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dangerous and nasty
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W
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dangerous and nasty
The good times keep a-rollin' in Louisiana for the Stray Cat Gang — including Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Wright and a smattering of crew members arrested at Saturday's W wrap party in Shreveport. New reports allege Wright fielded at least one ethnic slur from an onlooker after being escorted out of the Stray Cat with unruly lighting technician Eric Felland. Brolin and company went down a little later when coming to Wright's aid — i.e. "interfering with that arrest," according to Shreveport police Cpl. Robert Elliott. Furthermore, "a rep for Brolin ... didn't say what the rehabbed actor was drinking," according to Rush and Molloy. Next up for the group: An encore on Dec. 2, when all are due back in court. Meanwhile, chalk up another incentive for filmmaking in Louisiana — the only state where you can cast, scout and produce an entire movie faster than the legal system can prosecute its stars. [NYDN]
crime and punishment
Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Wright Hauled Off by Cops in Lifelike 'W' Publicity Coup
If we had just produced an entire feature film in about 12 days like the gang behind Oliver Stone's W, then we, too, would probably have been in a bit of hell-raising mood when it was all said and done. We're not sure if getting arrested would have been on the agenda, but we'll grant newly shorn Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright the benefit of the doubt, anyway: The duo, who play President Bush and Colin Powell in the film, spent some time in custody early Saturday after coming to the aid of a rowdy crew member at a bar in Shreveport, La.
According to police called to the Stray Cat at 2 a.m., the actors and four other crew members "interfered" with the other's arrest:
More »
we want a pitcher, not a belly itcher
Oliver Stone Turning 'W' Into Something Resembling 'Oil Fields Of Dreams'
As the clock ticks down to the planned (and totally insane!) October 17th release date of Oliver Stone's W, more details are emerging about the plot and structure of what we're still fairly convinced is some sort of elaborate April Fool's Day stunt. We've seen the teaser poster, and now, the Los Angeles Times' John Horn checks in on the film and reveals what could go down in cinematic history as one of the medium's most outrageous structural devices:
DRESSED IN a suffocating Rangers warmup jacket earlier on that scorching June day, Brolin kept running into an outfield wall, trying to make a heroic catch as part of the film's baseball-oriented fantasy framing device.More »
truth in advertising
Oliver Stone Goes Comical, Slightly Negative With First 'W' Poster
If there was ever a doubt that Oliver Stone's land-speed record production of W would be anything but a broad political satire of our outgoing president, let it now be allayed with Lionsgate's first teaser poster for the film. Combining eye-chart aesthetics, lexicographic precision and a surplus of malapropisms and other stupid shit George W. Bush has said over the last eight years (our favorite here: "I can press where there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be ... hold hands"), the one-sheet suggests that Stone's lugubrious, self-serious stabs at presidential folklore from JFK to Nixon are in fact over, and his more lilting, equally self-serious Natural Born Killers vein is set to bleed once again over an election-year popular culture. We eagerly await the official one-sheet; if Lionsgate has any sense, they'll use this as inspiration. [/film]
adventures in casting
Man Best Known For Playing With Mashed Potatoes Takes On Dick Cheney in 'W'
Oliver Stone's semi-comic masterpiece W may yet make its mid-October release deadline, as reports speculate Richard Dreyfuss is close to signing on as vice president Dick Cheney. The role was the only one Stone had not cast for the film, which started shooting last week in Louisiana. The 60-year-old Brooklynite who once fought off Jaws, mashed-potatoed his way into an alien abduction in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and scored a Best Actor Oscar for The Goodbye Girl, will be entrusted with Cheney's despotic war hawk in the weeks ahead. More »
the play is the thing
Gifted Cindy Adams Rewrites 'W' Script Just in Time for Shooting
In her latest gesture of a humane tradition that includes everything from A-list fetus guarding to Yorkie rescue/fetishization, Cindy Adams today saves readers the $11 they would have shelled out to see Oliver Stone's W when it opens this October. While we'd obviously read a few mildly tantalizing reviews in the last month (which is evidently news to Adams, who appears to think she's the only one who's nabbed a copy of the script) it takes a certain rare, Cindyesque fortitude and genius to condense the entirety of Stanley Weiser's 125-page screenplay to a single gossip column in the New York Post: More »
sprinting toward oblivion
