Sharon Waxman has a report from the set of Team America: World Police, a $32 million puppet action film being directed by a couple of reluctant, foul-mouthed punks pulled from obscurity by Paramount.
Somehow the pair of college buddies, named Matt Stone and Trey Parker, got their pitch–a 3-minute clip of The Thunderbirds with new dialogue dubbed over it–to producer Scott Rudin, and Paramount to greenlight it immediately, even though the guys have no previous puppeteering experience.
Now enduring weeks of 14-hour days shooting, “with three weeks of production to go, the filmmakers found themselves in a warp-speed work schedule of shooting all day, editing half the night and rewriting on the weekends. ‘Every shot is problem solving,’ Mr. Parker explained.”
When they’re stumped, the pair follows one article of faith aspiring action filmmakers would do well to remember, WWJBD? What Would Jerry Bruckheimer Do?
Author: greg
I don’t need no stinkin’ Metropolitan Diary
INT – NYC Friday, 7:30AM
A groggy mid-30’s MAN with bedhead and a 4-day growth of beard crawls into the t-shirt, khakis, and flip-flops dropped the previous night along the trail to his bed. Alternate side parking.
INT – CAR
Sitting in his car, he figures, why not go to this Costco he’s heard of, get those Pampers, that baby formula, maybe a rack of ribs. He crosses the 59th st bridge, drops into LIC, and pulls into the Costco parking lot. When the store finally opens (at 10) he enters, and is stopped by an ATTENDANT.
ATTENDANTMembership card, sir?
MANUmm, I guess I need to pick it up.
ATTENDANTTo your right.
The man wanders to the membership desk and shells out more than he would have saved on his baby gear. Guess he’ll be coming back here again.MEMBERSHIP DESK CLERKStep to the end of the desk for your picture.
MANI need a picture? What for?
CLERKIt goes on your membership card.
MANI just– Had I known, I would’ve gotten all dressed up.
CLERKWould it be that much better?
Spiral Jetty: Still Spiral, Not a Jetty
Todd Gibson‘s posting an extensive first-hand account of his recent visit to the Spiral Jetty, which, because of an ongoing drought, is now completely out of the water.
That’s fast. Some friends went in early July, and it still had water around it, although the Jetty itself was entirely walkable. [via bloggy]
Faithful pilgrims of contemporary art will also appreciate Gibson’s account of his visit to the Lightning Field. He does get around.
Related: Other Spiral Jetty and Smithson posts on greg.org
Post about a show that included the intriguing backstory of the official photographs of Lightning Field.
On Collectors’ Museums, or pot kettle, kettle pot
WP art critic Blake Gopnik is wants calling for DC’s bigwig art collectors–capitalists all, who else can afford a Richter?–to go communist, and open a collective to share their hoard with the contemporary art-starved DC public.
It’ll never happen, but not for the reasons Tyler Green thinks. If Miami’s experience is any indication, hyper-competitive, status-hungry collectors who open exhibition spaces have less than a 1 in 4 chance of not embarassing themselves.
[When I first did the rounds of the big Miami collections five years ago, I realized four people had–independently? in competition with each other?–bought nearly identical Oldenburgs, the original of which is at the National Gallery. In DC. And when I was introduced to one as a ‘fellow collector,’ her first question was, “Do you collect Gursky? Struth?” Which is unbelievably tacky art world shorthand for “Do you have over $10 million? or do you make over $2 million a year?” The only possible answers, by the way, are “Oh, not any more.” or “Who?”]
Basically, I worry that most collectors would be too self-important, possibly too clueless, and almost certainly too thin-skinned to be able to pull something like this off.
If Blake’s determined, though, he should get in touch with the Rubells, whose Rubell Family Collection put the pressure on their Miami peers in the first place, and who bought a hotel in Washington last year.
Observer: Two’s an Undergound Trend
The UK Observer does a trend story on guerilla media, that starts with grafitti and small-house publishing, but is mostly a mashup on underground bands–kids playing gigs on the tube, for example–and indie filmmakers–like Outfoxed‘s Roger Greenwald, and Chris Jones and Genevieve Joliffe, authors of The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook.
According to the Observer, J&J “managed to cast Harrison Ford’s little-known brother Terence as the male lead in The Runner,” their 1992 sci-fi? thriller? horror? flick. Considering how hard he is to reach these days, I’m sure the Observer means “then-little-known.”
Art Attack [Observer-UK]
Bloghdad.com/Echo_Company
Philadelphia Enquirer photographer David Swanson and reporter Joe Galloway have created a powerful report on the Marines of Echo Company, which has lost more soldiers in the Iraq War than any other unit so far.
Swanson accompanied the Marines, part of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Company, on many of their battles in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi. The report is based on his journal, and interviews with the “families, friends, teachers, girlfriends, and ministers” of the fallen Marines.
Echo Company, a Special Report from the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Knight Ridder was “almost alone” in pre-war reporting of official and expert skepticism on WMD [AJR]
“Now They Tell Us,” Michael Massing’s scathing review of pre-war news in the NY Review of Books
Republican “Switch” Ads, by Errol Morris
You’ve gotta see Errol Morris’s commercials for MoveOn PAC, the unaccountable special interest division of MoveOn.org. Morris took the “Switch” concept he used for Apple, and shot ads of Republicans who discuss switching their vote to Kerry. Morris’s straight-on interviewing style and deft editing manage to convey real peoples’ nuanced, complex, and sincere perspectives. The word that sticks with me most: Betrayed.
Of course, MoveOn’s populist, anti-war-energized donors voted to run the ad about WMD lies, which strikes me as the ad they most want to show Republicans rather than the ad that’s most likely to sway Republicans to switch.
