators," and the guy just said, "Move along,"' she recalled. [Maggie] Gyllenhaal said she was awash with gift vibrators from friends by the end of filming." Yowza! So, uh, why isn't there more post-Toronto buzz? [NYDN]