'W' Gets Weirder as Lionsgate, Oliver Stone Agree to Outrageous Five-Month Turnaround
Oliver Stone's drive to get his Bush biopic W in front of audiences before Election Day acquired new momentum on Thursday — if you can believe it. And we guess we have no choice but to wait and see if the director and Lionsgate, which yesterday picked up the film's North American distribution rights, can place their prismatic presidential quasi-drama on screens by their proposed Oct. 17 release date. Oct. 17! Stone hasn't even cast Dick Cheney yet — for a film that starts shooting Monday. Not a problem, insists the filmmaker, who's still spinning on the big picture:
"We don't really know much about Mr. Bush beyond the controlled images we've been allowed to see on TV. This movie's taking a bold stab at looking behind that curtain," Stone said in a statement. "I'm real pleased that Lionsgate has the independence necessary to bring this provocative story to an American audience."More »
defamer casting
Josh Brolin's 'W' Glamour Shot Overshadows Critical Dick Cheney Casting Call
While we long ago put to rest those rumors that Oliver Stone's forthcoming George Bush biopic W was a fantastically sophisticated April Fools gag on the media and all modest Americans of taste and discretion, it's not like Entertainment Weekly had to go rub it in with its new cover story. But there they are anyway: Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Banks as the President and First Lady, all set to ham it up in the drama Stone is apparently location scouting as we speak. Alas, with Stone swearing up and down he can have the film in theaters by election time, one critical vacuum remains: Who, who will play Dick Cheney? More »
truth to power
Meticulous Fact-Checker Oliver Stone Earns Rare Second-Guessing For 'W'
We spit our whiskey across the bedroom this morning after reading that Oliver Stone's forthcoming W may not live up to the painstaking accuracy standards we've come to expect from the filmmaker. After the screenwriter put to bed our concerns that the pranks and outbursts included in last week's script review were not, in fact, April Fool's Day gags, Bush biographers are getting all fussy today over the actual historical record:
"It leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy," said Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush. "Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run." ...More »
defamer investigates
Script Review Hints Oliver Stone's 'W' Might Just Be A Well-Cast April Fool's Joke
The hyper-sensitive Defamer April Fool's Bullshit Scanner went off again moments ago as we browsed ABC.com's exclusive screenplay review of W, Oliver Stone's upcoming biopic about the transition of George W. Bush from spoiled drunk Texas asshole to election-stealing, malaprop-slinging, Jesus-loving Texas asshole. To this very moment, in fact, we can't verify the legitimacy of Marcus Baram's trenchant read-through whose very headline — "Daddy Issues, War Lust in Oliver Stone's W" — flirts with incredulity. To that end, we combed through Baram's script review in an attempt to determine the moments that seem authentic versus those that appear to be inexplicably hacky:
We Think We Buy: "When his father cries after losing to Bill Clinton in 1992, Bush sticks it to his dad by telling him that he would have won if he'd ousted Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War."
Bullshit, Right? "When he hears about French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's desire to give weapons inspectors 30 more days to work in Iraq, Bush explodes: 'Thirty days! I'd like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of s—'s throat!' "
trade roundup
Miley Cyrus Sleeping With The Enemy. Figuratively! (Praise Jesus.)
· Most Powerful Tween on the Planet Miley Cyrus manages to finagle her way out her billion-year Disney contract for one magical evening, headlining their blood rival Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards. Still, she must return to Cinderella's Castle* in Anaheim by midnight, or her career will be turned into "a fucking Debbie Gibson state-fair-touring pumpkin, mark my words," said her fairy Bob Iger-mother. [Variety]
· Tobey Maguire is attached to produce Afterburn, an adaptation of a futuristic comic about treasure hunters who venture into the half of the planet scorched by a solar flare to retrieve valuable surviving artifacts, like the Venus de Milo and Cher. [Variety]
· After the story about the kid who lived at his parents' house who sold his first script to Ridley Scott for $650,000 vs. $1.1 million with Leo D. attached to star, we thought God had doled out all the screenwriter miracles for the month. Wrong! "A Staten Island tollbooth worker in desperate need of a car wrote a crime thriller spec titled Brooklyn's Finest last year. Now he finds himself rubbing shoulders with some of Hollywood's finest, including Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke and Antoine Fuqua." Why do we get a feeling the next time our mom calls us at work, it'll be to tell us she just sold her first spec to Sony "for mid-sixes?" [THR]
rebels forget their cause