Each ad may elicit its own rebuttal–or, at least there are automatic administration retorts of varying degrees of accuracy/effectiveness; I see the William Harrop ad as vulnerable to criticism of “sour grapes,” and the economic thesis of the Brady Van Matre ad doesn’t make sense. But the cumulative effect of so many Republican voices of discontent is quite powerful.
As a registered Republican (Yow, where’d that come from??) my top picks are Rhonda Nix, Kenneth Berg, and Sid Hasan.
Related:
Philip Gourevitch reports from the set: context, insightful comments from Morris, spin from MoveOn’s Wes Boyd, and a bit of “we’re politicians above all” from the Kerry campaign.
“Confessions of A Republican,” Johnson’s powerful 1964 ad, which was entirely scripted. [from AMMI’s The Living Room Candidate]
My interview with Errol Morris
Speaking of Losers Who Found a Bag of Mail
Despite the unmitigated embarassment of his last three directorial forays, the actor Kevin Costner still felt qualified, nay, compelled to let fly with the advice on the set of his current film, Untitled Ted Griffin Project. After wrapping for the day rather than engage in a duel-to-the-death on jet skis, writer/first-time director, Ted Griffin, got the axe. A Fly on The Wall has a gory report from the set [via Defamer]
Now tell me first-time directors, what hurts more:
1) Getting fired from your first film, which you wrote the script for, and which is still named after you?
2) Getting fired by the Patron Saint of First Filmmakers, the man you wrote Ocean’s Eleven for, Steven Soderbergh?
3) Getting replaced by Rob Reiner? I mean, come on, what’s he ever done?? [Okay, you’re not helping here…]
Rare Mies van der Rohe Interview on BBC
[via archinect] Mies van der Rohe gives a rare interview to BBC Radio. (They’ve gotten even rarer since he died; this one’s from 1959.)
New Docu joins Three Kings for theatrical re-release
With the sole exception of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, no movie has provided as dead-on accurate a depiction of war as David O. Russell’s Three Kings. Now, in an example of cautious “I told you so” prophecy-checking, Russell is co-directing a documentary that revisits aspects of his 1999 film about the first Gulf War.
Sharon Waxman reports that the $180,000 film is being rushed out for both a new DVD and an unusual theatrical re-release of the original film.
In collaboration with with Juan Carlos Zaldivar and Tricia Regan, Russell interviews Iraqi refugee extras from Three Kings (which was shot in California and Mexico, not the mideast, btw) and veterans of both GWI and II. In at least one life-imitates-art moment, a soldier who got the nickname “Clooney” for his involvement last year in attempted looting from Saddam’s hoards of cash.
I probably shouldn’t even link to the old DVD at this point, but in case they replace the good commentary tracks…
Related: Bloghdad.com/Three_Kings
Partying with David O. Russell
Photos from Japan, with apologies to Lightningfield, Bluejake, et al
Unsurprisingly, next to this store, which I dubbed, “Jen,” was a food court where you could buy a sweetened crepe with bananas, gelato, custard, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and powdered sugar.
This ramshackle building was next to our Circle K. I didn’t think much of it until we walked by it at night, when it was open, and the upstairs was hopping.
The next day, looking at its inventive, case study-like I-beam construction from across the street, I came to like it.
Continue reading “Photos from Japan, with apologies to Lightningfield, Bluejake, et al”
Jessica :: Choire , LaToya :: Michael
Until I see them standing side by side, I’m going to assume that “Jessica Coen” is really Choire Sicha indulging his “breast-wielding, 24-year old D-girl” side. I mean, it’s not like he needed an excuse to read WWD…
Or waitaminnit, maybe Nick is the Remington Steele to Choire’s Laura Holt… or maybe Nick is Remington and Ana Marie is Laura Holt, and Choire is just that other guy, who got booted after the first season…Or maybe Skyler and Raven had to leave Port Charles when […]
[next day update: ok, maybe not LaToya and Michael.]
Moving the WTC Site Museums?
Has he shrunk out of sight? Daniel Libeskind was notably absent from David Dunlap’s NYT report of architects vying for the commission to design the cultural buildings at the World Trade Center Site. Maybe he’s automatically in the running. After all, the museum images we all refer to right now are the cantilevered crystalline forms in Libeskind’s original proposal.
But, in what is by now standard operating procedure for the Port Authority- and LMDC-run rebuilding effort, flaws and shortcomings are being found in yet another element of the master plan. Dunlap’s article looks at options and challenges for moving the museums, now that obstructing a promenade between Calatrava’s train hub and the Winter Garden, and looming 15 stories over the Memorial entrance doesn’t seem like that great an idea.
Plan May Be Too Much of A Good Thing [NYT]
How ____ would protest at the Republican Convention
Dale Peck, writer/Hatchet man: will periodically leave Soho House to “commit civil disobedience as many times as possible.” [via Gothamist]
Maer Roshan, magazine non-launcher/editor: will bombard and disorient conventiongoers with daily rundowns on the best plastic surgeons and spa treatments in town. Also, will depict attendees as big-hair-sporting, cowboy-hat-wearers. Not clear that this will be recognized as protest. [via Gawker]
Various anarcho-geeks: will ride around town on wi-fi- and gps-enabled bikes, hoping someone will text them. Ooh, you’ve got’em scared now, pal. [Eyeteeth, via waxy]
The Lord Spins in Mysterious Ways
So which way does this go? I mean, I’m a pretty religious guy from a religious, hurricane-prone state, and I can’t figure it out:
Does getting pounded by two history-making hurricanes mean God is displeased and punishing Bush and his supporters for their election year sins, OR
does it mean God’s blessing him with several weeks of high-profile disaster relief photo-ops and FEMA-distributed largesse?